The 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 7.24 percent on October 29, according to Freddie Mac. That’s down from 7.32 percent the week before, but it’s up from 6.17 percent a year ago. And the Mortgage Bankers Association expects rates to sit near 7.3 percent for the rest of 2026 and stay above 7 percent through 2027.

Read that again. Not through the holidays. Through 2027.

So here’s the question that decides your next twelve months. Are you going to wait for rates to fall, or are you going to learn how to sell in the market you actually have?

Because the market isn’t frozen. It’s moving, just slower and pickier than it used to be.

The numbers tell you exactly what kind of market this is

Existing-home sales ran at a 3.99 million annual rate in September, according to the National Association of REALTORS. That’s up 1.5 percent from August and down 2.2 percent from a year ago. The median price hit $417,500, up 1.3 percent in a year. That marks the 39th straight month of year-over-year price gains.

Prices aren’t crashing. Sales aren’t booming. And inventory just hit 1.60 million homes, the highest level since November 2019, good for 4.8 months of supply.

Put those three facts together and you get the whole picture. Buyers have more choices than they have had in years. Sellers still expect last year’s price. And the deal only happens when somebody in the middle does real work.

That somebody is you.

NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said it plainly in the September report. Higher inventory and longer days on market give buyers more negotiating power, and sellers need to be realistic about local conditions, which could mean price discounts and other incentives to attract buyers.

Translation: the agent who tells sellers the truth early wins the listing that actually sells. The agent who nods along to an inflated price wins a listing that sits.

Stop selling the rate and start selling the math

Your buyers are doing the math first. You should too.

NAR’s third quarter numbers put the typical monthly payment on an existing single-family home at $2,251 with 20 percent down. For a first-time buyer on a typical $368,000 starter home with 10 percent down, the payment is $2,208, which eats 36.3 percent of income.

Those are real numbers, and your buyers already feel them. So stop leading with “rates will come down soon.” You don’t know that. Nobody does. NAR just cut its own 2026 forecast to 2 percent growth or less for sales and prices, because rates stayed high longer than expected.

Here’s what you do instead.

Run the payment before the showing. Sit down with your buyer and walk through the real monthly number at today’s rate, not the rate they wish they had. Show them what a 2-1 buydown does to the first two years. Show them what seller concessions can buy down. Show them the payment on the house $25,000 cheaper.

Buyers who see the math stop panicking about the rate. Buyers who never see the math panic at the kitchen table and walk away.

This isn’t a scripting trick. It’s the job. And it’s the same discipline as a follow up plan that actually runs on schedule: you do the work before the moment, so the moment goes your way.

Price it like the market you have, not the market you miss

Median time on market was 33 days in September, up from 31 in August. That isn’t a disaster. It’s a warning. Homes priced right still move. Homes priced on hope sit, get stale, and then sell for less than they would have with an honest price on day one.

Your listing appointment is where this gets decided. When you walk in, you aren’t competing against the other agent your seller might call. Four out of five sellers contact only one agent before they hire one, according to NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. You’re competing against the seller’s own expectations.

So bring the data and say the hard thing with confidence. Show them the homes that sold in their neighborhood in the last 90 days, not the ones listed. Show them the price cuts on the homes still sitting. Then give them a price that gets showings in the first two weeks, because that’s when the best offers come.

If you need the structure for that conversation, the listing presentation that turns appointments into signed listings lays it out step by step. The point is the same: the appointment is yours to win or lose, and the price conversation is the whole game.

The buyers are still there, they just look different

First-time buyers were 31 percent of September sales. Cash buyers were 27 percent. Investors were 20 percent.

Read those numbers as a map. Nearly a third of your buyers are first-timers who need education, not pressure. More than a quarter are paying cash, which means they don’t care about your rate conversation at all. And one in five transactions involves an investor who cares about one thing: does the math work?

If your whole pipeline is rate-sensitive move-up buyers waiting for 6 percent, your pipeline is empty for a reason. Go find the cash buyers, the investors, and the first-timers who have been saving for three years and are tired of waiting.

And while you’re at it, check your own backyard. Prices rose in 78 percent of the roughly 235 metro areas NAR tracks in the third quarter. Your market has a story. Find the neighborhoods where prices are still climbing and the ones where sellers are cutting, and talk about both. Agents who know their local numbers sound like experts. Agents who quote national headlines sound like the news.

This market rewards systems, not sprints

Here’s the part nobody wants to hear. A 7 percent market doesn’t reward the agent who works harder for two weeks. It rewards the agent who works the same system every week for a year.

The typical agent closed nine transaction sides in 2025. Nine. That isn’t a volume problem. It’s a consistency problem, and a slow market makes it worse, because the gaps between closings get longer and the panic gets louder.

The fix is boring and it works. Conversations every day. Follow up that runs whether you feel like it or not. A sphere you actually touch instead of a list you bought and forgot. That’s the production system that ends feast or famine: same inputs, same week, every week, until the closings stop bunching up and start showing up on schedule.

Rates aren’t your problem. Waiting is.

The agents who close in a 7 percent market aren’t smarter than you. They just stopped waiting for permission from the Federal Reserve and started working the market in front of them. Do the math with your buyers. Price honestly with your sellers. Find the buyers who are actually buying. And run your system like the market depends on it, because right now, it does.

Want the full system behind this? That’s what we build inside Power Unit Coaching. Come learn how to run your business on structure, not hope.