They Waited for the Dip. It Cost Them $60,000.

In the spring of 2024, I had clients — I'll call them the Kellermans — who were as ready to buy as anyone I've worked with. Pre-approved at $2.1M. Knew exactly what they wanted: a waterfront home on the Butler Chain, 4 bedrooms, something with a proper dock. We'd toured eight properties over two weekends. They loved one of them — a lake butler frontage home in the high $1.8s that checked every box.

Then rates moved. Not dramatically — we're talking a 30-basis-point uptick on jumbo loans — but it was enough to make them pause. They'd been reading about a "potential market correction" and decided to wait and see.

I told them what I tell every client who asks about timing: I don't know when prices are going to fall, and neither does anyone else. What I do know is that the property they loved wouldn't wait.

It went under contract 11 days later. We found out on a Saturday morning.

What happened next

They stayed patient. We kept looking. Summer 2024 came and went. The waterfront inventory they were looking at — Butler Chain homes in the $1.7M–$2.1M range — didn't get cheaper. It got thinner. By September, there were fewer good options on the market than there had been in April.

In November 2024, they bought a comparable property at $1.94M. Not the same view, not quite the same dock situation. But close enough that they were happy.

The math on waiting: approximately $140K more than the home they loved in April, plus seven months of apartment rent while they waited.

They don't dwell on it. But when we talk about it, the thing they most regret isn't the money — it's that they let an abstract bet on macroeconomics cost them the specific home that actually fit their life.

Why market timing almost never works for luxury buyers

The argument for waiting usually goes something like this: rates are high, inventory is low, prices are elevated — something has to give. And that's not an unreasonable analysis at a macro level. But it misunderstands how the luxury submarket in Orlando actually works.

The Butler Chain waterfront is not rate-sensitive in the way the general market is. Roughly 45 percent of transactions above $2M on the Chain close in cash or effectively cash terms. When jumbo rates moved from 6.1 to 7.2 percent in 2023, the under-$700K Orlando market paused noticeably. Butler Chain volume barely moved. The buyers in that market aren't primarily mortgage-dependent.

The other dynamic that undermines timing strategies is scarcity. There are a finite number of direct lakefront homes on the Chain. They don't all come to market at once. When a good one shows up at a reasonable price, it moves — often in under three weeks. You can't wait for "better conditions" and then expect the specific property to still be there.

I've watched the Kellerman situation play out in different forms many times. Sometimes the gap is smaller — $20K or $30K. Sometimes it's larger. Almost never does the waiting buyer end up ahead.

The question I ask buyers who want to wait

When a client tells me they want to wait for prices to come down, I ask them one thing: what specific event would tell you the time is right?

Most people can't answer that precisely. They're waiting for a feeling, not a data point. A vague sense that conditions have improved, that it's "a better time to buy." But markets don't send clear signals. By the time you feel confident the conditions are right, the best inventory has already been absorbed by the buyers who didn't wait.

The Kellermans bought a good home. They're happy on the water. But they carry a quiet awareness of the one that got away — the dock, the view, the specific morning light on that particular stretch of Lake Butler.

That awareness doesn't go away.

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If you're trying to figure out whether now is the right time to buy in Orlando's luxury market — and what the actual data says — request the Q2 2026 market report. No pitch, no automated follow-up. Just the numbers and a note from Ryan.