Check whether the starting rate is even competitive before you spend a dollar buying it down. Our lean is against paying points in the first place. When a zero-point quote sits well above what a borrower with your credit score, loan size, and down payment should be getting, the fix is rarely to pay thousands to lower it. The fix is to shop the loan, because a competitive lender may start you near that lower rate at little or no cost. If the buydown on offer mostly brings you back to where a good lender would have started you, you would be paying two or three points to undo an uncompetitive quote. That rarely makes sense. Run the break-even too. Divide the cost of the buydown by the monthly savings it produces. If $12,000 buys you $200 a month, that is a five-year break-even, and you only come out ahead if you keep both the loan and the rate that long. Nobody can promise where rates go, so a long break-even is a real bet. If you need to close on time, closing at a fair market rate as-is and revisiting later often beats sinking cash into points now. Pull two or three competing zero-point quotes first, then decide. The buydown comparison is something some people still want to see, and we will run it for you on the free Roadmap conversation.