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There is a version of the housing market story that gets told over and over, and it goes like this: prices are high, rates are high, nothing is affordable, and the only people buying are the ones with cash. That version is not wrong, exactly. It is just incomplete.

The arithmetic here is brutal and worth understanding clearly. A buyer who financed a $400,000 home at three percent in 2021 pays roughly $1,686 per month on principal and interest. That same loan at a seven percent rate costs $2,661. The difference between those two payments explains why so many potential sellers are sitting tight. Volume collapsed. Prices mostly did not.

Affordability, by the standard measure of what share of median household income goes toward the monthly payment on a median-priced home, is near its worst level since the early 1980s. That is a real problem, and it is not going away quickly. A market can stay unaffordable for longer than most buyers expect to wait. What it means, practically, is that the buyer who can close confidently has more leverage than the headline numbers suggest.

Before you look at a single listing, get your pre-approval locked down. Not a rough estimate. Not a verbal confirmation from a loan officer you met once. A full pre-approval based on verified income, tax returns, bank statements, and a hard credit pull. Any agent worth working with will tell you the same thing: no pre-approval, no offer.

If the report surfaces significant deferred maintenance or structural issues, you have real choices, and walking away is a legitimate one of them. You can ask the seller to repair specific items before closing. What you should not do is panic and waive your right to negotiate.

Negotiation works best when it is quiet and well-prepared. Before you make an offer, find out whether the price has been reduced and by how much. A listing that has been sitting for six weeks with no price adjustment is a fundamentally different negotiation than one that just hit the market at an aggressive price.

For buyers with a real reason to be in a specific place for the foreseeable future, this market is full of opportunity that distracted or impatient buyers miss. The homes that are priced correctly for current conditions are still moving. They are moving to buyers who showed up prepared.

The buyers who come out ahead in this market are not the ones who waited for perfect conditions. They are the ones who got their finances in order early. If you are ready to take that step, real estate listings and buyer tools are a practical starting point.