10 min read
Everyone says I would be crazy to give this rate up
Let us start by agreeing with you. Your low rate is valuable. It is real money, every single month, for as long as you hold that loan. Anyone who waves that away is not being straight with you.
And the gap is wide right now. Per Freddie Mac's weekly survey, August 6, 2026, the 30-year fixed averaged 6.69 percent, an eleven-month high. If your rate starts with a 2 or a 3, the difference feels like a wall. Economists even have a name for this: rate lock-in. Millions of homeowners are staying put mostly because of the loan attached to the house, not the house itself.
So the instinct is sound. But an instinct is not a calculation. A rate is one input. It is not the payment, it is not your equity, and it is not the cost of living in a home that no longer fits. The rest of this article is about the inputs the instinct skips.
One more thing before the math. There is no trick coming. Sometimes the honest answer is that your current setup is the best deal you will ever get, and you should keep it. I tell people that regularly. The goal here is just to make sure you decide with the full picture, not with one number.
What is staying actually costing me?
A cheap payment on the wrong house is not free. It just charges you in a different currency. You pay in space, in time, and in years of your life spent working around the house instead of living in it.
Maybe two kids share a room and it worked at ages four and six, but it does not work at ten and twelve. Maybe you work from home at the kitchen table. Maybe the commute that made sense in 2020 eats an hour a day now. Maybe there are stairs your knees, or your parents, cannot keep doing. None of that shows up on a mortgage statement. All of it is a cost.
There is also the money you spend forcing the wrong house to work. A storage unit. A basement finish. An addition. Renovation money is expensive money right now, because most people borrow it at today's rates, not at their 2021 rate. It is common to price out an addition and find that the total cost, and the payment on the loan behind it, gets uncomfortably close to what a move would cost. Except at the end, you still have the same lot, the same street, and the same commute.
So write the real ledger. On one side, the extra interest a move would cost. On the other, what staying costs you in dollars, workarounds, and time. For some families the low rate still wins, clearly. For others, it has been quietly losing for two years. You will not know until you write it down.
The move-up math: your rate is not the only thing that changed since 2020
Here is what the rate conversation always leaves out: while rates went up, so did the value of the house you already own. If you bought in Central Ohio in 2020 or earlier, you have likely been building equity from two directions at once. Prices rose sharply across the metro, and every payment you made pushed your loan balance down.
For a sense of where values sit now: per the Columbus MLS, pulled August 10, 2026, covering the previous 90 days, Dublin recorded 314 closings at a median price of $580,000, and Galloway recorded 133 closings at a median of $335,000. Different price points, same story. Central Ohio homeowners who bought years ago are often sitting on more equity than they realize.
That equity is the engine of the move-up. It becomes the down payment on the next house. A bigger down payment means a smaller loan. And a smaller loan shrinks the damage a higher rate can do, because you are paying that higher rate on fewer dollars.
Think of it this way. The rate on your next loan is worse than your current one. But the loan itself can be a much smaller share of the home's price than your first loan was. Those two forces push against each other. Which one wins depends on your specific equity, your target price, and your loan. That is math, not mood, and it takes about twenty minutes to run properly.
This is why I push people away from the question of what rate they would get, and toward the question of what loan they would actually need. The second question is where move-up deals get found.
Compare payments, not rates
Nobody pays a rate. You pay a payment. And a monthly payment has more parts than the interest rate, which is why comparing rates alone leads people to the wrong answer in both directions.
Here is what actually belongs in an honest side-by-side comparison of your current house and the next one.
Run every one of those lines for both houses. Sometimes the gap between the old payment and the new one is far smaller than the rate gap suggests, because equity shrank the loan, or PMI fell off, or the tax picture changed. Sometimes the gap is bigger than expected. Either way, now you are deciding on the real number.
And one caution about the future. You will hear that you can refinance later if rates fall. That is true, and it is a real option to keep in mind. But nobody can promise you rates will fall, or when. So run the numbers as if today's payment is the payment. If the move only works with a refinance you are hoping for, the move does not work yet.
- The loan amount itself, after your equity becomes the down payment
- Principal and interest at today's actual quoted rate, not a headline rate
- Property taxes on the new home, which vary a lot by school district in Central Ohio
- Homeowners insurance on the new home
- PMI, which may disappear entirely if your equity puts you past 20 percent down
- HOA or condo fees, if any
- What you are currently spending to work around the old house: storage, repairs on aging systems, commute costs
When staying really is the right answer
I promised honesty, so here it is: for a lot of people reading this, the answer is stay. Not stay forever. Stay for now.
Stay if the house still fits and the move is a want, not a need. A low rate on a home that works is one of the best financial positions a family can hold. You do not give that up for a slightly nicer kitchen.
Stay if the new payment would strain your monthly budget. A house that stresses your finances is a worse home than a small one that does not, no matter how good the closets are. If the comparison from the last section makes your stomach drop, that is your answer, and it is a fine answer.
Stay if your timeline is short. If there is a real chance you move again within a few years, for work or family, the costs of selling and buying twice in a short window can eat the benefit of the move. Time in the home is what makes the math work.
And stay if your income feels uncertain right now. A move-up is a commitment. You make commitments from stable ground.
If any of those describe you, waiting is not losing. Your equity does not vanish while you wait, and your low rate keeps working for you every month. When your situation changes, the math will still be here, and so will I.
The escape hatch: builders are buying rates down
Now for the part of the market most rate-locked owners have not looked at. Builders in Central Ohio want to sell homes in this rate environment, and they are spending real money to close the rate gap for buyers.
As advertised on builder sites in August 2026, incentives include first-year rates as low as 2.875 percent through 2/1 buydowns, flex cash ranging from $17,500 up to $50,000 at specific communities, and paid closing costs. Many of these offers expire monthly and get replaced with new ones.
A quick plain-English explanation of a 2/1 buydown. The builder pays money up front to lower your rate by 2 points in year one and 1 point in year two. In year three, the loan goes to its note rate, the real rate, and stays there. So a buydown is a discount on your first two years, not a permanent low rate. You should qualify for, and budget for, the year-three payment. Any lender or agent who glosses over that is not doing you a favor.
The fine print matters too. These deals are usually tied to the builder's preferred lender, they apply to specific homes or communities, and the numbers change month to month. That is not a reason to avoid them. It is a reason to compare the builder's lender against an outside quote and make the builder's offer prove itself.
Used carefully, though, these incentives can shrink the rate gap that is keeping you in place. Flex cash can also be used to buy the rate down permanently rather than for two years, which is often the smarter use of it. For move-up buyers, new construction is currently where the most negotiating room in Central Ohio lives. If you want the details, my New Construction Playbook covers how these deals work and what to push on.
My offer to you is simple
No two situations are the same. I have sat at kitchen tables where the move-up math worked beautifully, and tables where I said plainly: keep this house, keep this rate, call me in two years. Both conversations were good ones.
The number that matters is not the rate on a billboard. It is your payment, on your next house, after your equity does its work. I will run those numbers for you personally. Your equity, your likely sale price, your real payment either way, side by side on one page.
Text me, call me, or email me, whatever is easiest. I am happy to come sit at your kitchen table and walk through it. It is free, there is no obligation, and if the answer is wait, then that is the answer I will give you.
