Are Reluctant Home Sellers Too Attached to Their Low Rates?

You’ve heard of golden handcuffs. That’s when a company compensates you generously to discourage you from taking a job elsewhere.

Some of us restrain ourselves with another type of golden handcuffs: low mortgage rates. Economists dub the phenomenon the “rate lock-in effect.” They say rate lock-in happens when we lash ourselves to the low mortgage rates we got when we bought or refinanced our homes.

So we stay put, even when we long to move up, downsize or relocate.