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Last Friday night, I found myself drinking in a laundromat.

This was not how I'd planned to celebrate my birthday.

My husband and I wanted sushi, but the wait for a table was a little over an hour, so we explored the rest of the neighborhood to kill some time. That's how we stumbled upon a tiny speakeasy-style bar hidden within a laundromat where every machine just happened to be "out of order."

There were only two other people inside, a couple about our age, and before long the four of us were deep in conversation about politics, law, Peter Thiel, and the economy. You know, the usual lighthearted birthday topics.

The woman was an attorney at a major financial firm who specialized in foreign exchange markets, and she knew her stuff. We talked about inflation, interest rates, bonds, the Federal Reserve, and the stock market. She had a sophisticated understanding of how money moves through the global economy, and I was enjoying the rare opportunity to have a conversation about this stuff with someone who was just as interested in talking about it as I was.

Eventually, the conversation turned to what I do for a living.

When I told her I write about personal finance, her eyes lit up.

"Finally!" she said. "Maybe you can tell me the answer to this."

She leaned forward.

"Is now a good time to buy a house?"

Of all the questions she could have asked me.

The $650,000 Question (or Considerably More, Depending on the House)

She and her family had recently relocated from another state. They were living in a short-term rental while they got to know their new city, but they wanted to settle down, buy a house, and put down roots.

The problem? She couldn't decide whether to buy now or sign a longer lease and wait for the housing market to improve.

I understood her dilemma. Home prices remain stubbornly high in many markets, and mortgage rates have been climbing. In mid-October, Freddie Mac's weekly average for a 30-year fixed mortgage hit 7.40%, the highest level of the year.

That's a tough number to swallow if you remember when mortgage rates started with a two.

But what struck me wasn't the question itself. Millions of Americans are wondering the same thing.

It was who was asking it.

Here was a woman who understood the complicated mechanics of the financial system better than the vast majority of people (myself included). She could talk intelligently about currency fluctuations and monetary policy, but she couldn't figure out whether her own family should buy a house. If someone with that level of knowledge couldn't find the answer, what hope did the rest of us have?

I wish I could tell you I delivered some brilliant piece of financial wisdom. I didn't.

Instead, I asked her a question of my own: "Do you want to know when we bought our house?"

And then I had to admit something rather embarrassing.

We May Have Won the Homebuying Lottery

My husband and I bought our house during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you remember what the housing market looked like back then, you can probably see where this is going. Mortgage rates were extraordinarily low, personal space had suddenly become one of the most valuable commodities in the world, and we happened to be looking at just the right moment.

But it gets better. Thanks to a bit of coincidence, we got our offer in before the house officially went on the market. No competing with a dozen other buyers. No waiving every contingency known to mankind. No bidding war that ended with us offering our firstborn child and a year's supply of toilet paper.

In other words, we got lucky. Really lucky.

So what did I tell this woman, who was wrestling with the same decision under far less favorable circumstances?

"There's never a perfect time to buy a house," I said. "The best time to buy a house is when you need to buy your house."

Coming right after the story of my own nearly perfect home purchase, that was perhaps not the most convincing argument.

But I meant it. I just think I owe her a better explanation.

A Good Financial Decision Isn't Always the One With the Best Outcome

Here's something we don't talk about enough when it comes to money.

You can make a perfectly reasonable financial decision and still end up with a disappointing outcome. And you can make a questionable decision and get incredibly lucky.

My husband and I didn't buy our house because we'd predicted how the pandemic would reshape the real estate market. We wanted a house. We found one we loved. We could afford it. And a whole lot of things happened to work out in our favor.

In fact, the night before we signed our mortgage papers, my mom was still asking me questions about neighborhood comps, school districts, and the local real estate market. Not because she thought we were making a mistake, but because she's my mom, and she wanted to be absolutely sure we'd thought through every possible angle before making one of the biggest purchases of our lives.

A few years later, my mom told me buying our house when we did might turn out to be one of the best financial decisions we'd ever make.

Someone buying a house today might go through exactly the same decision-making process, only to watch mortgage rates fall a year later or see comparable homes in their neighborhood sell for less than they paid.

Does that mean they made a mistake? Not necessarily. It means they couldn't see the future. Nobody can.

This is where we tend to get ourselves into trouble. We judge financial decisions by how they eventually turn out rather than whether they made sense with the information available at the time. The person who bought at the bottom of the market looks like a genius, and the person who bought right before a downturn looks like a fool.

Sometimes that's true. Often, it's just hindsight. And hindsight is a wonderful thing to have when evaluating someone else's mortgage. It's considerably less useful when you're deciding what to do about your own.

The Problem With Waiting for the Perfect Housing Market

Let's say you're thinking about buying a $650,000 house. You can afford it, you've saved a substantial down payment, and you've found a neighborhood you like. But mortgage rates are higher than you'd prefer, so you decide to wait.

Seems reasonable enough. If rates fall next year, you could save hundreds of dollars a month on your mortgage.

But lower rates could also bring more buyers back into the market, and more competition could push home prices higher, wiping out some or even all of those savings. And if rates don't fall, you may spend another year renting only to find that the houses you wanted cost more and financing them costs just as much.

Of course, the opposite could happen, too. Prices could fall, rates could drop, and waiting could turn out to be an excellent decision.

That's the maddening part. There are perfectly plausible scenarios in which buying now is the smarter move, and equally plausible scenarios in which waiting is better. You can study interest rates, employment data, housing inventory, and economic forecasts until your eyes cross, and you still won't know which one is coming.

It feels responsible to wait until you have enough information to make the best decision. But sometimes you're waiting for information that doesn't exist yet.

So When Is the Right Time to Buy a House?

I'm not suggesting you ignore the numbers and buy a house because the kitchen has beautiful countertops. Please don't do that. A home is one of the largest financial commitments most of us will ever make, and the numbers matter. A lot.

But I don't believe we need to treat every home purchase as though its primary purpose is to generate the highest possible investment return. A house is an asset, yes. It's also where you wake up in the morning, where your kids play in the backyard, and where you spend approximately 47 minutes every evening trying to figure out what to make for dinner. That has value, even if it doesn't show up on a spreadsheet.

So instead of asking whether the housing market is about to get better, start with a few questions you can actually answer.

Can you comfortably afford the house at today's prices and interest rates? Not what the payment might be if you refinance someday. What will it cost you right now? That means the mortgage, property taxes, homeowners insurance, maintenance, and all the little expenses that come with owning something that can suddenly require a $15,000 roof. If the purchase only works because you're counting on rates to fall or your income to rise, that's a good reason to reconsider.

Do you expect to stay long enough to make buying worthwhile? Closing costs, moving expenses, and selling costs add up quickly. If you expect to move again in two years, renting might make much more financial sense. If you plan to stay for a decade or two, short-term market fluctuations matter considerably less.

Do you actually know what you want? This is the question I wish I'd spent more time on with my new friend. Her family had just moved to a new city and was still learning the neighborhoods and figuring out where they wanted to spend their time. That's a perfectly good reason to rent a little longer. Not because the Federal Reserve might lower rates next year, but because buying the wrong house in the wrong neighborhood could be a far more expensive mistake than paying a slightly higher mortgage rate.

Are you buying a house you want to live in, or making a bet on the housing market? If the only reason you want to buy now is that you're convinced prices are about to skyrocket, slow down. If the only reason you're refusing to buy is that you're convinced prices are about to collapse, slow down, too. Neither prediction is a sturdy foundation for a major financial decision.

What I Should Have Asked Her

I've spent the past few days thinking about my unexpected real estate conversation, and I've come to two conclusions.

First, I still believe what I told her. There's no perfect time to buy a house. Or, at least, there's no perfect time that anyone can reliably identify in advance.

Second, I'd give her a different question to ask.

She wanted to know whether it was a good time to buy a house.

The better question was whether it was a good time for her family to buy a house.

Forget guessing what interest rates will do. Forget worrying about paying more than the person who buys six months from now. Would buying a home make her family's life better? And could they comfortably afford it?

Because the best time to buy a house isn't necessarily the best time for the housing market. It's the best time for your life, provided the numbers work.

That's what I was trying to tell her that night.

And since we exchanged numbers before leaving our little laundromat-turned-cocktail-bar, I think I might just send her this article.

After all, she asked me a question about personal finance. The least I can do is give her an answer.