Why does your budget buy less house than it did a year ago, even though prices dropped? Because financing costs rose faster than prices fell — the 30-year fixed went from 6.26% to 6.95% while Tarrant County's median price declined 3.9%, says Josh White, a REALTOR® with Close Real Estate. The rate move more than erased the price relief.
This is the conversation I have most often right now, and it usually starts with confusion. Someone got pre-approved last year, took a break, came back — and the number their lender gives them is smaller than it was. Meanwhile every headline says prices are down.
Both things are true. Here's how they fit together.
What Actually Changed
Two numbers moved in opposite directions over the past year.
Prices came down. The median sale price in Tarrant County is $338,866, off 3.9% year over year, per Redfin. At that rate of decline, the equivalent median a year ago was roughly $352,600 — call it $13,750 of price relief.
Financing got more expensive. Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey put the 30-year fixed at 6.95% as of September 17, 2026. A year earlier it averaged 6.26%. That's 69 basis points.
Most people intuitively weight the first number more heavily, because a price is a number you negotiate and a rate feels like weather. But on a 30-year loan, the rate is doing far more work.
The Math, With Real Numbers
Take a $300,000 loan amount. Principal and interest only — no taxes, no insurance.
| Rate | Monthly P&I | |
|---|---|---|
| A year ago | 6.26% | about $1,850 |
| Today | 6.95% | about $1,986 |
About $137 more per month for the identical loan.
Now flip it around, which is the more useful direction. If your comfortable payment is that same $1,850 in principal and interest, at 6.95% that supports a loan of about $279,300 rather than $300,000.
You lost roughly $20,700 of borrowing power. Prices gave back about $13,750.
Net, a buyer holding the same monthly payment is still around $6,900 behind where they were a year ago — despite a market that genuinely did get cheaper.
These are illustrations using round loan amounts and principal-and-interest only. Your actual figures depend on your loan program, credit profile, down payment, and the taxes and insurance on the specific property. Run them with a lender, not with a blog post.
Why This Surprises People
The asymmetry isn't obvious unless you've seen it laid out.
A price reduction is a one-time change to the amount you borrow. A rate change alters the cost of every one of 360 payments. Over the life of the loan, a rate move of most of a percentage point swings a much larger number than a few percent off the purchase price.
There's also a psychological piece. Price is visible and negotiable — it's printed on the listing, and you can counter it. Rate feels fixed and external. So buyers pay close attention to the thing they can haggle over and underweight the thing that actually governs their monthly cost.
What This Means for Your Pre-Approval
If your approval amount came back lower than last year, nothing went wrong with you. Your income didn't fall, your credit probably didn't move much. The arithmetic underneath the approval changed.
A few practical consequences:
- An old pre-approval letter is not a current budget. If yours is more than a couple of months old, it's describing a market that no longer exists. Get it refreshed before you start touring.
- The same house costs a different amount depending on when you lock. Two buyers with identical finances, three months apart, can have meaningfully different purchasing power.
- Your comfortable payment should drive your price range — not the other way around. Decide the monthly number first, then find the price that produces it at whatever today's rate actually is.
What You Can Actually Control
You can't move the rate market. You can move several other things.
Loan structure. Different programs price differently, and the gap between them is often larger than buyers expect. Worth comparing rather than accepting the first quote.
Rate buydowns and seller credits. In a market where a quarter of Tarrant County listings have taken a price reduction, some sellers will contribute toward a buydown instead of cutting price further. For a buyer focused on monthly payment, that can be worth more than an equivalent price cut. It's a negotiation worth raising.
Debt-to-income. Paying off a car loan or a card before you apply can move your approval more than you'd guess, because it changes the ratio lenders underwrite against.
Timing and leverage. Homes in Tarrant County are taking a median of 47 days to sell, and sale-to-list is running at 98%. That's real negotiating room — more of it than buyers had a few years ago. You may have lost borrowing power, but you gained bargaining position. The September market update goes through those conditions in more detail.
On Waiting for Rates to Fall
The obvious response is to wait. It's worth thinking through what waiting actually costs.
If rates drop meaningfully, the buyers currently sitting on the sidelines come back. Competition rises. The 47-day market and the 98% sale-to-list ratio — the conditions giving you leverage today — tend to disappear in exactly the environment that produces cheaper money.
You can refinance a rate later. You can't refinance a purchase price you overpaid because five other people wanted the same house.
That isn't an argument to buy now. It's an argument against treating waiting as free. Whether it makes sense depends on your timeline, your income stability, and how long you plan to stay — not on anyone's rate forecast, mine included.
Frequently Asked Questions
If prices are falling, shouldn't I wait for them to fall further?
Possibly, but weigh it against what rates do in the meantime. A further price decline paired with another rate increase can leave you worse off than buying today. The two move independently, and only one of them is refinanceable later.
Does a bigger down payment fix this?
It reduces the loan amount, which reduces the payment, so it helps with affordability. It doesn't change the rate environment. And draining savings to make a payment work is its own risk — you still want reserves after closing.
How current does my pre-approval need to be?
Talk to your lender about their specific timeline, but treat any letter more than a couple months old as informational rather than actionable. Rates have moved enough over the past year that stale approvals can be meaningfully off.
If you're buying or selling in Fort Worth or Parker County, call or text Josh White at 432.215.9177 or visit buysellfortworthhomes.com.
Equal Housing Opportunity. Josh White and Close Real Estate support the Fair Housing Act and equal opportunity in housing.
General information only, not lending or financial advice. Josh White is a licensed REALTOR®, not a mortgage professional. Payment figures are illustrations based on stated assumptions. Market data from Redfin's August 2026 reporting period; rate data from Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey, September 17, 2026. Figures were current at publication.