If you were looking at houses in January, you felt it. After three years stuck at roughly 4 million existing home sales since 2023, the market finally had a little momentum. Economists were calling for a better year, listings were moving a bit faster, and you could talk yourself into making an offer.

Then the war in Iran started in late February, and mortgage rates moved the other way. HousingWire's Mortgage Rates Center, which is powered by Polly, had the 30-year conforming mortgage at 6.23% before the war. As of July 28, after escalation, it was at 6.94%. Mike Pappas, who runs The Keyes Company and Illustrated Properties, put it plainly to HousingWire: they felt the breeze behind them early in the year, and when the war started that changed.

That gap between 6.23% and 6.94% doesn't look dramatic on a chart, but you feel it in the payment. The math that matters is the difference — about seven-tenths of a point — applied to whatever you would actually borrow. If you want to know what it means for you, take the loan amount you are underwriting, run it at your quoted rate versus a rate seven-tenths lower, and look at the monthly principal and interest. That is the cost of waiting, or of buying into higher rates.

For brokers, that shift is enough to derail a rebound. A market living at 4 million sales is not a market with slack. Buyers are already stretched, sellers are anchored to what they would have gotten in January, and a higher rate makes both sides pause. So inventory sits a little longer, open houses get a little quieter, and the early-year optimism fades.

If you are in it right now, the trade-off is straightforward. You cannot control the war premium in rates, and you cannot wish the market back to February. If you need to buy, underwrite at today's rate and see if the house still works with a refinance later as a possibility, not a plan. If you can wait, wait because you want to, not because you are trying to time a 6.23% print that only existed before a geopolitical shock.