Within your price range for purchasing a home, the dominant factor affecting affordability is the interest rate on the mortgage you’ll obtain to finance the purchase. Other factors, such as the amount of the cash downpayment you make, property taxes, and insurance certainly contribute to the cost of ownership, but these factors likely don’t vary over time as dramatically as do mortgage interests. These other factors also rarely decline and usually rise consistently but not so quickly or significantly as mortgage rates.

Although the prevailing interest rate for a 30-year mortgage (just below 7% at the time of this blog post) is not remarkably high in the context of the 50-year history of mortgage lending in the United States (approximately 7.73%), the memory of many homebuyers stretches only over the past 10-15 years when interest rates were unusually and unsustainably low in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007. By comparison to the very low rates from 2009 to 2021, the doubling of mortgage rates since early 2021 combined with an historically rapid increase in home prices seems to many potential homebuyers to make home ownership unachievable. Waiting for “rates to come down” has been the mantra for many over the past three years.

Timing is always a factor in the making of any major decision, such as purchasing a home, but waiting for mortgage rates to descend to the lows of 2020 and 2021 may require lifelong patience. Other strategies likely will be more effective and more attainable in the near-term to reduce the mortgage payment on the house you desire. One of those strategies is known as a rate buy-down.

Investopedia published a rate buy-down explainer in early 2025 that will help you understand the impact of interest rate on monthly mortgage cost and the opportunity to lower substantially your cost in the early years of a new mortgage. Stronglast affordability programs offer the kind of seller assistance described by Investopedia.

Our usual disclaimer. Each of you lives with different circumstances. Your unique circumstances may affect the availability or suitability of any affordability program. Talk to knowledgeable people you trust to make the decisions that best suit you. The information provided by Stronglast in this post and otherwise is generalized and may not consider important factors affecting you.