If a chunk of your past clients and sphere contacts have gone quiet about moving, new mortgage data gives you a concrete reason why, and a way to talk about it that doesn't rely on guesswork.
Realtor.com's second-quarter 2026 mortgage data report, covered by HousingWire on October 22, 2026, found that mortgages originated between July 2019 and June 2022 now make up 42.8% of all outstanding loans, up from 40.8% in the prior quarter. That three-year window lines up almost exactly with the lowest mortgage rates in modern history, and it means a growing share of the homeowners in your database are sitting on something they are reluctant to give up.
The report, drawing on Federal Housing Finance Agency data, breaks the numbers down further. About 19.2% of outstanding mortgages carry a rate below 3%. Another 29.9% sit between 3% and 4%, and 16.5% fall between 4% and 5%. Add those together and 65.6% of all outstanding mortgages carry a rate under 5%, according to the report. Only 34.5% are at 5% or higher, split between 12% in the 5% to 6% range and 22.5% above 6%.
Meanwhile, mortgages originated since July 2022, when rates began climbing from their pandemic lows, account for just 27.8% of outstanding loans. In plain terms, newer, higher-rate borrowers are still a minority of the market, while the pandemic-era refinance and purchase wave keeps aging in place.
Hannah Jones, senior economist at Realtor.com, put it directly in the report: "A mortgage rate below 3% was an extraordinary exception, not a new normal. In data going back to 1971, rates fell below that mark only during the pandemic-era window and homeowners are still making decisions around those unusually low rates today." That is the sentence worth repeating to a seller lead who tells you they are "just not ready" to list.
For your listing conversations, this data does two things. First, it gives you a way to normalize the hesitation instead of treating it as a brush-off. A homeowner who bought or refinanced in 2020 or 2021 is not being difficult when they balk at trading a sub-4% rate for whatever is available today. They are responding rationally to a real cost, and acknowledging that up front tends to build more trust than pushing past it.
Second, it gives you a reason to ask a different question than "are you ready to sell." Jones noted that life events such as having kids, changing jobs, or going through a divorce still prompt people to move regardless of their rate. Your job in that first conversation is less about convincing someone to give up a low rate and more about finding out whether a life change has already made the decision for them, and then running the real math on what moving actually costs them at today's rate versus what staying costs them in space, commute, or a job change they're already navigating.
It is also worth setting expectations with buyer clients who are frustrated by thin inventory in certain price bands. The lock-in effect is a big part of why: owners with the lowest rates have the least financial incentive to list, so supply in the segments those owners occupy stays tighter than the headline inventory numbers suggest. Pointing a frustrated buyer to this data can reset blame away from "the market is broken" and toward a specific, explainable dynamic they can plan around.
None of this means rates are about to move in a direction that unlocks this group, and nothing here should be read as a prediction about where rates go next. What it does mean is that you now have a sourced, current number to use instead of an anecdote the next time a past client says they're staying put. Lead with the data, not the pitch, and let the conversation about their actual next move follow from there.
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