"What's Your Mortgage Rate?" The One Question I Am Asking San Francisco Homeowners

One question, asked on 24th Street

I have one question for San Francisco homeowners this month, and I am asking it on camera in the places where neighbors actually run into each other: what is your mortgage rate?

My first stop is the Noe Valley Farmers Market. It runs every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., all year, at the Noe Valley Town Square, 3861 24th Street. It is one of my favorite places in the city to talk to people, because almost everyone there lives within a few blocks and almost everyone has an opinion about housing.

The rules are simple. I only film people who say yes, and nobody has to give a name or an address. The videos go on my Instagram. This post is the part that does not fit in thirty seconds: why I am asking.

Today's rate

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 7.40% on October 8, 2026, according to Freddie Mac. A year ago it was 6.30%. Rates had gone up for seven weeks in a row, according to Trading Economics, and reached their highest level since November 2023.

Freddie Mac publishes a new number every Thursday, so by the time you read this there is a fresh one. Check it before you quote me.

Why the gap is the whole story

Here is what makes the question interesting. The rate a homeowner has and the rate a buyer can get today are often very far apart. Someone who bought or refinanced several years ago may be paying a rate that sounds impossible now.

That gap changes behavior. If moving means giving up a low rate for one above 7%, a lot of people simply do not move. They remodel. They add on. They stay in a house that is a little too small or a little too big, because the math of leaving is hard.

Here is my own arithmetic to show the size of it. On a $1,000,000 loan, principal and interest at 7.40% is about $6,924 a month. At 6.30%, where rates were just a year ago, it is about $6,190. That is roughly $734 a month for the same loan. The gap gets wider the lower the old rate is.

What it does to a neighborhood like Noe Valley

When owners stay put, fewer homes come up for sale. When fewer homes come up, the ones that do get a crowd.

You can see it in the numbers. When I pulled every closed house sale in San Francisco for September 2026 from Compass on October 4, 174 of the 192 houses with a list price had sold for more than asking. The median time on market was 12 days. That is houses only, citywide, not condos.

So higher rates have not made San Francisco houses cheaper this fall. They have made them scarcer.

If you are the one with the low rate

You are holding something valuable, and you should count it when you think about moving. Before you decide anything, look at three numbers side by side: what your home would sell for today, what the next home would cost, and what the new monthly payment would be at today's rate. Sometimes the answer is to stay. Sometimes the equity you have built more than covers the difference. You cannot know until you see the numbers on one page.

If you are the one shopping at 7.40%

Get more than one quote. Freddie Mac's chief economist, Sam Khater, said in the October 8 release that shopping around and getting multiple quotes can potentially save borrowers thousands of dollars.

And remember that you choose the house once but you can revisit the loan. If rates come down in the future, refinancing may be an option. Nobody can promise that they will, so buy with a payment you can live with today.

Why I am doing this in person

I talk about rates and prices all week. Charts do not tell you about the year someone bought, the house they almost bought instead, or the neighbor who has been on the block for forty years. Those stories are the real market in San Francisco, and the only way to hear them is to stand in the square and ask.

Marin is next, in downtown Mill Valley. If you see me with a microphone, come say hello and tell me your number.

This is general information, not financial advice. Talk to a licensed loan officer about your own situation.

Sources: Freddie Mac, Primary Mortgage Market Survey, October 8, 2026; Trading Economics, October 8, 2026; Noe Valley Farmers Market, noevalleyfarmersmarket.com; Compass, San Francisco single-family sales closed September 1 to 30, 2026, pulled October 4, 2026. Payment figures are my own calculations.