I’m one of them. For a lot of reasons my partner and I want to move, but we have a 3% mortgage. Even though we have a large amount of equity, we still can’t afford to buy now. I’m looking a getting a loan from my parents, which is ridiculous considering our situation but almost 8% interest rates mean our payment would just about double from what we have now.
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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8%, wow. I remember when it slowly (over years) came down from 17.5% in 1990 in Australia. My credit card at the time had 55 days internet free but the internet was 18.5%, at one point I think it hit 22%.
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I'm in year 17 of my 5 year starter home. I can't afford to upgrade now. I'm gonna die in this house.
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Part of me wishes to move. It's like you have to buy the house in cash now. What a time to be alive.
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3.25% 30 year... 27 years left.
But I'm OK staying. I've made huge improvements. Upgraded the electrical panel from 100A to 200A, added solar panels, added a retractible awning. Hot tub is coming.
It's a nice house, with a good yard, will be fun to add playground stuff when we have grand-kids.
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Lucky 'mericans. In Canada, fixed mortgages are still renegotiated every 5 years or so, nearly every homeowner with a mortgage is getting wrecked by the interest rates.
We get wrecked by other things. Healthcare costs is my wrecking ball.
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We have similar stories to the others, but also, we bought a house in a less-than-desirable town. So even if we could afford a higher mortgage rate, our house isn't worth enough to move somewhere more desirable.
I told my cousin to pick up a condo he liked in 2019. His cheap ass decided to wait. The condos in that building more than doubled in price and the rates tripled.
I had a similar experience with one of my best friends. In 2019 the market in our town was about to boil over and I suggested he try to find a house before it goes out of his reach. He was upset because there wasnt any more 200k houses that he liked anymore. He thought that it had to come back to that price someday. And then a couple months later, its almost impossible to find a 400k house that isnt a dump. Dude waited too long. He will never find that 200k place in this town now..
And people moved away from cities during COVID to decrease their cost of living and get a bigger place while still being able to work from home. They bought with lover interest rates in their mortgage.
Now employers want a return to office. The employees can't afford to move back.
Also a lot of people have discovered that no one wants to live in rural areas because they fucking suck. That's why there's no people there.
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Same story as everyone else. Bought pre-covid, refinanced, now sitting pretty. We desperately want to move, but I would have to make like $50k more a year for the same quality of life.
Oh, yeah. This isn't the house I wanted to die in, but unless we have another near-negative interest rate drop, we're here for the long term.
"Are you willing to relocate?" has now become a hard "no."
My wife and I were lucky enough to be able to purchase a home at a decent rate and then refinance a few years later to an even better rate (around 3.5%). We bought in 2019, when the world was still somewhat sane. The thought of trying to sell and get a new home at the higher rate makes me sick to my stomach and I feel bad for my brother-in-law.
We bought in 2016 with 50k down at 3.5% and our payments were $2,800. We refinanced and now our payments are $2,400. Zillow says if we bought our same house today, at today's rate with the same amount down the payments would be $7,700, an utterly unfathomable amount.
Yup. Bought at the end of 2019, refinanced in late 2020. Currently have a 15 year mortgage at a fixed 2.1% APR. I literally cannot afford to give this up.
It's less that I want to leave this house, specifically, and more that I just want out of this state. For multiple reasons unrelated to my good mortgage deal, I'm stuck here for the foreseeable future.
On the bright side, I never thought I'd actually own a house so I'll take the win.
Rent it out and move. Easy.
In the greater Boston area, rents are much, much less than interest costs on a mortgage.
It's very common right now to see a rental go on the market only for them to not get a renter and then for the house to be for sale within 6 months. ROI is plummeting compared to other investments but prices stay steady because so many want to buy a home.
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Ha, possible. Though I don't want to be an absentee landlord or deny someone else an affordable home. Would definitely sell :)
a fellow texan?
WV. Not worse, just differently bad.
Same exact situation. But I has daughters in a state that just upheld a civil war era law enacted to ban abortion prior to women being able to vote. We made a good amount of cash off the sale but now have to rent at almost twice what my mortgage was. Both my house and the Apt. I am in now in are owned by investment firms. This will be untenable.
Bought ours in January 2018 no way could we afford to give it up our refinance no matter 75k in equity. But our mortgage keeps pushing us too. I have click through 6 offers to refinance just pay my mortgage online each month.
Ditto. 2.6%. Car loan at 3.2%. Can’t afford a new car, can’t afford to move these days. Yeah, it’s hard to bitch when you’re glad to have a home, but it’s a figurative “house arrest” when market forces trap you.
Yep, 2.7% here. Bought in summer 2020. I really like the house, but the property is challenging as its a big slope. I didn't realize all the challenges in dealing with that. However, it's starting to grow on me and I'm still getting what I want out of my land its... just... more work and money. I got such a good deal it doesn't make sense to leave.
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Don't you have to renew it every 5 years?
In USA, refinance happens only when consumer wants to. Usually to get a better rate or cash in on some equity I think.
In Canada, the mortgage has to be renewed every 5 years or less depending on your contract. They'll never let you have a 30 years mortgage on a 2% interest rate the whole time.
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Nope :)
I think you may be thinking of an ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) where the bank recalculates the interest rate every few years based on the current federal rate (I'm not a money-ologist, but I think that's the broad strokes of it).
I pay 2.1% APR until it's paid off or I choose to refinance again (lol, right). The only thing that changes my monthly payment are the stuff paid from escrow (property taxes and homeowners insurance) since those can vary and the bank takes care of those by folding them into my payment amount.
Nope, US has 15 and 30 year fixed rates available. You can get an arm that has a variable rate, but they've been un popular after 2008, and with the low interest rates not worth it.
Holy shit. We don't have that in Canada. I wish we did. A lot of people have lost their homes due to raising interest rates as they have to renew every 5 years or so. Real estate in Canada is so fucked up.
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I haven’t heard of having to renew mortgage interest rates. A fixed interest rate should be good for the life of the loan.
I’m at 2.875% on a 25-year loan. I never plan on moving.
15 and 30 year fixed mortgages is pretty unique to the US.
Depends on where you live. Odds are most people reading this are in the US or Canada where fixed interest rates for life of the loan is common, though you can get an ARM. However in many other countries you cannot get those loans, and those people have to renew every few years.
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That’s not a thing in the US like it is in Canada. I can keep my sub 3% mortgage for the 25 years I have left on it.
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Not sure what makes you think this, but most mortgages are a contract for 15 to 30 years that lock you into a rate until the house is paid off. You may be thinking of some kind of variable rate mortgage but I though those renewed the rates way more often than 5 years but I'm not sure. It'll all depend on the mortgage terms.
The U.S. is the only country in the world where the 30-year fixed rate mortgage is the most popular way that people buy houses. It’s the deliberate result of government policy—government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from lenders, ensuring that they continue to offer such loans at little risk to themselves.
All the non-Americans here can't get 30 year fixed mortgages, that's why a good part of the Lemmings here are confused
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No who told you that? If your interest is fixed you don't fuck with that
In the UK it's quite unusual to have a fixed rate mortgage that goes that long. Normally you'd get a decent rate for 2-5 years, at which point the rate changes to whatever the current default is, and you get the opportunity to fix for another few years
Somehow I think that would be great for un-fucking our "home investment" slave system in the US where landlords buy all these homes on credit, convert them to multifamily, and then use the labor of renters indefinitely while allowing the homes to get worse and worse.
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Well mine isn't it fix 30 years. You can get one of those our a floating rate but goddamm I was told to only get a fixed 30 year mortgage. Correct that most people do refinance in 5 years but in today's market no fucking way.
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