10 min read
Prices are high and rates are high. Am I wrong to hesitate?
No. You are reading the market correctly. Per Freddie Mac's weekly survey, August 6, 2026, the 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.69 percent. That is an eleven-month high. At that rate, every $100,000 you borrow costs roughly $645 a month in principal and interest.
Run that against a typical Central Ohio price and the payment is real money. It is normal to look at that number and pause. Anyone who tells you the math is easy right now is not being straight with you.
So the question is not whether the market is expensive. It is. The question is whether waiting will make it cheaper for you. That depends on what would have to happen for prices to fall here, and whether those things are actually happening.
Why would Columbus prices not just crash?
Big price crashes need certain ingredients. They need far more homes than buyers. They need lots of owners forced to sell at once. They usually need a weak local job market. The 2008 crash had all of these, plus loans given to people who could never repay them.
Columbus does not look like that today. The metro has been underbuilt for years. Builders did not keep up with the number of people moving here, so there is a shortage of homes, not a glut. Shortages put a floor under prices.
The job side matters too. Central Ohio keeps adding employers, and the Intel project in the corridor east of Columbus has pulled more investment and more workers into the region. People with steady jobs do not have to sell cheap. When owners are not forced to sell, prices tend to hold even when the market cools.
None of this makes a drop impossible. Nobody can promise you that, and I will not. But the ingredients that cause crashes are mostly missing here. A market can cool and flatten without ever handing you the big discount you are waiting for.
But I see price cuts everywhere. Does that not mean prices are falling?
This is a fair read of what you are seeing, so let me show you what the data actually says. Per the Columbus MLS, pulled August 10, 2026, covering the previous 90 days, 46 percent of active Dublin listings have cut their price at least once, and the average cut is above $50,000.
On its own, that sounds like a falling market. But the same pull shows Dublin had 314 closings at a median of $580,000, and 81 percent of the homes that sold went under contract within 30 days.
Both things are true at once. Homes priced right are selling fast, at strong prices. Homes priced wrong sit until the seller cuts. Most of those cuts are sellers correcting a bad opening price, not the whole market sliding.
There is one real soft spot, and it is worth knowing about. In that same MLS pull, new construction sits 60 to 125 days and closes below list, while resale sells in roughly two to three weeks at asking. That is not a crash. It is a pocket of leverage, and prepared buyers are the ones who get to use it.
What has waiting cost people before?
I will speak carefully here, because I am not going to invent numbers. But I have watched this pattern play out in Central Ohio for years, and it usually goes like this.
A buyer decides to wait for prices to come down. Prices do not come down. A year later the same houses cost more, the buyer's rent went up at renewal, and the down payment they saved now covers a smaller share of the price. The goal posts moved while they stood still.
Waiting also has a quiet cost. Every month you rent, your full payment goes to your landlord. When you own, part of every payment comes back to you as loan paydown. Waiting pauses that clock.
Has waiting ever worked? Yes. In markets that were truly overbuilt or full of speculation, buyers who waited were rewarded. I just cannot point to those ingredients in Columbus right now. Betting on a big drop here is a bet against the supply math.
If I do wait, how do I wait well?
Waiting is a fine choice if it is an active one. The buyers who wait badly just refresh listing apps and hope. The buyers who wait well get ready, so that if a price drop, a rate dip, or the right house shows up, they can move in days instead of months.
Here is what waiting well looks like.
- Get preapproved now, and refresh it when it expires. It costs nothing and tells you your real budget instead of a guess.
- Pick two or three suburbs and learn them deeply. Know what a fair price looks like on sight.
- Watch closed prices and days on market, not headlines. Closings are the truth. Headlines are noise.
- Keep saving. A bigger down payment shrinks the loan no matter what rates do.
- Decide your numbers in advance. Know the monthly payment you can live with and the price where you would say yes.
Can I not just wait for rates to drop instead?
Maybe rates fall. Maybe they do not. But here is the piece I most want you to understand, because it changes the whole decision. A rate is temporary if you want it to be. A price is permanent.
If you buy at today's 6.69 percent and rates fall later, you can refinance and keep the lower payment. The price you paid on day one is locked forever, in your favor. If you wait for rates to fall and prices rise while you wait, that higher price is yours for the life of the loan, no matter how good rates get.
There is also a crowd effect. Lower rates do not just help you. They help every buyer who is sitting out right now. When rates dip, those buyers come back and competition rises. The calm shopping conditions you have today tend to disappear.
And you do not always have to wait for the market to hand you a lower rate. As advertised on builder sites in August 2026, some Central Ohio builders are offering 2/1 buydowns with first-year rates as low as 2.875 percent, flex cash from $17,500 up to $50,000 at specific communities, and paid closing costs. Many of these offers expire monthly. They exist because new builds are sitting, and they are one of the few ways to get real rate relief today.
When is waiting genuinely the right call?
I promised honesty, so here it is. There are situations where I will tell you to wait, and I tell people this to their face regularly.
If any of these fit you, waiting is not fear. It is judgment. The market will still be here when your life is ready for it.
- Your job or income feels shaky. A mortgage on unstable income is stress you do not need.
- You may move within two or three years. Selling that soon often eats any gains in transaction costs.
- Buying would empty your savings completely. A house with no emergency fund behind it is fragile.
- The payment only works if everything goes perfectly. It should work on a normal month, with room to breathe.
- Your life is mid-change. New relationship, possible divorce, custody in motion. Let it settle first.
What I would tell you across my kitchen table
No two situations are the same. I can write a thousand words about the market, but your decision comes down to two things: the monthly payment you can actually live with, and your timeline. Those are the numbers that matter, and they are yours, not the market's.
So here is my offer. I will run your actual numbers with you personally. Real prices in the suburbs you care about, and real payment estimates at today's rates, next to what waiting would look like for you. If the honest answer is wait, I will tell you to wait, and I will tell you exactly what to watch so you know when it is time.
Text me, call me, or email me, whatever is easiest. I am happy to meet in person too, and the coffee is on me. It is free and there is no obligation. You will leave knowing where you actually stand, and that is worth more than another year of wondering.
