Borrowing costs had roughly doubled in under a year. Prices had just come off a historic run. The consensus across the industry was that the market would cool and rates would retreat, and that patient buyers would be rewarded for sitting out a cycle.

Four years later, we can stop speculating about that decision and just measure it.

I want to do that honestly, because the version of this story told by most of my industry is dishonest in a specific way. It picks a 2022 purchase price, compares it to today’s, and presents the difference as pure loss,  ignoring everything the buyer paid that the renter didn’t. That framing is designed to produce urgency, not accuracy.

So here’s the real accounting, with the costs on both sides.

What the waiter gave up

Appreciation. The national median existing-home price was roughly $378,800 in October 2022. By August 2026, NAR had it at $429,100. That’s about $50,300, or 13.3% over four years.

Worth sitting with that number, because it’s far below what most people assume. FHFA’s index shows national appreciation decelerating steadily: 8.3% in 2022, 5.5% in 2023, 4.8% in 2024, 1.8% in 2025, and 1.7% in the year through the first quarter of 2026 — the slowest pace since the post-crisis recovery began in 2012.

The runaway appreciation people feared in 2022 did not happen. Growth slowed every single year.

Principal paydown. Someone who bought the median home with 10% down in late 2022 has paid roughly $15,000 off their loan balance over four years. Early amortization is interest-heavy, so this number is smaller than most people expect — but it’s real, and it’s forced savings the renter didn’t do.

A larger down payment requirement now. On that same 10% basis, the cash needed at closing rose by about $5,000. For a buyer still saving, that’s a treadmill: the target moved while they were running toward it.

Add it up and the 2022 buyer’s equity position today is somewhere around $100,000 — their original down payment, plus principal paid, plus appreciation.

That’s the number my industry quotes. Now here’s what gets left out.

What the waiter avoided

The 2022 buyer didn’t acquire $100,000 in equity for free. Over those four years they also paid:

  • Mortgage interest, which dominates early payments and is money gone, not equity
  • Property taxes, typically several thousand dollars a year
  • Homeowners insurance, which has risen sharply in many states
  • Maintenance and repairs, conventionally estimated around 1% of home value annually
  • Closing costs on the way in, and eventually on the way out

Run those honestly against four years of rent and the gap narrows dramatically. For a median-priced home and a median rent, the buyer’s non-recoverable costs — interest, taxes, insurance, upkeep — exceeded the renter’s rent payments by roughly $45,000 to $50,000 over the period.

Set that against the roughly $65,000 the buyer gained in appreciation and principal, and the net advantage lands somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 to $20,000 over four years.

Then subtract one more thing. A renter who invested the down payment they didn’t spend, in a market that performed reasonably, recovered a meaningful share of that difference.

So the honest answer is: waiting cost something, but far less than the urgency narrative suggests. Not nothing. Not a catastrophe. A modest amount, concentrated in markets that appreciated and nearly absent in markets that didn’t.

The rent side is the real surprise

Here’s the finding that genuinely changed how I think about this period.

Apartment List’s data shows the national median rent at $1,390 in August 2026. Had rent growth simply continued along its 2017–2019 trajectory, the projection would be $1,395. Rents are within five dollars of their pre-pandemic trend line.

In August 2022, the median rent sat 14% above that trend. The spike fully unwound.

A construction boom delivered enormous apartment supply. Multifamily rent growth has slowed to roughly 1.4% annually, down from nearly 16% at the 2022 peak. Single-family rent growth hit the slowest pace in Zillow’s records. Rental vacancy has been running around 6.6%, the highest since 2021, and nearly two in five rental listings now come with a concession attached — a free month, waived fees, free parking.

The nightmare scenario renters were warned about in 2022 — rents spiraling while they sat on the sidelines — did not materialize. Renters got meaningful leverage instead.

Where waiting was clearly correct

National averages hide the thing that matters most, which is that this decision had completely different outcomes depending on where you live.

In a number of metros — Austin, Tampa, Denver, Phoenix, Dallas, Seattle among them — prices have been flat or outright declining year over year. A buyer who purchased near the 2022 peak in those markets with a small down payment may have less equity today than they started with. Underwater borrower counts have climbed, concentrated among people who bought in 2022 and later with minimal money down.

In those markets, the people who waited didn’t just avoid a cost. They avoided a loss, and they’re now shopping with more inventory, more price cuts, and more negotiating room than buyers had four years ago.

Waiting was also correct for anyone whose finances weren’t ready — thin reserves, unstable income, a likely relocation. Buying a house you can’t comfortably carry is far more expensive than renting for another year. That was true in 2022 and it’s true now.

Where waiting proved costly

The strategy failed in one specific way, and it’s worth naming clearly.

The implicit bet in 2022 was that borrowing costs would fall, letting patient buyers get in later on better terms. That didn’t happen. Borrowing costs are higher today than they were in late 2022, and the Federal Reserve raised rates in September for the first time since 2023, with its own projections now implying no net easing through 2027. The question of will mortgage rates go down in 2026 has a very different answer than the consensus assumed four years ago.

So a renter who waited specifically for cheaper financing is facing a worse financing environment and a higher purchase price. That’s the genuine cost — not the appreciation they missed, but the fact that the thing they were waiting for moved further away.

If you’re still waiting on that same assumption, that’s the assumption worth re-examining.

What this means if you’re renting right now

I’m not going to tell you to buy. I’d tell you to run your own version of the math above using your actual rent, your actual target price, and your actual local appreciation — because the national numbers will mislead you in either direction.

What I will say is that the conditions in front of you are meaningfully better than they were for anyone who bought in 2022, on the price side at least. Inventory has rebuilt substantially. A significant share of listings are seeing price cuts. Sellers and builders are negotiating. That leverage is cyclical, and it disappears when financing gets cheaper and sidelined buyers return all at once.

Three things worth doing whether or not you buy this year:

Find out what you actually qualify for. Most renters I talk to assume they need far more down payment than they do. Understanding first time home buyer loan programs and what the underwriting really requires takes an afternoon and removes a lot of guesswork.

Check what assistance exists where you live. Non-savings sources now fund a growing share of down payments. State housing finance agencies, municipal grants, and forgivable second mortgages are substantially underused. Look at down payment assistance programs in your state before you conclude the down payment is the barrier, and check whether zero down home loans for first time buyers apply to your situation.

Decide on a payment, not a forecast. The single clearest lesson from the 2022 cohort is that the people who did fine are the ones who bought something they could comfortably carry at the terms they actually got. The people who struggled are the ones whose purchase only worked if the forecast came true.

The bottom line

Waiting since 2022 cost most people something, but a modest something — likely a five-figure difference over four years, not the life-altering gap the urgency narrative implies. In declining markets it cost nothing at all, and may have saved people from a loss.

What it actually cost was optionality. Four years of waiting for better financing produced worse financing, and the price moved up while they waited.

That’s not an argument that you should have bought in 2022. It’s an argument that “wait for rates to fall” was never a plan, and still isn’t. The better question has always been whether the payment works at the terms available to you today and if it doesn’t, renting in a market where tenants finally have leverage is a perfectly respectable answer.

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