Name: How to Get a 3% Mortgage Rate in a 7% World
Uploaded: 2023-09-25T20:12:00Z
Duration: 6 min 18 s
Description: Assumable loans allow home sellers to transfer the more attractive rate they secured in the past to buyers. Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Eisen joins host J.R. Whalen to explain how they work, as well as the pros and cons. Illustration: Alexandra Citrin-Safadi; Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

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Sustainable Investing and the Wealth Transfer

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Assumable loans allow home sellers to transfer the more attractive rate they secured in the past to buyers. Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Eisen joins host J.R. Whalen to explain how they work, as well as the pros and cons. Illustration: Alexandra Citrin-Safadi; Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

https://m.wsj.net/video/20230925/5c5882b2-fa9e-4ae8-966b-001d38ecb977/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

How to Get a 3% Mortgage Rate in a 7% World

J.R.: Here's Your Money Briefing from Monday, September 25th. I'm J.R. Whalen for the Wall Street Journal. Homeowners reluctant to move, because current mortgage rates are much higher than when they bought their home may be able to benefit from that lower rate after all. It's called an assumable loan and Wall Street Journal banking reporter Ben Eisen joins me to discuss. So Ben, the average 30-year mortgage has been rising steadily for some time now. It's currently more than 7%. What kind of an effect has that had on the housing market?

Ben: When you look at the housing market these days, there really just aren't a lot of transactions. The number of transactions is down sharply from a couple years ago when rates are low. And what's happening is you have buyers who are reluctant to buy. because when mortgage rates went up so much it just added so much to the monthly cost of buying a home. And then you have sellers who are also reluctant to sell. People who bought when rates are low they wanna keep those low rates. And giving those up might mean buying a home and taking out a new mortgage at a higher rate. So, it really just sort of slows down all of the turnover that you've seen in the housing market and that's really kind of had a detrimental effect.

J.R.: So, how do these assumable loans work? How can home buyers take advantage of rates say in the 3% range, which we haven't seen for several years?

Ben: So, assumable loans are a kind of completely different transaction than you might think about when taking out a new loan to buy a house. Instead of the seller taking money and using that to pay off their mortgage and the buyer taking out a new mortgage to buy the house, you actually just have one mortgage. It's the seller basically, transferring their own mortgage to the buyer. And when they do that, the buyer keeps the rate that the seller had. So, you know, if it was 3% or 2.5%, they keep that and the buyer ends up paying whatever the difference is between the sale price and the mortgage that's been transferred.

J.R.: Now, these types of loans they aren't new, but they seem like they would be beneficial to both the buyer and the seller. So, what do so few people know about them?

Ben: Just to be clear about what an assumable loan is, it's a feature of certain types of loans and these are generally loans that are part of government programs. If you think about a VA loan or an FHA loan, these come with assumable features. Now, that only makes up about a fifth of all mortgages, but also when you think about what it takes to actually transfer it there can be a lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through and there are a lot of reasons why it might not work.

J.R.: So, what does it take to transfer these loans?

Ben: So what you have to do is you have to work with the actual lender of the money to the seller and you have to process the assumption itself, which means underwriting the buyer and making sure they qualify to assume the loan of the seller. And there can be paperwork, but it can be sort of a sluggish process.

J.R.: In your story, you spotlight a startup called Roam. What role does it aim to play here?

Ben: So, Roam is trying to kind of of smooth out the bumps in all of this. One, is actually kind of matching up buyers and sellers by having a database of assumable loans that buyers can browse and look for and basically putting that front and center in the actual home search process. But they're also trying to help get the assumptions done, which might mean working with the lender and kind of badgering them until they get it done. Just taking care of all of the procedural work of it.

J.R.: Is there a cost or an extra fee for going down this road?

Ben: So the startup that, you know, is aiming to sort of popularize this and they charge a fee of 1% of the actual sale price of the home that's sort of their cut for making this all happen.

J.R.: So, they try to get involved and cut down on some of the legwork that might discourage a buyer or seller from getting involved?

Ben: Yeah, they basically do that. And another aspect of all of this is that, if you say you buy the house for $500,000, but the mortgage you're assuming only has $300,000 balance on it, that's $200,000 that you have to come up with, which would be a pretty big down payment if you are the buyer. Now, if you don't have the cash, what a lot of people need to do is take out a second loan at a market interest rate and use that to help complete the process. So, that adds another hurdle there. Roam isn't a lender, but they kind of aim to help recommend lenders and help people understand that process too.

J.R.: Now, why are lenders cool to this idea of putting assumable loans on the table? Wouldn't it increase the likelihood of a sale?

Ben: So, the sale goes through, but the lender wouldn't actually be making a new loan. They would basically, be taking a loan that already existed and transferring it to a new buyer. And when you actually process an assumption, you don't necessarily make as much money as you would make originating a new loan. You also might not make enough money to cover the cost of doing it, because it's a lot of work and you're only getting paid the few hundred dollars to do it. So, lenders are sort of cool to the idea. They'll process the assumptions and so far there just haven't been that many to process. But you know, if this became sort of a major effort, it might be a kind of substantially eat into their business.

J.R.: Not every seller who goes down this road, actually follows through with the assumable loans. Why is that?

Ben: Some people might look into this and think that it sounds great, but they eventually just sort of decide that it's not for them based on the work that would be needed or not being able to assume the specific loan. There's a lot of just bumps along the way that can cause people to maybe not follow through with it. It can be a difficult effort, but just in talking with homeowners who have made it happen if it does work out, if sort of the stars align for something like this, it really can save a lot of money. The difference between buying a home with a 3% mortgage versus a 7% mortgage is is not insignificant. So, it really is something that can be sort of game changing for people.

J.R.: That's Wall Street Journal banking reporter Ben Eisen. And that's it for Your Money Briefing. Today's show is produced by Ariana Aspuru with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm J.R. Whalen for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.

WSJ's Your Money Briefing podcast is your personal-finance and career checklist. Finance reporters and experts break down complicated money questions every weekday to help you make better decisions about managing your money. 