If you have been waiting for mortgage rates to make your decision for you, the last twelve months have been an expensive lesson. The 30-year fixed rate has barely budged. In this post I will show you exactly where rates sit, what the difference is worth in dollars per month on a Monroe County purchase, what the local price data actually says, and why several widely quoted sources disagree with each other. I will also tell you where the numbers do not exist, because that matters as much as the numbers that do.

Where rates actually are

Freddie Mac publishes a weekly survey of average mortgage rates. Here is what it reported in August 2026.

Three weeks, a range of four hundredths of a point on the 30-year. Compared with the same week in 2025, the 30-year is up about 0.07 points. That is the whole story of a year. The 15-year has moved a little more, from 5.69 percent to 5.95 percent over the same twelve months, but nothing in that series looks like a trend either.

The August 20 reading was the second consecutive weekly decline. Two down weeks is not a direction. It is two down weeks.

What does a flat 6.65 percent cost compared with last year?

Roughly fourteen dollars a month on a $300,000 loan. That is a straight amortization calculation: principal and interest at 6.65 percent works out to about $1,926 a month over 30 years, versus about $1,912 at last year's 6.58 percent. Taxes and homeowners insurance are on top of that and, in Monroe County, they are not small. But the rate change itself, year over year, is a rounding error in a monthly budget.

Now compare that to what prices did. The Monroe County median sale price hit $308,500 in May 2026, a record high, according to NYSAR data reported by the Rochester Business Journal on June 26, 2026. Zillow's Home Value Index for Monroe County stood at $285,439, up 4.1 percent year over year, and for the city of Rochester at $252,192, up 4.3 percent as of June 30, 2026. The index is a modeled value, not a median of actual closings, so treat those two figures as different measurements of the same general direction.

Here is the arithmetic that matters. A four percent move in price on a $300,000 house is roughly $12,000. A 0.07 point move in rate is about $14 a month, or a little over $5,000 across a full 30-year term in nominal interest. Waiting a year for rates to fall, in a market where prices rose, has been the losing side of that trade.

Should I buy or wait in 2026?

Buy when the payment works and the house works, not when the rate looks like a bargain. That is not a slogan, it is what the data above supports. Nobody I would trust is publishing a credible forecast for where the 30-year sits in December 2026, and the twelve-month record shows a rate that refuses to move much in either direction.

The practical questions to answer before you decide:

• Can you carry the payment at today's 6.65 percent without counting on a refinance? If the plan only works after a refinance, it is not a plan.
• Do you have the down payment you need for the price band you are shopping? Realtor.com's December 2025 profile of the Rochester market put the average down payment here at 15.9 percent and the average borrower FICO score at 744.
• How long do you expect to hold the house? Short holds are where transaction costs eat you, regardless of rate.
• Are you competing on speed? Zillow reported homes in the city of Rochester going pending in around eight days as of June 30, 2026. That is a market where hesitation costs you the house, not just the rate.

If the answer to the first question is no, waiting is the correct call. Not because rates will improve, but because the payment does not work. That is a different reason and it leads to different preparation.

Why the headlines contradict each other

Because they are measuring different things and rarely say so. Two examples from this summer.

First, price. Monroe County's median sale price in May 2026 was $308,500. The median list price for the same county and month was $319,900, per Realtor.com data in the FRED series. Those are not the same number and they never will be. One is what buyers paid. The other is what sellers asked. Any article that puts them side by side without labeling them is telling you something untrue by accident.

Second, supply. In December 2025, Realtor.com ranked Rochester the number two housing market in the country for 2026, forecasting 5.3 percent sales growth and 10.3 percent median price growth. That was a prediction made before the year started. Meanwhile the Rochester Business Journal has been running coverage headlined around inventory rising in Monroe County while prices also rise, and in Freddie Mac's August 6, 2026 release, chief economist Sam Khater described national for-sale inventory as improving with listing prices modestly below year-ago levels. If you have been told supply is collapsing here, that premise deserves a second look.

I will also be straight about the timing. As of late August 2026, August closing data does not exist yet. Association figures for a given month publish in the first half of the following month. Anyone quoting you August sale prices in August is quoting a modeled estimate or a list price.

What this means if you are selling this fall

Flat rates are good news for a seller, in a narrow way. They mean the buyer pool looking at your house in November will be doing roughly the same math as the pool that looked in August. There is no rate cliff pushing buyers to act now, and no obvious rate relief giving them a reason to wait you out.

What it does not mean is that a countywide median tells you what your house is worth. The $308,500 figure covers every closed sale in Monroe County. It includes a two-bedroom in the city and a four-bedroom in Mendon. If you are pricing a home in Henrietta, Pittsford, Brighton, Rush or Honeoye Falls, town-level medians are drawn from small monthly sale counts and swing hard on the mix of what happened to close. I spent years buying and rehabbing houses before I got licensed, and the habit that carried over is simple: I price off recent comparable sales in your price band and your condition, then I check the median for context. Never the other way around.

One more thing worth knowing. Realtor.com's Rochester profile noted that about 40 percent of listing views on Rochester-area homes came from out of state, with a median home age of 1966. Out-of-area buyers judge condition and photos harder than local buyers do, because they are comparing your 1960s colonial against inventory in markets they know better. Presentation is not fluff here. It is how you reach that share of the demand.

Common questions

Is 6.65 percent a good mortgage rate right now?

It is the market rate, which is the only useful benchmark. Freddie Mac's survey put the 30-year fixed average at 6.65 percent for the week ending August 20, 2026, and the 15-year at 5.95 percent. Your actual quote will differ based on credit score, down payment, loan type and points paid, so compare your offer to the survey average rather than to a rate you remember from 2021.

Will home prices in Monroe County fall if rates stay flat?

Nothing in the current data points that way. The Monroe County median sale price reached a record $308,500 in May 2026 per NYSAR data reported by the Rochester Business Journal, and Zillow's county index was up 4.1 percent year over year. Flat rates remove the pressure that a sharp rate spike puts on prices, so the more likely outcome is continued movement driven by local supply and demand rather than by financing costs.

How fast are homes selling in the Rochester area?

Fast, in the city at least. Zillow reported homes going pending in around eight days as of June 30, 2026. Town-level days-on-market figures from aggregator sites vary widely and several carry unclear reporting dates, so I would not rely on them for a listing decision. Ask for the actual median days on market for recent comparable sales in your specific price band.

Should I wait for rates to drop before selling?

Waiting for a rate move that has not happened in twelve months is a weak reason to delay a sale. The 30-year has stayed within roughly 6.65 to 6.69 percent across the first three weeks of August 2026 and is up only about 0.07 points from the same week in 2025. If you need to sell for a life reason, the rate environment is not going to reward patience the way it might have in a falling-rate year.

Why do different websites show different prices for the same town?

Because they measure different things and sometimes label them poorly. Median list price, median sale price and modeled value indexes all produce different numbers for the same place and month. I have seen four sources disagree on a single Rochester-area town by roughly $60,000, with some of them unclear about which month they were even describing. Always check whether a figure is a sale price, a list price or an estimate, and what period it covers.

If you are trying to decide whether to move in the next several months, bring me your actual numbers and I will walk you through the comps line by line, including the ones that argue against your plan. Schedule a time with me here and we will look at it together.

Khem Kadariya, Sold By Khem

About this data

The figures in this post were compiled from publicly available sources including Houzeo, Movoto, Zillow, RochesterFirst and the Rochester Business Journal, along with other public market data. Real estate numbers change quickly, and these were accurate as of August 2026. For current figures on a specific home, street, or town, ask me directly rather than relying on a published average.