Homeowners waiting for a better moment to sell should stop trying to time the market, National Association of Home Builders CEO Jim Tobin said.
“If you’re trying to time the market, you can’t do it,” Tobin told Yahoo Finance on Monday. “If you talk to anybody who’s bragged about when they sold their home or bought a home, it’s always in retrospect.”
That’s a tough sell right now. Homebuyers are backing out of contracts at near-record rates, and builder confidence fell in October to its lowest reading since 2012.
Tobin said the fix starts with supply. Many owners have pulled their homes off the market because they don’t think they’ll get the price they want.
“We need more existing homes, and we need more new homes to be sold,” he said. “We need people to get off the sidelines.”
That includes owners sitting on a 3% mortgage rate. Tobin argued that for creditworthy borrowers, now is as good a time as any — even if trading up means taking on a higher rate.
Read more: How to get the lowest mortgage rates right now
The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 7.4% as of Oct. 15, unchanged from the week before and up from 6.27% a year earlier, according to Freddie Mac.
“I would say 6 is key,” Tobin said, explaining that getting back to rates in the 6% range “opens the market a little bit.” However, he doesn’t expect that before the end of the year and said 2027 is “going to be bumpy as well.”
So where are buyers going?
“It’s the Midwest,” Tobin said, pointing to more affordable markets like Indianapolis and Milwaukee that haven’t seen the same jumps in home prices and insurance rates.
“Indianapolis remains one of the most affordable markets in the country,” he said, “and it’s really attracting people.”
Internal AI tools helped analyze interview transcripts, research, and draft this post. Humans reviewed, edited, and fact-checked this post before publication.
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