Rich baby boomers jumped in with all-cash offers, and sellers scored huge windfalls as weary buyers pushed prices to new heights. After all, people have to move for a wide variety of life reasons; mortgage rates be damned. "The further and further we get from the peak of the market," Peterson told me, "the harder it is to deny what's happened." Mortgage rates haven't fallen — in fact, they've gone up about 0.6 percentage points since the start of the year. "It can always be tricky telling somebody that they were just lucky because it makes you sound envious," Peterson told me.

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Persons: Rich, Sellers, Eric Peterson, Peterson, Austin, Freddie, they've, Selma Hepp, Freddie Mac, Mike Simonsen, Redfin, towners, Libby Levinson, Katz, Price, Levinson, John Burns, they'll, Realtor.com, you'd Organizations: Freddie Mac, Reserve, Federal Housing Finance Agency, Altos Research, Sun, John, John Burns Research, Consulting Locations: Austin, Boise , Idaho, Denver