The Fed Meets Oct 28. Here's What Sellers Should Do
The Fed Meets Oct 28. Here's What Sellers Should Do
The most important event on the housing calendar this month is not a housing report. It's a meeting. The Federal Reserve's rate-setting committee sits down on October 27 and 28, and the decision lands Wednesday the 28th. Right now the bond market gives an 85% chance of a hold, a 14% chance of a hike, and for the December 9 meeting the odds of a hike are up at 77%. (CapitalSnitch, October 19)
So this week's decision is probably a hold. But "probably" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. A 14% surprise chance is not zero, and December looks like the real threat. You and I both know what a quarter-point surprise does to mortgage rates. They don't wait around. Buyers shopping this weekend would feel it before next weekend.
What they're paying today: 7.40% on a 30-year fixed, per Freddie Mac's October 15 survey, the highest level in nearly three years. (Rodeo Realty / Freddie Mac, October 16) LendingTree's Matt Schulz put it plainly this week: "No one should expect rates below 6% anytime soon." (LendingTree, October 2026)
You can't control the Fed. Control what you list.
Here's how I read the risk. It's one-sided. If the Fed holds and talks tough, rates stay right where they are and cautious buyers keep shopping cautiously. If it surprises with a hike, or signals that December is locked in, every buyer on the fence gets a fresh reason to sit down. Waiting for the coast to clear is a bet that the coast clears. The futures market is telling you it won't.
So don't list like it's 2021. List like rates are about to get worse, because they might. Price to the buyer standing in front of you, not the one you were imagining at 6.5%. An overpriced listing doesn't just sit in this market. With buyers this thin, it never gets visited at all.
Market the payment, not just the price
When money costs 7.4%, your buyer shops a monthly number. That's exactly why the big builders are spending real money buying rates down into the fours and fives for their spec homes. I wrote about it yesterday: permanent buydowns, 2-1 buydowns, closing credits. Their marketing teams figured out that selling a payment beats selling a house. Steal that idea.
You don't need a builder's budget to play the same game. As a seller you can offer a rate buydown through your buyer's lender as a seller concession, same mechanism the builders use. A 2-1 buydown drops your buyer into the mid-fives in year one. Cost to you: a few thousand at closing. Now compare that to a listed sale, where you'd hand roughly 6% of your price to agents. That's $24,000 on a $400,000 home. The commission you didn't pay is your leverage. Spend a little of it buying down your buyer's rate and you still walk away with more than your neighbor with the agent sign out front.
Speed is the strategy
October 28 is nine days away. Nine days for a hold that keeps things calm, or a surprise that scrambles every buyer's math. The sellers who win this winter are the ones who get live, get sharp, and get ahead of the headlines instead of reacting to them.
Start your free 15-day trial. No card needed, listing pauses if you do nothing. Founding sellers pay a one-time $49, then it's $99 standard. No commission, ever. And if you want to see what 7.4% does to your buyer's monthly number, run it through our mortgage calculator first. Then put the payment in the listing.
Sources: CapitalSnitch, October 19, 2026; Rodeo Realty / Freddie Mac, October 16; LendingTree rate forecast, October 2026.