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Table of Contents

Should I Buy a Home Now or Wait Until Next Year?

“Rent just went up, again. Your baby cries in a thin-walled apartment agitating your abutter. At work, your coworkers bought houses and are bragging about equity. And every day you doomscroll mortgage rate predictions like they’re horoscopes.”

🚦“You’re not waiting for the market—you’re waiting for permission.”

This article gives you the clarity to stop guessing and start deciding.

Is Timing the Market a Trap?

Home price predictions are as useful as horoscopes.

In 2024 the Fed lowered the rate (by 1 percent) yet in the same time period the mortgage rates went UP by almost 1 percent.

Without learning, future Homebuyers left a puddle of drool waiting for the September 2025 Fed Funds Rate cut. But that quarter point drop sent mortgage rates UP by 1/4 percent.

Even highly paid Wall St. bond traders don’t get it right.

Your home buying decision should be based on your life, not guesses of what’s to come. 🤷‍♀️

Since you can’t abracadabra the perfect home, you need to adopt a flexible timeline for your game plan. This is hard for some people, impossible for others. Flexibility and your ability to pivot requires faith in the mission. And to have faith you’ll need to have a compelling “Why” behind your mission.

Finding (and winning) the perfect home is difficult. Trying to combine that victory with the perfectly placed “x” on the Home Price chart? Or a dip in the mortgage interest rates?

You just tied one shoelace to the other shoe.

Trying to time any market, is a “financial no-no”. You become your own worst enemy. Fear, ego, greed and self-fulfillment may defer your eyeballs from the bigger mission which is safe and happy homeownership for yourself.

Instead focus on your Why. Without a strong “Why” your project won’t be able to withstand the headwinds that inevitably will blow upon you.

You’re either about to make the most liberating decision of your life—or stay stuck because you listened to headlines instead of your gut.

Your “Why” Is More Important Than Your Wallet

A buyer doesn’t compete with other buyers, or get a lucky low interest rate, or even snipe the unicorn off-market deal – they are really competing with themselves. Only themselves. Their mindset.

I saw a deal blow-up over a (non-monetary) shift in terms (the closing date changed). When a buyer walks away from a purchase deal because of ego, principals, or “needing the upper hand”, then I know they aren’t ready to own yet.

A compelling “Why” can come in many forms. ✨

Once you have your “kick the door down” type of self-propulsion you just won the battle.

For over 5 years I’ve worked with a young couple to help them buy a home. First in concept only. Then they tiptoed through the dance. Then they moved into an apartment (from their parents home). They got engaged. Made house offers. Got married. More house bids not accepted. Confusion mounting. Instill run-away market anxiety. Interest rate speculation. But after 17 pre-approval letters and a dozen offers spanning several years, they won their bid.

Their Why?

3 days before the accepted offer she peed on a pregnancy stick and learned they were about to start a family. 🤰 Their next home offer? No bunting, no lowball, no waiting for the right pitch. No interest rate forecast check. FULL SWING OF THE BAT TO WIN.

By buying a home last year you literally dodged a year of inflation and saved the equivalent of getting a very good used car…. for free (4.98% inflation on a $600,000 home = $29,880 saved). You also didn’t get that annual rent increase notice. Your mortgage payment was frozen in time, like it’s inside a block of ice, exempt from all inflationary powers. You pay your mortgage payment in “yesterday’s dollars”.

Except you didn’t buy a home last year.

The next best time is now.

Renting Means You’re Buying—Just Not for You

Rats don’t know they are in a maze or that a human built that maze*. Similarly. Tenants don’t know that they are providing their rent to fuel the ROI on a Private Equity Fund 🏢.

Large apartment communities are owned by Private Equity Funds. The lion’s-share of apartments are these type communities. Most small-scale landlords are genuine and awesome people (this section doesn’t pertain to tenants renting from the small-scale landlord).

Every month you pay rent, your homeownership goal moves further towards the horizon.
Through monthly savings it’s nearly impossible to save more than the price that your future home inflates by before you buy it. Remember as a child trying to build a barrier around your sandcastle at the beach? Same thing. You can’t out-build / out-save the tide 🌊of inflation.
I got a notice of “Rental Decrease” – said no one.
There is no Federal Income Tax deduction for the rent that you pay.

In Massachusetts your rent deduction STOPS at monthly rent paid above $333 per COUPLE. Even if your luxury apartment rents for $5,295 per month, your Massachusetts deduction will never equate into more than a $200 cash value PER YEAR, per couple. Ever.

Have you known anyone that had their apartment “condo-ed”? If so, all those rent checks just evaporated and became part of your landlords exit strategy. Poof.

*thank you Seth Godin for the analogy.

Buy Now If These Situations Apply

“If you are still able to set aside a healthy amount every month, I would lean towards buy.” This is called a practice mortgage payment. It’s brilliant. Christopher Donovan of Harding Financial practices it with his clients and I learned it from him. And if you are able to handle the practice payment without resorting to a fetal position in your bathtub, you’ve already proven yourself mostly worthy of the homeownership title.
Consolidating physical locations into a single home would save you money. Examples: A couple each renting their own apartment. Or you rent an apartment and you pay handsomely for storage space. Your work requires you to have access to an office so you pay $475 a monthly to Regus™ or WeWork. Really instead you could work from home if you had an extra room. Your urban apartment doesn’t come with parking so you pay several hundred dollars a month in addition to your apartment rent. Paying to store a boat, collectable car, work vehicle or motorcycle? Same.
Mismatched housing category. You’re a country girl living in an urban apartment. You don’t drive, but the only access to your campus-type apartment is via a highway off ramp through wetlands, effectively a moat. Privacy is important but if the façade of your building went away you’d look like Alice from the Brady Bunch in the center square. The town you rent in, with a rich-old-guy Select Board, refuses to invest in sidewalks or bike lanes. You deal with the devil: Landlord is legit absentee, but you get old school rent pricing.
Philosophically or financially misaligned. You won’t, don’t (or can’t) bring yourself to contribute any longer to the ROI of the evil Hedge Fund that just bought your apartment campus (among 13 others). In the Worcester Area alone they control 5,400 apartments. Even the state attorney general can’t touch their corruptness. The US Department of Justice is trying, so far unsuccessfully.
Environmental opposites. You’ve reduced your environmental footprint to a proud-smile sized shape. But this week you witnessed beer-bellied Building A tenant hoist his COVID era flat screen TV directly into the dumpster without even looking over his shoulder. WTF. Electronic disposal stickers are literally $10 and can be ordered online. You live in one of the 96 towns in Massachusetts with high forever chemical levels in the drinking water. Come to learn the charcoal in your Brita doesn’t touch those PFAS particles. The term Reverse Osmosis makes your landlord laugh like it’s a standalone punch line. You: What’s so funny?
You’re committed to this journey. The relationship you are in. The career you entered. You want permanency for your growing future household and have full control over your destiny.

Wait If These Red Flags Exist

An apartment (continuing to rent) is an advantage over home ownership if these situations describe your current world:

Tentative Employment – Your arrival at work greets you with daily trepidation and you subliminally relate to the lyrics from Modest Mouse’s Float On: “we both got fired on exactly the same day”
You report directly to a micro-managing Frenemy – imagine the burden of carrying a $5,000 monthly nut and the person who hands you a paycheck (or more realistically needs to REauthorize your continued inclusion in the quarterly HR budget) is surreptitiously watching your post-lunch login times. And right after he advances his readers up the bridge of his nose, 👀he invites you and your team to meet up at a local brewery after work.
You have no idea where your paycheck goes. Your direct deposit has a leak and your carafe empties to dry every month. Your ex-roommates have your Disney+ plus login. Venti Matcha latte charges mount like Leinignen’s Ants. A recurring gym membership in a city you moved out of last year taps your debit card. You’re paying for your ex-boyfriends iCloud backup but it’s only .99 cents a month (and there are some pictures of the two of you on the Outer Banks). Then the $35 overdraft fees begin their tempo march until payday.
An addiction or dependency has control of your inner joy-stick. If there is an addiction that blocks your ability to seek and obtain new goals, the mission of homeownership will fail. Why? The homeownership pursuit requires ALL your free bandwidth for the foreseeable future. It competes with almost everything else in life. The sacrifices are herculean for your generation. On the other hand, if you can go get help, conquer this demon and then come back to the game, you’ll probably be a more successful homeowner than anyone else you is starting out without adversity. You just proved to yourself you can slay the dragon.
You take bad credit reporting personally. If you’ve used the term “they” in describing your prior credit history – “they … (______)” … then you have work to do. Even if you were wronged and that credit reporting mistake truly wasn’t yours (sorry but this is unlikely) it’s still your responsibility to correct and defend it. Paying for your dental co-pay from 2019 that metastasized to delinquent collection is not a “cost”. It’s your bill, your teeth. As Scott Adams of Dilbert fame would say, “reframe your brain” (and paying it off now becomes an INVESTMENT in buying a house).
You currently rely on someone, or an agency, to pay or contribute to your rent. If you’re not earning it, then you’re not vested. Roommate income? (Pa)rental subsidy check, AirBnB, fees from hosting gambling meetups? They ain’t going to cut it. If you’re living with the ‘rents still, rent free? Book 24 months of mock rent at $2,500 each and show us the $60K in your account. Then we can talk.
You believe Home Ownership is your right. And indeed it is. But unless you’re a cash buyer, you’ll need the assistance of a mortgage provider to help you realize that right. When a lender is going to stake you a half-million dollars to become a homeowner, it needs to be clear that you’ll be able to repay the debt (with significant interest). You’ll need to prove to them exactly how you are going to do it. Being entitled to be a homeowner won’t fly.

The Mortgage Rate Myth (and why It doesn’t matter)

“Fed cut rates” doesn’t mean “mortgage rates dropped.” Explore how mortgage rates are set and why they shouldn’t drive your buy decision.

In 2024 the Fed lowered interest rates by 100 Basis Points (bond speak for 1 percent). Mortgage rates actually INCREASED by almost 1 percent (frustrated future homeowner speak).🤯

Hanging your hat on the words from the podium of the bespectacled-silver-haired-Powell may not be in your best interest. Here’s what that cluster-fungus looks like on a graph:

Buy vs Wait: a cheat sheet

Consider these situations as you approach your housing crossroads.

Situation	Buy?	Wait?
TikTok, IG reels and YouTube shorts demand your attention	❌	✅
Renting two apartments or storage space + paid parking?	✅	❌
Your parents pay your rent in Southie	❌	✅
You can demonstrate 24 “practice” mortgage payments	✅	❌
“They” messed up your credit	❌	✅
You don’t have control of your monthly expenditures	🛑	✅
You’re committed to the journey (your personal “Why”)	✅Hell yeh!	❌ “Why” wait?
A good co-worker was terminated without a reason	🛑	✅ until more info
Apartment living is a contradiction to your principals	✅Yes	❌ Get out

What If Rates Drop Next Year? (Reality Check)

Be careful what you wish for.

Author Joe Garland is quoted “thank God for the Greenheads.” Yes he’s talking about the oversized housefly’s with sleek green craniums containing mandibles. The reasons Joe liked them was that he knew they kept the buying hordes away from his favorite beach neighborhood in Ipswich. He got to enjoy the solitude and remoteness of Ipswich MA without it turning into a bunch of Revere Beach high-rises.

My point? Think your homebuying odds are weighed against you now? Lower mortgage rates will become general admission to an arena. You may never get your seat. In fact, you may get trampled.

So be grateful for the high(er) rates. If they drop after you buy you have a great opportunity to refinance and ratchet down on your monthly costs.

Already Leaning-In on the concept that your apartment no longer works for you?

Get clarity on whether it’s time to buy or wait—without the guesswork. Start by unlocking your Future Home Ownership Score here for free. We won’t contact you unless you specifically ask us to.

How to Decide: A Lifestyle-First Framework

Case study: Grandparents purposely rented from a top-rated expensive apartment community in Danvers to elevate the quality of their neighbors.

Yet they needed to explain to their curious granddaughter why a hypodermic needle found next to their car was dangerous. That discussion prompted them to buy a house. One with an inground pool.

Are you inherently mis-aligned with your type of housing? Apartment community vs control of your own driveway and yard.
A young couple has proudly mastered their grilling-game and want to show off for friends on Saturday. The apartment community grill has been “invaded” by a family of 27 before the maintenance man even arrived for work.
In the glass walled conference room you bombed your work presentation in front of your boss’s boss today. The reason? The sound of a shattered plate emitted from Unit 413 at 3 in the morning (you live in 412) and the next hour was loud voices and the squawk of police walkie talkies.

Expert Take: Why I Don’t Believe in Timing the Market

I bought my first 3-family (of several) at the age of 23. I used the savings from accumulated customer tips from the paper route of my youth as the downpayment (lot of newspapers, a lot of steps). Back then I had plenty of energy to work a day job and then paint vacant units into the dark hours of the morning.

As a paperboy I had watched a TV interview with a millionaire. I frantically wrote the address to purchase a transcript (there were no repeats or reruns, or rewinds back then). This was decades before podcasts, seven years before Al Gore invented the internet.

I acquired up my Why early.

I had learned that HomeOwners are 4,300% wealthier than their tenant counterparts.

If a Tenants’ net-worth could fit in a roll-on suitcase, it would take a full Ford F550 dump truck to carry around the net worth of one Home Owner.💰 I re-read that transcript daily until the closing day on the 3 fam.

Then later in hindsight, another example surfaced for me, literally close to home.

My parents bought their home for $30,000 and sold it 3 decades later for $300,000. It was their biggest financial harvest of their life. (My father’s highest paying year was $18,000 and my mom stayed at home raising the kids). But they got their “zero” (added to value).

I drive by the old house from time to time – the new owners are keeping good care of it and seem to be enjoying the yard (patio set up and pruned shrubs), and they are well on their way to receiving their “zero” as the value has smashed through the 7 figure ceiling without looking back.

Think you know which direction mortgage rates are going? (hint: you don’t, and you’re wrong). Bond traders who professionally (try to) time the market and who also who earn 7 figure incomes – routinely botch those predictions.

“Don’t base your biggest lifestyle decision on a tweet from Trump or Powells words from the podium. Buy a home because you have a reason—not because you’ve guessed the future.”

We listened to a story from a recent client. When their child would cry in their nursery room, the downstairs tenant used the butt of a broom handle to bang on his ceiling (the infants floor). It worked. The baby was horrified and wailed in fear so loud it caused the parents to remove the child from that room for several days.

Should that family try to time the market?

Could house prices DOUBLE again?

Yes, over time they will, especially with income and asset inflation so prevalent.

Remember, we are one pandemic away from 15 years of home price appreciation …. occurring in 2.5 years as it did on this graph:

[Home prices from 1965 to present provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Reference is drawn to a spike in prices – equivalent to 15 years of home price appreciation – occurring in just 2.5 years following the pandemic.]

Conclusion: The Right Time is When You’re Ready

Your decision to wait a year, or a decade (or a lifetime) shall not depend upon the price of houses or your inaccurate prediction of mortgage rates.

The news you are soaking in will mislead you. It will scare you.

In the end the Private Equity companies (that own all the large apartment communities) hope you’ll swallow that pill.

Don’t.

Think about your future.

Take a stance against the cattle call that is mass-tenancy.

Don’t let us become a Nation of Renters.

Get a Toe-Hold on your homeownership journey (before the summit vanishes behind the clouds)

If you’re tired of rent hikes, noisy neighbors, and watching others build equity, it might be time to take control. Connect with GoldCoast Mortgage to see if buying now is your smartest move—even if rates seem high or houses expensive. You don’t have to do it alone.

Resources:

👉Don’t let your Pre-approval “Bully-Your-Budget”. Read more here: Be aware your Housing Expense can be a “Budget Bully”

👉Eliminate the nefarious underworld of Trigger Leads (Trigger Leads are have been banned by US Congress before that law ratifies you may still become a victim). Be certain to OPT OUT today. It’s free, it’s your right, and it takes less than 2 minutes. Those 2 minutes will save you hours of aggressive telemarketing calls in the future: www.optoutprescreen.com or 1-888-567-8688

👉If we missed anything in our Tenants Lounge related to your journey from Rental Apartment to buying your first House, please let us know.

Should I Buy a Home This Year or Wait?