09/09/2026
If you thought about buying last winter and decided to wait, here is what that decision cost.
Mortgage rates bottomed at 6.01% in February. They are 6.65% now. On a median-priced home in Arlington, Belmont, Waltham or Watertown that is about $409 more every month for the same house.
Put another way, the same monthly payment that bought a $1,225,000 house in February buys a $1,145,292 house today.
There is a second cost most people never see. We looked at 577 sales across the four towns. Buyers competing in winter paid about 99.4% of asking and had ten days to decide. Buyers competing in spring paid 102.0% and had seven.
None of this means you should rush. Plenty of good reasons to wait exist, and if rates drop meaningfully in the next year, waiting will have been right. Nobody knows.
It does mean waiting is a decision with a price, and it is worth knowing the price before you make it.
