A few weeks ago, Sean Dycus thought he spied the window to snatch a lower mortgage rate than the 8% he got saddled with in December when he bought an investment home in South Carolina for $450,000.

“I got an offer that would lower my rate by almost a percent and a half,” Dycus, who works with Mainstreet Properties, told Yahoo Finance. “I thought about it, sat down and did the numbers. Then rates went up again.”

That’s the fast-changing rate environment last year’s homebuyers face as they hope to shed the much higher-than-expected mortgage rate they were forced to swallow in 2022 in order to close on a home.

“I knew rates were high when I bought, but I also knew that I wasn’t going to get a perfect deal again,” Dycus said, noting he got a 20% price discount on the property. “I thought, I’ll just suck it up and refi when it’s time to refi.”

The latest chance may have passed Dycus by. The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage increased to 6.65% this week, according to Freddie Mac, climbing over a half-point in the last four weeks as recent data showed inflation was still a threat.

The rate, which began a downward trajectory in January, was a whisker away from dropping below 6% at the start of February, perking up refinance activity then. For instance, the volume of refinance applications increased 15% for the week ending Jan. 20, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association survey.

“There may have been some buyers who grabbed rates at 6.75% or more last fall who might have had a chance at a 6.25% rate,” Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH.com, told Yahoo Finance.

Now with rates closer to 7% than 6%, only 161,000 high-quality candidates could shave at least three-quarters of a point off their mortgage if they refinanced, according to figures mortgage technology and data provider Black Knight shared with Yahoo Finance. Black Knight defines high quality as 30-year mortgage holders with a maximum 80% loan-to-value ratio and a credit score of 720 or higher.