Your Current Mortgage Has a Good Rate. Is Giving It Up Losing Money? The Comparison That Actually Helps

The rate is the percentage of interest the lender charges you for lending you the money. It counts for a lot in your payment. But your payment is not the only thing it costs to live where you live.

The real cost of a house adds up several things:

• The mortgage payment.
• The homeowners insurance.
• The property taxes.
• The upkeep and the repairs that keep coming up.
• What it costs you not to have the space you need.
• What you are paying to keep putting it off.

That last one is the part almost nobody counts. It can be the long commute, a bedroom that is no longer enough, a roof or an air conditioner that will need replacing soon, or the strain of living on top of each other. All of that costs something, even if it never shows up on a statement.

The useful question is not "will my new rate be higher than my current one?" The useful question is this: what does it cost me to live here, all of it together, and what would it cost me to live in the other house, all of it together?

And to answer it, a news headline does not help, and neither does the number a relative got. What helps is the real number for the next house, with your papers, worked out by a lender.

The comparison may tell you that staying makes sense. That is also a good result, because you decided with numbers and not with fear. And it may tell you the difference is smaller than you imagined, or bigger. I do not know until we look at your case, with your papers and the details of the house you are interested in.

I am not going to tell you rates will go down. I am not going to tell you they will go up either. I do not know, and it is not worth deciding on your house based on a prediction nobody can guarantee.

I am also not going to give you a rate in this article. I am a real estate agent, not a lender. Rates and payments come from the lender, with your documents in hand, the day you ask for them.

Before you decide, I connect you with a lender to get the real number for the next house. Then we put that number next to the cost of staying and the sale of your current house, in a single plan. That way the decision is math, not fear.

And if the number says it does not make sense yet, you come away with a list of what can be moved and by when. That is also a plan. What matters is that you see the number before you let go of anything, and not after you have signed the sale.

That giving up a good rate costs something, but it is not the only thing that costs. The full math includes what you pay for staying, and that one usually gets left out.

I tell you this because I have seen fear of one figure last for years, while the full math takes one conversation.

What is the real number for the next house, with your papers?

Send me on WhatsApp what you pay today on your house and what kind of house you are thinking about, and I will tell you how we build the comparison with a lender. No commitment, nothing to sign.

I am Veronica Yeary, a REALTOR in Dallas-Fort Worth. I sell your home and find the next one with a single plan, and the whole transaction is with me, start to finish, in Spanish or English.

469-441-8890 · call, text or WhatsApp · veronica@veronicayeary.com