Market Update · August 24, 2026 · 6 min read
Mortgage rates barely budged today. Freddie Mac's latest survey puts the 30-year fixed at 6.65% as of August 20. According to Mortgage News Daily, lenders are sitting sideways to slightly higher—mostly because they set Friday's rates during the best part of the day, and bonds didn't quite keep pace today.
But no one's really watching the day-to-day tick. Every mortgage professional I know is looking at Friday. Fed Chair Warsh gives his Jackson Hole address then, and Redfin notes that traders are ignoring almost everything else—Canadian tariffs, inflation prints, geopolitics—until they hear what he says about the path forward.
That's the backdrop. Now let me tell you what happened at Home Depot and Lowe's, because it matters a whole lot more to Maryland sellers than another speech about monetary policy.
HousingWire reported today that both Home Depot and Lowe's are seeing consumers stall on big, discretionary remodeling projects. Repair and maintenance? Still steady. But the kitchen gut-jobs, the primary-suite additions, the finished basements? Those are idling.
I wrote about this trend yesterday, but today's headline adds hard retailer data to the anecdote pile.
Here's why it matters if you're thinking about listing your house in Harford County, Baltimore County, Anne Arundel, Howard, or anywhere else I serve across Maryland, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Delaware: your buyer pool is sitting on the fence about big financial commitments right now.
They'll fix a leaky faucet. They won't rip out your 1990s kitchen after closing—not in this economy, not at these rates, not with this much uncertainty.
You know I spent 20 years in education before I got my real estate license. I still teach rather than sell. So here's the lesson.
If buyers aren't planning to remodel, they're hunting for move-in-ready. That doesn't mean your house has to look like a Toll Brothers model. It means it can't look like a project.
I've been in enough open houses this summer to tell you: the dated-but-clean houses are moving. The "bring your contractor" houses are sitting, even with price cuts.
And price cuts are real. Redfin found that mid-September is the prime dealmaking window for buyers in Baltimore—I covered that last week—but late August still has juice if your house is priced right and shows well.
"Shows well" in August 2026 does not mean "has good bones." It means "doesn't scare someone who just read that remodeling projects are getting shelved nationwide."
Paint matters. Carpet matters. That half-finished bathroom? It's costing you more than you think.
Everyone wants to talk about mortgage rates. I get it. 6.65% is better than the 6.77% we saw last week, and way better than where we were in late July when rates spiked above 7%.
But here's what the data actually shows: pending home sales fell 2.3% in July, even as rates started their descent. Contract cancellations hit 14% nationally—the highest in nearly three years.
Buyers have power right now. They're walking away from deals that don't pencil. They're negotiating hard. They're waiting for the next price cut.
And they're definitely not budgeting an extra $40,000 to redo your kitchen after they close.
I work across a big footprint: Cecil, Harford, Montgomery, Howard, Anne Arundel, Charles, Baltimore County and Baltimore City in Maryland; Prince George's County and D.C.; York and Lancaster Counties in Pennsylvania; New Castle County in Delaware.
The remodeling freeze doesn't affect every market the same way.
In Howard County and Montgomery County, where median prices are higher and buyer expectations run toward newer construction or extensively updated resales, a dated interior is a bigger handicap than it used to be. Sellers who were counting on "location, location, location" to paper over deferred maintenance are finding that buyers want both—and if they can't have both, they'll wait or they'll buy new.
In Harford County and Cecil County, where the housing stock skews older and buyers have historically been more willing to take on projects, I'm still seeing patience—but even there, the easy projects (paint, floors, appliances) are table stakes. If your house needs a new roof or a furnace or both, you're competing with new builds in Bel Air and Fallston that come with warranties and none of the surprises.
Baltimore County and Baltimore City? It's block by block, but the pattern holds. Well-maintained rowhouses in Hampden or Catonsville or Towson are moving. The ones that look like they need a construction loan? Sitting.
So back to Jackson Hole. Chair Warsh speaks Friday. Markets are waiting to hear whether the Fed sees enough progress on inflation to ease up, or whether stubbornly high shelter costs—Zillow's forecasting 2.8% rent inflation and 3.2% owner-equivalent rent inflation in the latest CPI print—keep pressure on rates into the fall.
If Warsh signals cuts ahead, mortgage rates could ease a bit more. If he sounds hawkish, they'll tick back up.
But here's the thing: whether rates end the year at 6.4% or 6.8%, the remodeling slowdown isn't a rate story. It's a confidence story. Consumers don't know what's coming. They're seeing headlines about tariffs and oil shocks and the 30-year Treasury yield hitting a 19-year high. They're holding tight.
That's not changing Friday, no matter what Warsh says.
So if you're a Maryland seller banking on a post-Jackson Hole buyer surge, I'd temper expectations. What will help: pricing your house for the market that exists, not the one you wish existed, and making sure it doesn't look like a fixer-upper to someone who just decided not to remodel.
If you're serious about selling your house in Baltimore County, Harford County, or anywhere else in my territory before the calendar turns, here's what I'd focus on this week:
Look at the entry. Look at the kitchen. Look at the primary bathroom. If any of those spaces scream "you'll need to budget for this," fix it or price accordingly.
Mid-September is Baltimore's sweet spot for buyers, per Redfin's data. If you list now at a dreamy number hoping for multiple offers, you're going to hit September with stale listing syndrome and fewer showings. Start where the market is.
If rates drop another quarter-point, great. But they're not dropping two full points before Thanksgiving, and buyer confidence isn't coming back just because Warsh sounds dovish in Wyoming.
Pull up the active listings in your neighborhood. Filter for the ones that have been sitting 45+ days. Look at the photos. If your house has the same vibe—needs work, priced optimistically—you're in that pile. If it doesn't, you've got a shot.
The Jackson Hole speech will move markets for a day or two. But the real story is whether new listings keep ticking up—Redfin reported the fifth straight week of increases through mid-August—and whether buyers keep walking away from deals that don't pencil.
If you want to talk about what this means for your specific house in Harford, Baltimore, Anne Arundel, Howard, or any of the other counties I serve, let's talk. I've been doing this long enough to know that national headlines don't close deals. Pricing, condition, and timing do.
And in August 2026, timing means understanding that your buyers aren't remodeling. They're looking for a house that doesn't need it.
Katrina Kirton Sherrod, REALTOR® · Samson Properties · Licensed in MD, DC, PA & DE · 443-616-9770 · Katrina@kkstherealtor.com
“The best time to buy a home was five years ago. The second best time is after we talk.” — Every honest realtor, eventually