Did you buy your house during the pandemic years? Congratulations, there's a good chance you have a dirt cheap mortgage rate. Perhaps below 3% — about half of today's average for a 30-year fixed mortgage.
For would-be buyers who missed that golden window, it can feel like they lost their opportunity to afford a house.
But it turns out there is a way to turn back the housing market clock: It's called an assumable mortgage. This kind of transfer lets the homebuyer take over the seller's mortgage, and with it, their old — much lower — mortgage rate. The buyer gets a more affordable home. The seller gets a marketing point that could lead to more offers, and perhaps even a higher selling price. And the tight housing market gets a little looser, thanks to the boost in home sales.
About 6 million homes in the U.S. have both an assumable mortgage and an interest rate below 5%, according to an estimate by Assume List, which helps buyers find these homes for sale and navigate the buying process.
But there are some caveats. First, not all mortgages qualify for this kind of transfer — and even when they do, buyers and sellers don't always realize it. Second, the process can be time-intensive and require a substantial cash down payment.
Sellers rarely realize they have an assumable mortgage
While most conventional mortgages are not assumable, government-backed mortgages are. That includes VA loans, or those granted through the Department of Veterans Affairs, meaning they are often linked to homes owned by vets. FHA loans, from the Federal Housing Administration, which often go to first-time home buyers without a ton of cash, can also be transferred. About 18% of new mortgages issued in 2020 were VA and FHA loans.
But few of those homeowners realize they have the option to transfer the mortgage — and neither do their potential buyers.
"People just weren't aware there was an opportunity for them to save literally tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars," says Jerry Devlin, the founder of Assume Loans, a new kind of real estate company that helps buyers and sellers make these transfers.
Companies like his have popped up to work on assumable mortgages. Some offer their own websites where buyers can search for home listings that offer assumable mortgages, like competitor Roam, which uses AI to identify them.
A recent search on Roam of homes in Houston, Texas, showed 433 listings with an assumable mortgage and a rate of 3% or lower. A search on Zillow, which relies on the seller self-reporting if the mortgage can be transferred, revealed only three.
"Oftentimes, the first time that a seller hears that they have an assumable mortgage is from a buyer with Roam," says Raunaq Singh, Roam's founder and CEO.
Mortgage companies have little reason to make the process easy
Despite the savings, this kind of mortgage transfer is rare. One of the biggest challenges is how long the process can drag on.
By law, mortgage servicer companies have 45 days to evaluate the buyer's credit to approve the transfer. The reality is it can take months, says Craig O'Boyle, president of Assumption Solutions, another company that helps buyers and sellers transfer mortgages.
The FHA allows servicers to charge up to $1,800 in fees, but these companies can make much more money by starting a new loan at today's higher rate rather than transferring an older one at a lower rate, says O'Boyle.
"If a lender can get rid of a 2.5% rate and lend money out at 6.5%, I think they'd prefer to do that," he says.
In return for a fee, companies like Assumption Solutions help speed up that process, for example by pressing the servicer to comply with that 45-day requirement.
Brendan Burroughs, a food service driver, turned to Assume Loans after getting stuck trying to assume a mortgage for a Florida four-bedroom with a 2.5% rate. He said a loan officer from his mortgage company, Mr. Cooper, told him 1,500 people were ahead of him needing help with their mortgages, so he'd have to wait. Then he didn't hear anything from the servicer for a month.
When he complained about it in a post on Reddit, commenters said he should expect to wait months longer. But once he signed up with Assume Loans, he says, his servicer called him in three days.
"I got pushed from the spot number 1,500 to No. 1," Burroughs says.
In a statement emailed to NPR, a spokesperson for the Mr. Cooper mortgage company pushed back against Burroughs' claim that his case was moved up because of the involvement of Assume Loans. Instead, they asserted that Burroughs' transfer matched industry timelines and that working with Assume Loans meant he was "charged unnecessary fees for services homeowners can complete themselves at no cost."
Assumable mortgages often require a six-figure down payment
The other big challenge with transferring a mortgage is that home prices have shot up 54% since January 2020. So an original mortgage made when housing was cheaper is no longer going to cover the price of the same house today.
It's up to the buyer to make up the difference. And that can mean a huge down payment.
Imagine a house that sold for $500,000 in 2021 and is selling for $700,000 today. That alone is a $200,000 difference.
And that's not even factoring in how much of the mortgage has already been paid off through the current owner's monthly payments and their own original down payment. That can produce an even bigger gap between the value of the existing mortgage and what the new buyer has to pay.
The buyer could get a secondary loan, but those are difficult to come by, especially for such a large figure. And they often have high interest rates. Instead, the buyer often covers this gap with a cash down payment.
That's a stretch for many buyers, says Laurie Goodman, founder of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute. If the idea is to free up starter homes for young families, she says, they are "the last people that can come up with an extra $200,000 in cash."
Burroughs was lucky. He needed a $105,000 down payment for the Florida home he wanted. But he was able to cover it due to some early investments in Tesla and Nvidia stock.
Today, his mortgage rate is significantly lower than that of his co-worker, who pays $3,200 a month for a similar-model home. "My mortgage is literally half that," Burroughs says.
Without the assumable mortgage, Burroughs says, he would likely still be living with his in-laws, and still surfing for a home on Zillow.
A way to unlock the housing market
First-time buyers face a tight housing market. Many starter homeowners are unwilling to sell and move on to bigger properties, even if their families have outgrown their homes, because they would lose their low mortgage rate. The U.S. housing turnover rate is near a 25-year low.
In a recent paper, the Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning think tank, argues that making more conventional mortgages assumable will help loosen the housing market gridlock.
It also argues for making "portable" mortgages an option, in which a seller can take their existing mortgage and its low rate with them to their new home.
"Long term, the cause of housing unaffordability in the United States is that we don't have enough housing supply. But you can't snap your fingers and build 3 million new homes overnight," says Bharat Ramamurti, a co-author on the paper and the former deputy director of the White House National Economic Council under the Biden administration. "This type of policy gives you a chance of addressing it in the short term."
In November, Federal Home Financing Agency Director Bill Pulte posted on X that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which guarantee mortgages and package them for investors, were looking at doing assumable or portable mortgages.
But Goodman, of the Urban Institute, doesn't think assumable mortgages can do much to unlock the housing market. The down payment is just too big of a barrier, especially for first-time homebuyers, she thinks.
"You can get a good deal if you have a lot of cash to put down," Goodman says. "The problem is that there aren't a lot of people who can do that."
Some buyers are still willing to pay up-front for a low rate
In 2025, real estate agent Charles Johnson used an assumable mortgage to buy a Minneapolis duplex he otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford. He got it for an interest rate under 3%.
But Johnson rarely tells his clients about assumable mortgages since it's not a realistic option for most of them. Not only do they need a lot of cash and patience, but buyers can't be picky, because so few homes qualify.
"It'd be like a bait and switch," Johnson said. "I'm a huge advocate for it, but it's so narrow. I just don't want to manipulate people."
But Michael Lorino, founder and CEO of Assume List, said plenty of buyers are willing to go for it anyway. He said he's personally helped clients navigate about 40 assumptions over the last three years and has assisted on hundreds of other transfers. For the buyers who can make it work, it's worth the hassle for the chance to reopen that golden window of time when rates were so much lower.
"Go ask a homebuyer if they want to save money on a home purchase, right? One hundred percent of buyers want to do this," Lorino said. "There is no shortage of demand."
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