If you’re sitting on a 3% mortgage right now, congratulations — and I’m sorry.

Congratulations, because you locked in one of the best deals the American housing market has ever handed out.
Sorry, because that same deal might be the reason you feel trapped in a house that no longer fits your life.

More than half of American homeowners are in that spot. Roughly 52.5% of them have mortgage rates below 4%. Meanwhile, the average 30-year fixed is now in the mid-6% range.

That spread isn’t just math on a spreadsheet. It’s the difference between:

• “We can manage this payment,” and
• “If we move, our budget explodes — so we’re not moving.”

For the middle class, that’s not just an inconvenience. That’s a mobility crisis.

I want to talk about one idea that could loosen that grip: portable mortgages — letting people take their low rates with them when they move. Other countries already do it. We pretend it’s impossible. It’s not.

The Rate-Locked Middle Class

If you bought or refinanced anytime between, say, 2012 and 2021, your financial life might look like this:

• 30-year fixed mortgage
• Rate somewhere around 2.75%–3.875%
• Monthly payment you’ve built your entire budget around

Fast-forward to today.

Your life changed, as life tends to do:

• The kids are sharing a bedroom and starting to notice.
• Your commute is eating two hours of your day — and your sanity.
• You’re caring for aging parents and wish you lived closer.
• Or maybe you’re an empty nester with more house, more grass, more repairs than you want.

So you do what responsible people do: you run the numbers.

You jump on a mortgage calculator, plug in a realistic price for the next home and today’s 6-something rate… and your jaw tightens:

• Selling means losing that 3%–4% mortgage.
• Buying means stepping into a 6%+ mortgage on a usually more expensive home.
• Your new principal and interest could jump by $800–$1,000+ a month.

Technically, maybe you “qualify.” On paper.
In real life, where groceries, daycare, car insurance, and student loans live? That’s a different story.

So you say what millions of families are quietly saying right now:

“We can’t justify moving. We’ll force this house to work.”

Now zoom out:

• Families who should move up, don’t.
• Homeowners who would happily downsize, don’t.
• Starter homes don’t recycle back to first-time buyers.
• Inventory stays low, prices stay high, and everyone shrugs and blames “the market.”

But this isn’t just “the market.” This is design.
We built a mortgage system where your loan is glued to your house. Sell the house, lose the loan.

That worked when rates bounced around in a relatively narrow band. It breaks when:

• The old world: 3% mortgages
• The new world: 6%+ mortgages

…sit on opposite sides of a canyon.

That’s what “rate-locked” really means. You’re not just locked into a rate. You’re locked into a life.

Portable Mortgages

So what is a portable mortgage, really?

No jargon, just this:

• Instead of your loan being tied to the house, it’s tied to you.
• When you sell your primary residence and buy another primary residence, you can take your current rate and remaining term with you — if you still qualify financially and stay within certain limits.

Think of it as a “take your loan to go” feature.

Right now, the sequence looks like this:

Sell house → pay off old loan → take out brand-new loan at today’s higher rate

With portability, it could look more like:

Sell house → move your existing loan (same rate) to the new house → adjust only what truly needs to change

We’re not reinventing gravity here. Other countries already offer versions of this. The U.S. has a small cousin of the idea in assumable mortgages (mostly FHA and VA loans), where a buyer can step into the seller’s loan. But that’s clunky and limited — the loan stays with the house.

Portable mortgages flip the logic and say:

Stop punishing households for moving when life changes.

Meet Family A: The Starter Home That Turned into a Trap

Let’s put some real numbers around this.

Family A: Stuck in the Starter Home

• They bought in 2018.
• Home price: $300,000.
• Mortgage rate: 3.25%.
• Rough principal and interest: about $1,300–$1,400/month.

Fast-forward to 2025:

• They’ve had another child.
• Both parents work. The commute is crushing.
• They find a $400,000 home closer to work and better schools.
• Today’s 30-year fixed is around 6.24%.

If they buy that $400,000 home with a fresh 6.24% mortgage, their principal and interest alone could land around $2,400/month — $1,000 more every month before they even factor in higher taxes, utilities, and everything else.

On paper, maybe the lender says yes.
In the real world, the family does the same math you would:

“We’re not risking an extra $1,000 a month for the next 30 years. We’ll squeeze into this house and tough it out.”

Family A, With a Portable Mortgage

Now, replay the same story with portability.

Same family. Same $400,000 house. Different rules.

They’re allowed to port their 3.25% mortgage when they move:

• They transfer the old rate and remaining balance to the new home.
• The lender agrees they can port up to, say, $320,000–$340,000 at that original 3.25%.
• Anything above that can be handled by:
  • A bigger down payment,
  • A small second loan at today’s rate, or
  • A blended structure where part of the debt stays at 3.25% and the rest sits at 6.24%, giving them a combined rate somewhere in the middle.

Now, yes — the payment still goes up with the more expensive house. But instead of a $1,000 cliff, maybe it’s a $300–$400 hill.

For most middle-class families, that’s the difference between:

“No chance,” and
“This is tight, but we can seriously consider it.”

Portability doesn’t make the new house cheap. It makes the math less insane.

And when enough families can seriously consider moving instead of being financially handcuffed to their current address, the entire housing ladder starts working again.

Why the System Isn’t Rushing to Offer This

If this sounds so obvious, why isn’t every lender in America advertising portable mortgages?

Short answer: your pain is often someone else’s revenue stream.

Most of the low-rate mortgages written in the 2010s and early 2020s are:

• Profitable for investors to hold, and
• Great raw material for turning into new business when rates rise.

Here’s the basic incentive structure:

• When you refinance, someone earns a new set of fees.
• When you move and take a new loan, that’s more interest income at higher rates.
• When you reshuffle your debt, the machine gets paid again.

Portable mortgages do the opposite:

• They extend the life of your low-rate loan.
• They slow down prepayments and refinances.
• They shield you from being constantly recycled into worse terms.

What’s good for household stability is not always good for the churn machine.

But there’s a catch for the industry, too: a frozen market hurts everyone in the long run.

If rate lock drags on:

• Real-estate agents do fewer deals.
• Loan officers write fewer mortgages.
• Appraisers, inspectors, movers, furniture stores — everyone tied to home turnover feels it.

At some point, protecting old profits by choking off future business stops making sense.
Portable mortgages are one way to get the system moving again without blowing it up.

Mobility Is Middle-Class Infrastructure

We love to talk about “mobility” in America — social mobility, economic mobility, geographic mobility.

But here’s the quiet truth: if you can’t move without detonating your budget, you don’t actually have much mobility.

Being stuck in place touches almost every part of a middle-class life:

• The jobs you can realistically take
• The schools your kids can attend
• Your access to childcare and healthcare
• Whether you can move closer to aging parents
• Whether you can leave a high-cost, high-stress region without going backward financially

We treat roads, bridges and broadband as infrastructure. And they are.
But the ability to change your address without doubling your housing payment? That’s financial infrastructure too.

A U.S. version of portable mortgages doesn’t have to be a free-for-all. It could be built with clear guardrails:

• Primary residences only. No investor toys.
• Loan caps. Focus on middle-class price ranges, not luxury flips.
• Re-underwriting when you port. Your income, debts and credit still have to make sense.
• Standard rules through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Start where most mortgages already live.

This isn’t about giving people a magic loophole. It’s about not punishing reasonable decisions — moving for work, safety, family, or long-term stability — with a financial penalty big enough to scare them into staying put.

How Portable Mortgages Could Ease the Housing Shortage and the Affordability Crunch

Let’s zoom out from one family and look at the whole system.

Right now, the housing market has two big problems that show up in your life as the same thing: you can’t find anything you can afford.

Underneath that are two different issues:

1. Not enough homes for sale.
2. Homes that do come on the market are priced and financed in a way that makes the payment brutal.

Portable mortgages don’t build a single new house. But they can unclog the system we already have in ways that matter.

1. Portability unlocks “missing” inventory

A big chunk of today’s housing shortage isn’t pure construction. It’s circulation.

Think about all the owners who would normally move in a healthier market:

• Young families trading up from starter condos and small houses
• Empty nesters who’d rather not heat and cool a four-bedroom forever
• People who changed jobs and should have moved closer years ago

Those moves don’t just help them. They create a chain:

• A move-up buyer leaves behind a starter home.
• That starter home becomes a first-time buyer’s entry point.
• The starter buyer moves out of a rental, freeing up a unit for the next household down the line.

When people are rate-locked, that whole chain never happens.

Portable mortgages don’t magically add square footage to the country. But they turn stuck households back into sellers:

• More “normal” listings show up, not just death, divorce, and distress.
• Starter homes actually cycle back to the market instead of being held forever or only sold when someone absolutely has to move.

More circulation doesn’t solve the construction deficit, but it raises the number of for-sale options without waiting a decade for the zoning fights to end.

2. Portability softens the payment shock that kills deals

The affordability crisis isn’t just about home prices. It’s about the monthly payment that results when you mix high prices with high rates.

Right now, the standard U.S. rule is:

Move house = torch your old 3% loan and start over at 6%+.

That’s what turns a $400,000 house from “tight but doable” into “this will eat our entire raise and then some.”

When you introduce portability:

• The price of the new house might still be high,
• But part of the financing is anchored in the low rate you already earned,
• So the payment increase is smaller and more people can actually follow through on their decision to move.

For buyers on the other side of that transaction, more sellers showing up with realistic asking prices plus less desperate bidding is its own form of affordability:

• Fewer all-cash, bid-20%-over-list, waive-every-contingency wars
• More scenarios where a solid, middle-class buyer with financing actually has a shot

No, portable mortgages don’t chop 20% off home prices nationwide. But they pull some of the panic and scarcity out of the equation, which is exactly what’s been inflating the “this feels impossible” part of the affordability crisis.

3. First-time buyers benefit when move-up buyers can actually move

On the surface, portability looks like a perk for existing homeowners only. But renters trying to buy their first place have skin in this game, too.

Right now:

• A lot of owners who would usually move up into bigger homes are staying put because of rate lock.
• That means fewer starter homes ever hit the market.
• The starter homes that do hit the market are competing with investors and institutional buyers who can pay cash and close fast.

When you let move-up buyers take their rates with them:

• More of those starter homes actually get listed.
• More first-time buyers see something other than “fixer-upper next to a highway” at their price point.
• At the margin, investors face a bit more competition from families instead of the other way around.

You can’t complain about the lack of starter homes while also locking current owners into them forever.

4. Portability helps people move where the math works

In theory, one way middle-class households cope with high housing costs is moving to a more affordable area.

In practice, if you’re sitting on a 3% mortgage in an expensive city, this is the trap:

You can’t afford to stay.
But you also can’t afford to leave — because leaving means dumping your 3% rate and taking a 6%+ loan somewhere else.

Portable mortgages make “move to where the numbers work better” a real option again:

• You can relocate to a lower-cost region or closer to work
• Without taking a full-market-rate hit on your entire balance

That’s how you get real affordability gains: not just from stopping the worst-case payment shock, but from letting households actually execute the moves that make long-term financial sense.

Quick Glossary: Rate Locks and Assumable Loans

Let’s translate two pieces of mortgage jargon into plain English.

What “Rate Lock” Really Means

When you take a 30-year fixed mortgage at, say, 3.25%, you lock in that rate for the life of the loan:

• Your principal and interest don’t change just because market rates jump to 6–7%.
• The bank can’t randomly hike your rate.

That’s the good side.

The bad side?

• The minute you sell your house or refinance into a different loan, you lose that 3.25%.
• If current rates are higher, your next mortgage could be hundreds of dollars more each month — even if the new house is roughly the same.

So rate lock protects you inside your current house…
…but it also tends to lock you inside your current house.

What an “Assumable Mortgage” Is

An assumable mortgage lets a buyer take over the seller’s existing loan:

• Same rate, same remaining balance, same basic structure.
• Common with certain FHA and VA loans, much less so with conventional loans.

When it works, it’s a big win for the buyer:

• If the seller has a 3.5% loan and today’s rate is 6%+,
• The buyer can “step into” that cheaper rate instead of starting new at 6%+.

But:

• The buyer still has to qualify on income, credit, and debt.
• If the home is worth more than the remaining loan balance, the buyer needs cash or a second loan to cover the difference.
• Many loans simply aren’t assumable.

Assumable mortgages are like a one-time handoff tied to a specific house.
Portable mortgages would let you take your rate with you when you move, no handoff required.

Other Countries Already Let People Do This

Here’s the wild part: portable mortgages aren’t some sci-fi concept from a think tank. Other countries are already using versions of them.

Canada: “Porting” as a Normal Feature

In Canada, “porting” your mortgage is a standard option, not a weird edge case.

When homeowners sell one property and buy another, they can often:

• Transfer their existing mortgage — including the rate and remaining term — to the new property,
• As long as they stay with the same lender and move within a set window (often 30–120 days).

If the new home is more expensive:

• The old balance moves over at the old rate.
• The extra money is borrowed at the current rate.
• Lenders may blend the two into one payment.

This setup helps Canadian borrowers avoid breaking their mortgages early, which can trigger big penalties there, and it lets them keep their lower rate.

In other words: Canadian homeowners are being allowed to do what American homeowners are told is “too complicated.”

United Kingdom: Portability in a Shorter-Term World

The U.K. doesn’t revolve around the 30-year fixed. Most borrowers:

• Lock in a rate for 2–5 years,
• Then remortgage or move to a new product.

Within that system, portability is also common:

• You can transfer your existing deal to a new property when you move,
• Subject to fresh affordability checks.

Need more money for the new home?

• The original chunk stays at the old rate.
• The top-up comes at the new rate.
• Lenders often combine them into one monthly payment.

Again, this is treated as a customer retention feature, not a radical experiment.

Australia and Others

Countries like Australia also offer forms of mortgage portability. The details differ — more variable-rate loans, different regulations — but the core idea holds:

The mortgage is tied more to the borrower than to a single address.

You’re allowed to ask, “Can I take my deal with me?”
And the answer isn’t, “Absolutely not, nice try.”

The bottom line: portability is not impossible. It’s a choice.

What the U.S. Could Learn

The U.S. mortgage system is different, no question:

• We lean heavily on the 30-year fixed with no prepayment penalties — something many countries don’t offer.
• We securitize most mortgages into mortgage-backed securities, which makes product design more rigid.

But the existence of portability in Canada, the U.K., and Australia proves something important:

This isn’t about physics. It’s about priorities.

A U.S. version wouldn’t copy-paste their models. It would need to handle:

• Longer fixed terms,
• The way investors get paid when a loan is ported instead of paid off,
• The role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in setting rules.

But the principle is simple:
If you did the hard work to qualify, bought responsibly, and paid on time, you shouldn’t be forced to torch your 3% mortgage just to move across town.

So the real question for policymakers and lenders is not, “Can we do this?”
It’s: “Why haven’t we?”

What You Can Actually Do Right Now

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you can’t walk into your bank tomorrow and pick “portable mortgage” off a menu. Not yet.

But that doesn’t mean you’re powerless. You still make real choices.

1. Stop Letting Fear Do the Math

A lot of families are making decisions based on vibes:

• “If we move, our payment will double.”
• “There’s no way we can afford anything else.”

Maybe that’s true. Maybe it isn’t. You won’t know until you run the numbers:

• Target price range for the next home
• Current interest rates for your credit profile
• Property taxes and insurance in the new area
• How much equity you actually have to roll into a down payment

Sometimes the math will say, “Not yet.”
Sometimes it will say, “This is painful but doable,” or, “This works if we tighten up other parts of the budget.”

You don’t owe your future to the story your fear is telling.

2. Think Sideways, Not Just Upward

We’ve been sold one version of the American housing story:
Every move is bigger, better, and more expensive.

But your best move might be sideways:

• Closer to work, so you buy back time and gas money.
• Smaller house, better schools.
• Less space, more support system (grandparents nearby, friends you trust).
• Cheaper home that frees up cash to invest, pay off debt, or build your business.

Housing is shelter first, status symbol second. There’s no wealth in a house that looks good on Instagram but wrecks your cash flow.

3. If You’re Staying Put, Make It Strategic

If you truly are rate-locked for now, then own that decision and optimize around it.

• Make targeted improvements that improve how you live, not just how your house looks online.
• Be very careful turning equity into cash. A HELOC or cash-out refinance can be a tool — or a trap.

If you tap equity:

• Know the interest rate and whether it can change.
• Understand the payment schedule.
• Have a plan to pay it down faster than the bank’s slowest option.

The goal is not to sit on equity like a dragon while your life doesn’t fit your house.
The goal is to use what you’ve built deliberately, without blowing up your future.

4. Watch for Policy Experiments and New Products

If — or when — portable mortgages or “rate-preserving” products start getting tested in the U.S., you’ll likely hear about them from:

• Major lenders and mortgage aggregators
• Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac announcements
• Consumer-finance and housing news

When that happens:

• Ask pointed questions at your bank or credit union.
• Compare any new offers the same way you would a traditional mortgage: rate, fees, flexibility, fine print.

You don’t have to be the guinea pig. But you also don’t have to be the last one to realize the rules changed.

The Bottom Line: Stop Punishing People for Moving

Middle-class Americans are constantly told to be flexible and mobile:

• “Go where the jobs are.”
• “Move to the right school district.”
• “Relocate for opportunity.”

But in this rate environment, the fine print reads:

“You can chase opportunity — as long as you’re willing to light your 3% mortgage on fire and start over at 6%+.”

That’s not a serious mobility policy. That’s a loyalty penalty for doing the “right” things at the “wrong” time.

Portable mortgages won’t fix everything that’s broken in housing:

• They won’t build new starter homes.
• They won’t fix zoning.
• They won’t stop institutional buyers from hoovering up inventory.

But they would fix one very specific, very important problem:

• They would unlock people, not just properties.
• They would thaw a frozen market without crashing it.
• They would give the middle class something it does not have enough of right now: options.

At the end of the day, a mortgage should be a tool that helps you live your life — change jobs, move closer to family, right-size your home as your needs change.

It was never meant to be a shackle that keeps you stuck where you are, just so the system can keep writing new loans at higher rates.