a good read from FORTUNE
Homeowners who held onto a 3% mortgage rate are becoming 'accidental landlords'
BYALENA BOTROS
March 13, 2023 at 3:02 PM MST
The era of lower-than-ever mortgage rates is long gone, and it’s been replaced with rates hovering around 7%. But homeowners who locked in lower rates before or during the Pandemic Housing Boom aren’t selling. In fact, some of them are becoming “accidental landlords,” simply because they don’t want to lose their low rates of the past.
That being said, the so-called lock-in effect is putting pressure on both sides of the market. There aren’t as many buyers looking for new digs and not as many sellers looking to move up or downsize, if they’ll get stuck with a mortgage rate more than twice as high as their old one.
Redfin’s chief economist Daryl Fairweather told Fortune that high rates are constricting activity. “They’re looking at their monthly payment, which is quite low if they locked in a 3% mortgage rate compared to what their monthly payment would be if they sold and bought again, which would be quite high given how high mortgage rates are,” Fairweather said. “And it just makes a lot of sense for them to hold on to that low interest rate.”
Although rates are down from their 7.37% peak, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate came in at 6.57% on Monday. According to Goldman Sachs, 99% of borrowers have a mortgage rate lower than 6% (or the current market rate). Of those, 28% locked in rates at or below 3% and 72% locked in rates at or below 4%.
So if you took on a $700,000 mortgage with a 7% rate, your total monthly payment would be $4,657. But with the same size loan at a 4% rate, your monthly payment would be $3,342. Let’s say it’s a 3% rate with the same size loan, your monthly payment would be $2,951. It’s the golden-handcuffs of mortgage rates, and it’s keeping homeowners with low rates from selling and turning some into landlords.
Fairweather said there’s both anecdotal evidence and data showing that homeowners are holding on tight to their low rates. For example, new listings of homes for sale fell 21.7% year-over-year for the four-week period ending March 5, making it the biggest decline in two months, according to Redfin. In the same period, the biggest declines were seen in Sacramento (at -45.6%), Oakland (-44.5%), Portland (-42.3%), San Jose (-42.1%), and Seattle (-41.2%).
Michael Zuber, author of One Rental at a Time and former tech worker turned real estate investor, told Fortune that a 30-year fixed mortgage at a rate of 3% is without question one of the best assets most homeowners will ever have.
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