Mortgage rates climb again, Home Depot shoppers delay big projects

Homeowners are still making the same calculation at the kitchen table and on the sales floor: with borrowing costs stuck near 6.5%, the big move gets delayed and the repair list gets shorter. Bankrate’s May 14 update showed a national average 30-year fixed mortgage rate of 6.51%, up from 6.43% the week before, while Freddie Mac put its own weekly average at 6.36% as of May 14. Either way, the message to Home Depot associates is the same: customers are staying put longer, and when they do spend, they are more likely to patch, phase and prioritize.

That shift changes what rings up in the aisles. Instead of treating a shopping trip like the start of a full remodel, customers are more likely to ask about windows, bath updates, appliances and outdoor projects in smaller bites. Pro customers face the same pressure in a different form, with more quote shopping and more conversations about budget tradeoffs before a job gets greenlit. On the floor, that tends to favor maintenance, repair and urgent fixes over the kind of discretionary remodel that fills entire departments at once.

Home Depot has already told investors that the housing backdrop is weighing on demand. In its Feb. 24 fourth-quarter report, the company said sales were $38.2 billion, down 3.8% from a year earlier, even as comparable sales rose 0.4%. The company said consumer uncertainty and pressure in housing were affecting results, and chief financial officer Richard McPhail told CNBC the U.S. had been in a “frozen housing environment for three years.” That freeze matters in stores because fewer moves mean fewer full-room refreshes, fewer pro remodel starts and more cautious first purchases.

The company’s own outlook reflects that caution. In December, Home Depot said it was planning for the home improvement market to range from minus 1% to plus 1%, with comparable sales flat to up 2% and total sales up 2.5% to 4.5%. It also pegged its total addressable market at about $1.1 trillion. That is still a massive market, but the pace inside it looks slower. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies said annual owner-occupied improvement spending should reach $518 billion by the end of 2026, while growth in renovation and repair spending is expected to slow to 2.1% in mid-2026 and 1.6% by year-end. Redfin added to the same picture, estimating that about 20% of mortgaged homeowners have a rate above 6%.

For associates and department leads, the practical takeaway is not complicated. When rates stay high, customers do not disappear, but their projects shrink. The winning store will be the one that makes a smaller first step easy, keeps the right inventory on hand and helps turn a postponed remodel into a sale that starts now.