Mortgage Rates Hold Near 6.7% as Cash Buyers Pull Back

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate eased to 6.67% this week, its first weekly decline in six weeks, but affordability remains stretched for many buyers as home prices stay high relative to incomes.

Why it matters: Buyers are getting some relief on two fronts — rates ticked down and cash buyers, who’ve dominated bidding wars since the pandemic, are pulling back. But financing costs are still well above pre-2022 norms, and price growth cooling to a crawl doesn’t mean prices are falling.

By the numbers

• The 30-year fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.67% as of Aug. 13, down from 6.69% the week before, per Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey. A year ago, it was 6.58%.

• Cash buyers made up 31.4% of home sales in the first four months of 2026, down from 32.3% a year earlier, per Realtor.com data.

• Total home sales fell 8.5% year-over-year, while cash transactions dropped even faster, down 11.2%.

• Median home price growth slowed to just 0.2% year-over-year, compared with 1.8% in 2025 and a 15.4% peak in 2021.

Zoom in: Cash still rules at the extremes of the market — more than two-thirds of homes under $100,000 sold for cash, and a majority of homes priced above $2 million did too. Regionally, cash buying is cooling nationally but rising in some metros: Pittsburgh saw the largest jump, while high-cost job centers like Seattle and Washington, D.C. have the lowest cash shares in the country.

The big picture: Affordability pressure isn’t unique to the U.S. A comparison of home price-to-income ratios across developed countries puts the U.S. among the more affordable major markets, using long-run Dallas Fed data, with the U.K., Canada, and Australia notably worse off. That’s limited comfort for buyers here, though: U.S. housing prices have recently grown faster than incomes, one of the few stretches in the past 50 years where that’s been true.

What this means for you: Rates easing slightly and cash buyers stepping back both work in favor of financed buyers gaining a bit more negotiating room — but more room isn’t the same as affordable. If you’re saving for a home, it’s worth tracking your target market’s price trend specifically, since national averages can mask big local differences. Copiafy’s goal tracker can help you model a home-purchase timeline against your actual savings rate rather than guessing based on headlines.

Bottom line: The math is easing, not fixed — buyers have a little more room to negotiate, but financing and prices are both still expensive by pre-2022 standards.

Sources: Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey; HousingWire — “Cash buyer market share falling from pandemic highs”; A Wealth of Common Sense — “Where Housing is the Most Expensive.”