If your preapproval is from the spring, it is describing a house you can no longer buy.

The 30-year fixed reached 7.17 percent, the highest weekly average since January 2025. Here is exactly what that did to your budget, in Boston numbers.

The arithmetic

Purchasing power works off a payment ceiling. Your income did not change; the cost of borrowing did. So you do not pay more — you buy less.

A buyer approved for roughly $3,160 a month in principal and interest supported a $500,000 loan at 6.5 percent.

At 7.17 percent, that same $3,160 supports about $467,000.

You lost roughly $33,000 of purchasing power without making a single decision.

At 20 percent down, that is a purchase price drop from $625,000 — the Greater Boston median condo — to about $584,000. On the single-family side the effect scales up: the same percentage move on a $648,000 loan is roughly $290 a month, or about $43,000 of purchasing power.

What it does to a search already in progress

Three things break quietly:

Your saved search is wrong. The filter you set in April is showing you properties you can no longer finance at the payment you planned around.

Your offer strategy is wrong. If you were planning to stretch, the stretch is now larger than you think.

Your condo math is wrong in a second way. Fees compound against you at a higher rate now. At 7.17 percent, every $200 a month of condo fee costs roughly $29,500 of purchasing power — down slightly from the $31,000 it cost at 6.69, because higher rates mean each dollar of payment buys less loan. The direction that matters: high-fee buildings got relatively more expensive to qualify for.

What it does not change

The residential exemption. Boston's FY2026 exemption removed up to $351,108 of assessed value, saving qualifying owner-occupants up to $4,353.74 — about $363 a month. That is roughly equivalent to the entire rate move, and unlike the rate it is within your control. File by April 1.

Only a minority of Massachusetts communities have one: locally Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Watertown, Waltham, and Everett. Somerville's was worth $4,578; Cambridge's $3,403; Everett's $2,582.70.

The assistance programs. The purchase price cap, reported at $675,000, did not move. Against a shrinking budget, more of the market now falls under it, not less. Dorchester, Hyde Park, Mattapan, Everett, Revere, Chelsea, Malden, and Quincy still have real inventory below that line.

Square footage per dollar. Dorchester runs around $516 per square foot against a citywide figure near $675 and $1,100-plus in Beacon Hill and the Seaport. A converted triple-decker unit there typically delivers 1,000-plus square feet with decks and yard access.

What you get in exchange

The same rate move produced conditions buyers have not had in years.

Inventory climbed 5.4 percent in August year over year. Contracts signed fell 4.7 percent. Applications have declined three straight weeks.

NAR's chief economist calls the market sluggish, citing higher rates offsetting buying power created by job gains and income growth outpacing home price growth. Homes.com's chief residential economist described the shift in buyer psychology: we run out of people who say they need the right house regardless of rates, and return to people saying they would love to buy, but not at rates this high.

For you that means fewer competing bids, sellers whose expectations are resetting weekly, and time to think before writing.

Four moves that recover most of what you lost

1. Ask for a seller-paid buydown. In this market sellers have reason to participate. A seller who will not cut $25,000 off the price will often give $25,000 in concessions. Applied as a rate buydown, that money moves your monthly payment considerably more than the equivalent price cut does.

2. Price out points. Ask your loan officer for the break-even in months. Long hold, low break-even, and buying the rate down permanently frequently beats everything else on the table.

3. Look at the ARM honestly. The 7/6 has been quoted around 6.72 percent — about 45 basis points below the fixed — and ARM applications have climbed to nearly 10 percent of the market. Worth running. Not worth signing until you have calculated your payment at the lifetime cap and confirmed you could pay it.

4. Widen the neighborhood, not the budget. The single largest recovery available is buying where a dollar goes further. That is not a consolation prize — it is usually the better trade, and it is where the assistance programs still reach.

The one thing to do today

Call your lender and re-run the preapproval. Not a rate quote — a full re-underwrite of what you qualify for at today's number.

Most buyers do not do this. They keep touring at the old price range and discover the gap when they write an offer, which is the worst possible moment to find out.

Send me your current preapproval number and what you have been looking at, and I will show you what is actually in range now and where the recovery moves are on a specific property.

Chris Remmes, Managing Broker, Remmes & Co. [email protected] | 617-398-0015