In our experience, no. Higher rates shrink what a payment buys, and they change very few buyers' behavior. Buyers tend to fall into two camps: one group sets a firm monthly payment and holds that line no matter what they're approved for, and the other buys up to whatever the pre-approval allows. Rate changes don't convert the second group into the first. When rates rise, the same monthly payment covers a smaller loan, so buyers get less house for the same money. Faced with that, most people stretch rather than settle, because the things they're shopping for don't flex much. Bedroom count, commute distance, and school district are real constraints, and few buyers happily trade them away to hold a payment target. On the ground, buyers rarely shift down a price tier once they've been looking in a range. The ones who genuinely can't make the higher-rate math work usually step to the sidelines and wait rather than settle for meaningfully less house. So higher rates mostly change who is in the market and how far they stretch. The discipline has to come from you: what you qualify for and what you should spend are two different numbers, so decide the payment you're comfortable with and buy that, whatever the pre-approval ceiling says.