09/28/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/19MNi5LGeU/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Nearly half of American homeowners are sitting on a rate that makes moving feel like getting punched in the face financially.
That's the whole housing shortage in one sentence.
Look at the numbers. Nearly 50% of mortgages are locked at 4% or lower. About 1 in 5 is under 3%. Meanwhile today's rate is sitting up around 7%.
Run the actual math with me. A $400,000 house at 3.5% runs $1,796 a month. That exact same house at 7%? $2,661. That's $865 extra every month for nothing new, same house, same walls, same driveway. Over 30 years that's an extra $300,000 straight to the bank.
So when someone says a homeowner is "stubborn" for not selling, I push back on that every time. The FHFA found that every single point of gap between your old rate and today's rate drops your odds of selling by 18.1%. That's not stubbornness.
That's someone who did the math and closed the laptop.
Here's what that's done to the market. Inventory is still stuck well below pre-pandemic levels. Bankrate flat out called this spring muted. New construction is trying to fill the gap and it's not even close to enough.
Existing home sales are basically frozen for the year.
Now here's the part I actually find interesting. This is loosening, just slowly. Nearly 1 in 5 mortgages is above 6% now.
Because life doesn't check your interest rate before it happens. Divorces happen. Jobs move. People die. Families grow. Give it four or five more years and this grip starts to break.
If you're sitting around waiting for 2019 inventory to magically reappear, I've got bad news. You're going to be waiting a long time.
The people who figure out how to buy smart inside this actual market, the one that exists right now, are the ones who won't still be complaining about this in 2030.
