The U.S. housing market isn’t breaking. It isn’t rebounding. It’s frozen — held in place over the last 3 years by the quiet force of lower mortgage rates, specifically those that originated before the Biden presidential era.
Tens of millions of homeowners remain locked into loans carrying interest rates below 4%, a remnant of the pandemic refinancing boom. Replacing those mortgages today would mean rates above 6% and double-digit jumps in monthly payments. For most households, the math doesn’t work. They stay put.
Repeated across the…
