Rates Bottomed the Week I Filmed This

Mortgage rates bottomed the week I filmed this and then rose almost a full point over the following four months.

In this video I said "interest rates have been dropping rapidly" and flagged what came next as a forecast: "here's my prediction — with interest rates dropping and the fact that we're going into a slower season, if you can move in the next 2 to 3 to 4 months, now is the time to buy." The Freddie Mac 30-year average hit 6.08% the week of September 26, 2024 — its low for the year. By the week of January 16, 2025 it was 7.04%.

That's 96 basis points the wrong way.

But I want to score this fairly rather than dramatically, because two things complicate the obvious verdict — and because two of my other calls in that same video landed.

What rates actually did

My baseline was accurate, and if anything conservative. I said "a year ago interest rates were hovering around the seven mark." Fall 2023 monthly averages ran 7.20% in September and 7.62% in October, peaking at 7.79% the week of October 26. So rates really had come down a long way by the time I was talking.

I also said I'd "seen a couple of the high fives." The Freddie Mac survey never printed a 5-handle at any point in 2024. In the entire weekly series from August 2023 through August 2026, there is exactly one week below 6.00% — 5.98%, the week of February 26, 2026, seventeen months after this video, and it lasted about a week.

The "high fives" I'd seen were probably individual quoted products with buydowns rather than the market average. That distinction matters a lot, because I used those quotes as evidence of a trend.

Here's the month-by-month after the video:

October 2024 averaged 6.43%. November 6.80%. December 6.71%. January 2025, 6.96%.

Then all of 2025: 6.84% in February, 6.65% in March, 6.72% in April, 6.82% in May and June, 6.72% in July, 6.59% in August, 6.35% in September, 6.25% in October, 6.24% in November, 6.19% in December.

Rates didn't resume a durable decline until roughly August 2025 — eleven months after I said they were falling.

And now: they bottomed in February 2026 and have risen six straight months, to 6.65% the week of August 20, 2026 — roughly where they sat in December 2024.

What that means for someone who listened. A buyer who moved immediately in late September 2024 got roughly 6.1%. A buyer who took my "2 to 3 to 4 months" and closed in December or January got roughly 6.7% to 7.0%. On a $400,000 loan that difference runs about $155 to $235 a month in principal and interest.

Two things soften that, and I'd rather raise them myself than have someone else point them out.

The comparison I was actually offering wasn't September versus January. My pitch was winter versus spring — buy between October and February instead of waiting for the April-to-June market. Against that choice, the advice looks better, because a winter 2024-25 buyer got in ahead of a price run-up I'll get to in a moment, and spring 2025 rates ran 6.65% to 6.82% anyway, no better than the winter they'd have paid.

And a rate isn't permanent. Someone who closed at 6.96% in January 2025 could have refinanced during the week rates touched 5.98% in February 2026. That's thirteen months of the higher payment, not thirty years.

So the honest charge is narrower than "this cost people money." I told people the direction of rates was down, over a specific window, and it was up. That's a real error. It's just not the same as saying anyone who listened got hurt.

And this call was right

This one I got. I said "there's going to be a price increase for sure in the April, May, June market."

Per the Arvest Skyline Report, Benton County's average sale price went from $433,015 in the first half of 2024 to $471,427 in the first half of 2025 — up 8.9%. Washington County went from $389,525 to $417,489, up 7.2%. Sales volume rose 5.2%.

That's a good call and I'll take credit for it.

The equity showed up on schedule — and then gave most of it back

I want to be precise about what I promised, because it's easy to move the goalposts on yourself.

I named a horizon: buyers would "get over into the April, May, June, July market in this upcoming 2025 season" with equity. On that timeline, it happened. Benton County was up 8.9% year over year by mid-2025. Anyone who bought that winter and looked at their value the following summer saw exactly what I said they'd see.

What I didn't say, and should have, is what happens after one good season.

A buyer at Benton County's second-half 2024 average of $449,750 is looking at $465,888 in the first half of 2026. That's +3.6% over roughly eighteen months, about 2.4% annualized — and it does not cover the 6% to 9% cost of selling a house. Net of transaction costs, that buyer would take a loss selling today.

Benton County has given back part of the 2025 gain, down 1.2% year over year, and the Skyline Report's director now describes the region as "more of a buyer's market than a seller's market" — the first time in years.

Washington County held up better: $402,322 to $423,750, up 5.3% over the same stretch.

So the correction isn't that I was wrong about 2025. It's that I described one season's price move as "equity," which implies something durable and liquid, and it was neither.

The irony I want to be honest about

I made two predictions in that video and they couldn't both be true.

I said inventory would surge as locked-in sellers gave up and listed. That happened, dramatically. Northwest Arkansas active listings went from 1,883 in September 2024 to 3,492 in July 2026 — up 85%, the highest in the series. Nationally, active listings went back above 1.1 million. The Skyline Report's director confirmed the mechanism this year: "Interest rate lock-in is beginning to fade, and those who delayed selling since rates rose are beginning to feel OK about upgrading."

That's a genuinely good call.

And that surge is precisely what killed the price appreciation I also predicted. More supply, softer prices. I forecast both the cause and its opposite effect in the same video and didn't notice they were in tension.

The lock-in claim: right direction, wrong mechanism

I said sellers holding 3% and 4% notes were "fine going to the fives now" and would start selling, calling it "a little bit of a desperate sell."

Federal Housing Finance Agency data shows lock-in easing slowly rather than breaking. In the third quarter of 2024, 54.8% of US mortgage holders had a rate below 4% and 73.0% below 5%. By the first quarter of 2026: 49.9% below 4%, 66.7% below 5%. That's about five points of erosion below 4% and six points below 5% across six quarters, driven mostly by attrition and new lending rather than capitulation. Half of all American mortgage holders still carry a sub-4% rate.

And the specific mechanism I named never got tested: nobody was offered "the fives." Rates spent essentially the entire period between 6% and 7%. A move-up seller trading a 3.5% note was looking at 6.8%, not 5.5%.

Inventory rose anyway — for reasons other than the one I gave.

The 5.5% figure has a real source, and it says the opposite of what I used it for

I said "they say the average person is willing to accept a 5.5 interest rate."

The number traces to John Burns Research and Consulting. In an April 2023 survey of more than 1,300 homeowners and renters, 71% of prospective buyers who would finance said they were not willing to accept a rate above 5.5%. A September 2024 survey — contemporaneous with my video — found only 13% would accept 6.5% to 6.99%, against 47% at 5.0% to 5.5%.

Two corrections. First, 5.5% is a ceiling that a large majority refuses to cross, not "what the average person is willing to accept." Different statistic.

Second, and worse for my argument: the analysts publishing that number were using it to say the opposite of what I said. Commentary on the September 2024 survey noted that neither the then-current 6.11% nor the subsequent 6.62% was going to unlock meaningful seller activity. I cited their number to argue we were close to the trigger. They were using it to argue we weren't.

What was actually good advice

Now the part I'd keep, because a fair amount of this video was describing durable market structure rather than forecasting — and that part holds up.

Days on market really were lengthening, exactly as I said. Median days on market in the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metro: 50 in August 2024, 52 in September, 56 in October, 57 in November, 64 in December, 68 in January 2025. I was accurately describing what I was seeing on showings.

And here's an update that strengthens the advice rather than undercutting it: January 2026 hit 80 days — the highest January in the series — and July 2026 ran 64 days against 54 in July 2024. Listings are sitting roughly ten days longer now than in the fall I was describing. By my own logic, the buyer's leverage is greater today than when I made the video.

The winter-buying claim is well documented. ATTOM's analysis of more than 48 million sales found buyers closing on December 24 pay a 3.8% premium over automated valuation, against 14.0% on May 27 — a spread of more than ten percentage points. The best months to buy nationally run October through November. Zillow's sale-to-list ratio shows the same shape, troughing every January and February and peaking in June — roughly 1.2 percentage points of extra negotiating room in winter, about $5,400 on a $450,000 home.

Spring really is peak-price season, with one caveat I should have made. ATTOM's seller data puts the top premiums in March, April and May. But it measures the closing month, and a March closing is usually a January or February contract. So the peak contract season runs a bit earlier than "April, May, June."

And the negotiation advice was sound. I said to offer roughly five to twenty thousand under asking on a listing sitting 45 days without a price reduction — and I scaled it properly, adding "depends on the price of course."

The current sale-to-list ratio in Northwest Arkansas is about 98.4%, meaning the typical home already sells around $7,200 under asking on a $450,000 list price. So my floor was, if anything, conservative. The top of the range is achievable but requires genuinely stale or mispriced inventory.

"Instant equity" — the phrase I'd retire

I used it repeatedly in that video, and I want to take it apart, because it's a phrase our whole industry uses loosely.

The definition of market value that appraisers actually work from is the most probable price a property brings in a competitive, open market with both parties knowledgeable and acting without duress. Under that definition, an arm's-length sale after normal market exposure is the best evidence of market value there is. List price has no standing in it at all. It's a seller's opening ask.

So buying 4% under an asking price that was 4% over market creates exactly zero equity. It creates a correctly priced purchase.

The empirical check is worse for the casual version: ATTOM's data shows homes nationally closing 7% to 14% above their automated valuation estimates. Buyers as a group aren't extracting equity at closing — in the median transaction they're paying a premium over modeled value. "Below list" and "below value" are not the same measurement.

Where the idea genuinely holds: a mispriced listing that has aged, where negotiating to comparables is real. A genuinely distressed or non-arm's-length sale — estate, relocation deadline, divorce, pre-foreclosure — where the "without duress" condition is violated. A below-market-condition purchase where renovation costs less than the value it adds, which is sweat equity, correctly named.

Where it fails: as a general property of buying under asking. And transaction costs swamp it either way. At 6% to 9% to sell, a buyer needs roughly a 7% gain just to exit at break-even. A $10,000 win on a $450,000 house is 2.2%. It isn't liquid, and calling it "instant" implies a liquidity it doesn't have.

What I'd say instead

The tactical advice in that video was good and I'd give it again to anyone already shopping: winter is the cheaper season, aged listings carry leverage, listings that haven't cut price are worth an offer, and spring costs more.

The forecasting is where I'd be more careful now, and the failure was specific: I treated a long decline as a line that would keep going. Rates had fallen from 7.79% to 6.08% over about eleven months, which is a real trend and not a crazy thing to extrapolate. It reversed within days of my saying so anyway. That's the nature of forecasting rates, and it's an argument for not doing it on camera.

I don't know where rates go from here and neither does anyone else. What I can tell you is that as of late August 2026 the Freddie Mac average is 6.65% and has risen six months running, inventory in this region is up 85% from when I made that video, and homes are sitting about ten days longer than they were.

Those are conditions, not predictions. I'll try to stick to the first kind.