When the Curry family bought its first home in 2019, it was big enough for the small family.

The 1,067-square-foot Rancho Cordova, California, home provided enough space for Anna and Isaak Curry, their infant son, Kylan, and their dog, Echo.

In 2020, the couple took advantage of ultra-low mortgage rates and refinanced, scoring a 2.25% rate. Now, the couple has a second child, a second dog and want the option to have another child. They’re ready to move to a bigger home, closer to their children’s school, but don’t want to lose their low rate. So they stay put.

“How can you let go of 2.25%?” said Anna Curry, who is also a Sacramento Realtor and broker. “It’s like a treasure. You don’t get that ever again in your lifetime.”

The Currys both work from home, using their 1-year-old daughter Lotus’ bedroom as a shared office with two desks, Anna said. Sometimes Isaak has to keep working after Lotus’ bedtime, so Anna has to put her to sleep in the couple’s bed, then wake her up to move her later.

The space got even smaller in 2023, when Anna Curry’s parents, grandparents and brother all fled Ukraine and moved in with the family temporarily. They have since moved out, but the grandparents will likely move back in at some point, Anna Curry said.

While they wait for rates to decrease, the couple plans to rent a house in El Dorado County and rent out their Rancho Cordova home — keeping their three-bedroom, two-bathroom starter home off the market for the foreseeable future.

Thousands of Sacramento homeowners are staying put instead of selling their homes because they don’t want to give up their great mortgage rates, a Sacramento Bee analysis found.

The average mortgage interest rate was about 7% in January. It was about 3% at this point in 2021. The difference is tangible. A 30-year $400,000 loan at 3% interest will cost about $1,700 a month in principal and interest payments. At 7% interest, that same loan will cost about $2,700 a month.

The rates are impacting the local market. There were about 22,500 homes sold in the Sacramento region last year, down from about 40,000 sales in 2021, according to Zillow.

Sacramento’s 43% drop in sales from 2021 to 2024 was slightly less severe than some other parts of California but higher than the 38% national average for the time frame.

Many buyers are waiting for rates to drop as low as they did during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that’s not likely to happen, said Mike Frank, a Sacramento mortgage lender.

“That’s kind of a once in a generation kind of thing,” Frank said. “Now with everyone tightening their belts, eggs cost too much, you don’t even want to put gas in your car, do you really want to go shopping for a house?”

As a result, many people who bought or refinanced during 2021 are now just redoing a bathroom or kitchen to make their current space more comfortable, Frank said.

The situation is often causing people to rent for much longer than they wanted to.

“They’re giving up on even the idea of buying a house one day,” Anna Curry said.

But renting is expensive too. The typical apartment in the four-county Sacramento region rented for $1,748. That’s higher than Chicago and Portland, Oregon. Sacramento renters are increasingly squeezing into studio apartments.

Frank expects the holding pattern to break, though he’s not sure when. He thinks the rates will come down slightly in 2025, but not enough to drastically change the situation.

“The reasons people move are never going to change,” Frank said. “I think we are slowly on the path back to normal but we aren’t there yet.”