Assumable Mortgages Are Making a Comeback in a High-Rate Market - The New York Times

Assumable mortgages — or low-rate mortgages that home buyers can take over from home sellers — are making a comeback. The process can be challenging. 0:01 -10:33 10 minutes 33 seconds remaining By Tara Siegel Bernard Home prices were already high when Ellen Harper, a software architect living in Atlanta, started searching for a house in 2021. But she couldn’t have anticipated the quick surge in interest rates the next year, and, even with a large down payment, the new math made her uneasy. This year, however, she stumbled upon what felt like a portal to the not-so-distant past: listings of thousands of homes that come with a low-rate mortgage, which can be transferred from the existing homeowner to a new home buyer, known as an assumable mortgage. Ms. Harper, who is in her 50s, managed to snag one of these homes, closing two weeks ago on a four-bedroom brick colonial in Fairburn, Ga., with a $1,400 monthly payment. It’s an amount she’ll be able to comfortably afford into retirement tha

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