Let’s take a step back to fully understand the current situation. Inflation hit a 40-year high two summers ago; the Fed was already raising rates and only getting more aggressive. Mortgage rates, which were hovering near all-time lows, skyrocketed and the housing market froze: people stopped buying and selling homes. Hearing that, you’d think a rate cut would cause mortgage rates to fall, but the federal funds rate isn’t tied directly to mortgage rates. It’s the 10-year Treasury mortgage rate that’s tied to it, and the spread between the two is higher than normal.

But after months of positive economic data, expectations began to grow that the Fed would finally cut rates this month. Those talks sent mortgage rates to a 19-month low, as the bond market priced in a cut. “Mortgage rates are much more related to expectations of what the Fed will do than to what the Fed actually does,” Thomas Ryan, an economist at Capital Economics, told me. Fortune“So the mortgage interest rate reflects all those interest rate reductions.”

The average 30-year fixed weekly mortgage rate was 6.2%, as of last Thursday. In early May, it was 7.22%; in October of last year, it was 7.79%. So we’ve come a long way. Still, buying and selling hasn’t picked up (although there has been a bit of a resurgence in refinancing). Either way, it doesn’t seem like much will change. People are waiting for lower mortgage rates, even if they won’t get them right away. But being held back by the fear of missing out on lower rates may not be the best approach. “The upside is already there and available in the form of lower mortgage rates than they were a few months ago,” Mark Fleming, chief economist at First American, told me. Fortune.

Still, what the Fed does versus expectations does matter in terms of the 10-year Treasury. When there’s uncertainty, that drives the spread up, Ryan explained. And spreads have widened significantly in recent years. But now that we know the Fed has entered its slasher era, there’s less uncertainty and we’ll likely see the spread narrow. That will, of course, put “downward pressure on mortgage rates,” Ryan said. It’s unclear when that will happen or by how much they will come down, because much of the existing decline has already occurred. So maybe we’ll take a longer-term view.

“I think it’s actually less about Wednesday, it’s more about the fact that we’re turning the corner on a cycle of monetary easing than it is about monetary tightening,” Fleming said. “In other words, it’s the fact that the Fed has finally started cutting rates … whatever they do on Wednesday, they’re not going to be done. They’re going to continue to cut rates into next year … it’s less about whether rates are going to come down immediately or not based on Wednesday. It’s a clear signal that lower rates are coming in the coming months.”

Let’s not forget, though, that whether rates are lower or not, home prices are still high and that will remain a problem, something that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell himself has alluded to. Moody’s economist Nick Villa also put it well recently: “While lower mortgage rates are an opportunity that could unlock more supply, the country ultimately has a structural housing shortage and needs to keep building more homes.”