What a Month of Rising Rates Actually Costs a La Quinta Buyer

If you are planning a move to La Quinta or Palm Desert and you have been watching rates, the last month has been the wrong kind of interesting.

The 30 year fixed average has risen in every weekly print for the last month. Here is the sequence, straight off the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, which is a weekly national average:

• Week of September 10: 6.76 percent
• Week of September 17: 6.95 percent
• Week of September 24: 7.03 percent
• Week of October 1: 7.28 percent
• Week of October 8: 7.40 percent

That is 64 basis points higher than the September 10 print, which was exactly four weeks earlier. Roughly two thirds of a percent, and it moved in four straight weekly steps. It also happened straight through a Federal Reserve rate increase, which is the opposite of what most people have been waiting for. The week of October 8 print is the highest this survey has recorded since November 16, 2023, when it was 7.44 percent.

Percentages do not mean much. Dollars do.

Half a percent sounds like rounding. It is not. Let me use a real example.

Take a purchase price of $650,000 with 20 percent down. That is a $520,000 loan over 30 years. I am using principal and interest only, no taxes, no insurance and no HOA, because those change house to house and I do not want them hiding the rate.

• At 7.40 percent, the week of October 8 average, that payment is about $3,600 a month.
• At 6.30 percent, which is what the same survey printed for the same week a year earlier, it is about $3,219 a month.

The difference is about $382 a month. Over a year that is roughly $4,580. Same house, same price, same down payment.

The 15 year moved too, and nobody mentions it

The 15 year fixed average for the week of October 8 was 6.73 percent, up from 6.60 percent the week before, against 5.53 percent a year ago. If you are selling something on the coast and putting most of it down here, with a small loan on top, the 15 year is often the number that actually applies to you. It has moved more than a full point in a year and it gets almost no coverage.

Two things to watch for in rate headlines

First, a weekly survey average and a daily rate tracker are not the same number, and in the same week they can sit half a point apart. If you see two figures that do not agree, check whether one is a weekly average and the other is a daily quote. Both can be correct.

Second, the rate you are actually offered depends on your credit, your down payment, the loan type and whether you are buying points. A survey average is a thermometer, not a quote.

Does this change whether you buy

That depends on things a rate does not know. Whether you are paying cash. Whether you have to sell something first. How long you plan to hold it. Whether the house you actually want comes up twice a year or twice a decade.

What it does change is the arithmetic, and the arithmetic is worth doing before you fall in love with a floor plan. If you want the real monthly number on a specific price and a specific down payment, send me both and I will run it and send it back. No form, no list, nothing to sign up for.

The thing people get wrong about waiting. Trying to time the market isn't the best way to buy your home.

Laura Lake | Your Desert Real Estate Partner | DRE #01455311

Source: Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, week of October 8, 2026. Payment figures are principal and interest only, calculated on a $520,000 loan over 30 years.