Mortgage rates have spent most of 2026 doing the same thing they did in 2025. They drift in a quarter-point band, the headlines call it volatility, and the people who can afford to wait keep waiting. The buyers who moved in February are looking smart in May. The ones who are still watching the screen will probably look the same way in September.
The pattern under the headlines is straightforward. The Fed cut twice in late 2025 and has signaled patience since. Lenders have priced two more cuts into the curve and then taken them back out twice. Day-to-day mortgage rates move on inflation prints and Treasury auctions, not on the funds rate directly. That gap is what makes the headlines feel more dramatic than the actual buying environment is.
The buyers who moved in February are going to look smart by September. The ones who waited for certainty are going to keep waiting.
Beverly Hills has felt this differently than the rest of the country. Cash share on transactions above eight million is back near pre-2022 levels. Rate sensitivity in the three-to-eight band is real but compressed. Sellers in that range are pricing for a buyer who will write a contingency, not a buyer who will pay cash, and that has pulled list prices into a tighter relationship with closed comps than we saw last fall.
What that looks like on the ground. Fewer aspirational listings, more honest pricing, and a slower close timeline. Thirty days under contract is the new floor. Forty-five is normal. The deals that fall apart are falling apart over inspection items, not rate locks.
The buyers who have moved in the last ninety days have something in common. They are not waiting for a number on a screen to change. They are waiting for the right house. When that house appears, they write, they close, and they stop reading the rate headlines for a while. That is the entire move.
If a buyer is asking us whether to wait for rates, the honest answer is that the cost of waiting is usually higher than the cost of a slightly worse rate on the right property. Rates can be refinanced. The house cannot.
