Home buying insights / 01
Affordability Calculator with a Fixed Monthly P&I Payment
Purchasing power changes as interest rates change, while monthly principal & interest stays constant.
Market update · October 1, 2026
What Higher Mortgage Rates Mean for Home Sellers
Summary of an article by Keeping Current Matters — read the full article ↗
- Higher rates squeeze buyers, and builders are fighting back with incentives: nearly 1 in 5 newly built homes (18.8%) is advertised with a buyer incentive, most often a mortgage rate buydown (13.8% of new listings) that can drop rates below 6% and shave hundreds off a monthly payment.
- It's working: new-home sales sit at an 8-month high, back around 2019 levels, while existing-home sales run about 1 million sales below 2019 (Logan Mohtashami, HousingWire chief economist).
- Sellers can play the same game without slashing price — a rate buydown or closing-cost credit, repairs, or price negotiation are all levers, and highlighting the local amenities new construction lacks matters too (Joel Berner, Realtor.com senior economist).
- Builders have been repricing to what buyers can afford since 2022 — sellers now have to do that same “price discovery,” pricing and marketing for today's buyer, not yesterday's (Robert Dietz, NAHB chief economist).
01 / Your scenario
Variable inputs
Monthly payment does not include property taxes or insurance.
02 / Rate history
Your purchasing power over time
October 2025 – August 2026 + current rate
| Last 12 months | Average monthly interest rate | Maximum conventional purchase price | Maximum VA purchase price | Loan amount gain / (loss) | Down payment gain / (loss) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 2025 | 6.25% | $710,253 | $568,203 | – | – |
| November 2025 | 6.24% | $711,493 | $569,194 | $991 | $248 |
| December 2025 | 6.19% | $715,079 | $572,063 | $2,869 | $717 |
| January 2026 | 6.10% | $721,761 | $577,409 | $5,345 | $1,336 |
| February 2026 | 6.05% | $726,011 | $580,809 | $3,400 | $850 |
| March 2026 | 6.18% | $716,028 | $572,822 | ($7,987) | ($1,997) |
| April 2026 | 6.33% | $704,441 | $563,552 | ($9,270) | ($2,317) |
| May 2026 | 6.44% | $696,333 | $557,066 | ($6,486) | ($1,621) |
| June 2026 | 6.49% | $692,893 | $554,314 | ($2,752) | ($688) |
| July 2026 | 6.54% | $689,158 | $551,326 | ($2,988) | ($747) |
| August 2026 | 6.67% | $680,274 | $544,219 | ($7,108) | ($1,777) |
| Current average rate | $625,090 | $500,072 | ($44,147) | ($11,037) |
Swipe sideways to view all columns.
Since February 2026
Loss in purchasing power
Conventional
($100,921)
VA
($80,737)
Notes & sources
Gain / (loss) compares each rate with the preceding month. Green indicates an increase; red indicates a decrease. The two change columns show the difference in maximum loan amount and conventional down payment, respectively, as calculated in the supplied workbook.
Interest rates are calendar-month arithmetic averages of weekly Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) rates. The workbook’s current 30-year rate is a daily average from Bankrate; you can adjust it directly in the last row.
Sources: Freddie Mac PMMS ↗ · FRED mortgage rates ↗ · Bankrate ↗