How to Get Listings When Sellers Are Rate-Locked (2026)

If every listing conversation ends with "we'd love to move, but we're not giving up our rate," stop arguing. You won't win. Three out of four mortgaged owners have a rate under 6 percent, and about half say they won't sell until rates are under 5 (Clever, April 2026). So go find the owners who have to move anyway: people retiring, relocating, or splitting up. Text your past buyers two numbers with no pitch: their rate, and what their house is worth above what they paid. For the ones who ask where they'd go, show them the math on renting the house out, and have their lender check whether the loan is assumable. The rate is on the loan, not the house.

By D.J. Paris, president of sales and marketing at Kale Realty and host of the Keeping It Real Podcast. The fix is below. If you want to talk it through, there's a 10-minute option right after it.

The real problem: the rate is on the loan, not on the house

Owners say "we have a great rate." They never say "we have a great loan." The rate has quietly become a property of the home in their mind, like a finished basement, and giving up the house feels like giving up the rate.

That's not how any of it works, but it's how it feels, and feelings are what's stopping your listing. You're not going to argue anyone out of this. The survey numbers up top say most owners feel this way. That's a lot of people with the same answer ready before you've finished your sentence.

The truer read is that "I won't sell until rates are under 5" is a statement about preference, not about capability. Preference bends when life moves. A retirement, a relocation, a divorce, a job three states away, a house that stopped fitting. Those people sell at any rate, because the rate was never the reason they were moving.

And there's a second group. Owners who have never seen their own two numbers next to each other. They know their rate down to the decimal, because it's the thing they brag about. They have no idea what their house is worth above what they paid. Finding out means talking to an agent, and they assume that starts a sales process. You can hand them that number in a text with no pitch attached. Some of them will do something with it.

Move 1: chase the people who outgrew the house, not the rate

Two lists, and you can build both in an afternoon.

First list. Pull every client who bought a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom between 2019 and 2021. That window is deliberate. Those buyers have held long enough to have real equity. They also bought at the small end, and that's the size people outgrow fastest.

Second list comes from your sphere, and you get it by asking the plain version out loud:

Who do you know who's retiring, relocating, or splitting up? The sphere question that finds real sellers

Those three words cover the moves that happen regardless of interest rates. A retirement has a date on it. A relocation has a start date. A separation has lawyers and a timeline. None of those people are checking rate headlines before they decide, because the decision was made for them.

One rule. Asking who's moving is fine. What you never do is decide who to call, what to show, or how to describe a neighborhood based on who someone is: age, family, marital status, or any other protected trait. Ask about the move, not the person.

Move 2: two numbers, no pitch

This is the move you'll run on that 2019-to-2021 list, and it's the one that produces listings from people who told you last year they'd never sell.

Nobody's telling you to sell. I want to show you two numbers so you can decide with facts. Your rate is [X]. Your house is worth about $[Y] more than you paid. The two-numbers text

"Nobody's telling you to sell" is why they keep reading. Every other agent message they get is a version of now is a great time to list. This one takes that off the table first. It's the only message in their inbox they don't have to defend against.

The first number, their rate, you include because it proves you're not pretending the rate doesn't matter. You said it first. You named the thing they were going to say. Now they don't have to.

The second number is the news. They've never heard it out loud. Maybe they've seen a Zestimate they don't trust, or a neighbor's sale price they've half-remembered wrong. A number from an agent who pulled real comps, with no ask attached, is new information about their own life.

Pull that number properly. Real sold comps out of your MLS, close in geography and close in time, and be conservative rather than optimistic. An inflated number gets you a listing appointment and then a hard conversation on pricing, which costs you more than the appointment was worth. Say "about" and mean it.

Most replies won't be "list it." They'll be questions, and questions are the point. The common one is some version of "yeah, but where would we go," which is exactly the door to Move 3.

Move 3: make the low rate work for them

When the reply is "but we'd lose our rate," you have two real options to put in front of them, and neither one is a sales pitch.

Option one. They keep the house and rent it out, and buy the next one. Show them the math. What the current place would rent for, what the payment is, what the next house would cost. The low rate on that loan is the best rental financing they will ever get. The thing they were afraid to lose becomes the reason the rental works.

Be honest about what you don't know here. Whether their lender allows the property to become a rental is a lender question. So is what it does to qualifying for the next loan. How any of it lands on their taxes is a question for their accountant, not for you and not for me. Show the math, say plainly that the lender and the CPA have to sign off, and let them decide. Keeping a property and buying another is a bigger financial decision than a move, and pretending otherwise is how agents lose clients.

Option two. Ask whether the loan is FHA or VA, then have your client ask their lender one question: is this loan assumable? Some FHA and VA loans can be, which means a buyer takes over the seller's loan and the seller's rate.

I'm not going to tell you how an assumption works, what it requires, or how long it takes. Those rules are lender-specific and servicer-specific, and they change. The answer comes from the lender and the servicer in writing. If it's a VA loan, have your seller also ask what an assumption does to their VA entitlement. Your job is to ask the question.

If the answer comes back yes, understand what just happened. The rate your seller was clinging to is now the single strongest line in the listing. Everyone is talking about payments. A listing that can offer a buyer a below-market rate isn't competing with the other units in the building. That turns their "problem" into the best marketing asset on the block.

One more guardrail. How you advertise an assumable loan is regulated, and what you're allowed to claim about financing in marketing is not up to you. Run the listing language past your managing broker before it goes live, and let the lender confirm the facts you're putting in it.

Do this today

Stop waiting for the rate to change your business

The rate-locked seller is real. It's also the easiest excuse this market has handed agents.

People are still retiring, relocating, and splitting up, and your closed files are full of owners who've never heard what their house is worth. That's not a market problem. That's a text you haven't sent.

Who this works for, and who should read something else

Frequently asked questions

Still stuck on this one? Book 10 minutes with D.J. I'll call you, and I won't bring up Kale unless you do.