Protect yourself on the way out first: many builder contracts let the builder keep your deposit if you walk, and that forfeit can run into the thousands. Read your specific contract closely before assuming you can leave clean. Builder contracts are genuinely one-sided territory, and the fine print is where it bites. The reason walkaways like yours happen at all: new construction commonly runs anywhere from one to six months behind schedule because of supply-chain and labor issues, and a long build window is exactly what creates the rate-lock problem. A buyer who qualified comfortably at signing can, after a stretch of rising rates, no longer qualify by the time the home is ready, or qualify for less. The payment that worked at signing doesn't work at closing, and that pushes buyers to renegotiate or walk. Whether a wave of walkaways translates into price cuts comes down to plain supply and demand, and we can't promise which way it breaks. If walkaways free up a chunk of homes in a community where buyer demand for those specific homes is still ample, prices hold. If demand for them is thin, discounting gets more likely. It's local and community-specific, with no market-wide rule. For your next purchase, focus on what you can control: know the contract's forfeiture terms going in, and line up a lender relationship where your qualification is confirmed and your rate strategy is planned before you're staring down a closing date. That's exactly the kind of thing we map out in the free Roadmap conversation, about 20 minutes with your real numbers, so a build delay doesn't blindside you.