Mike and Cathy Blackwell were eager to buy their first rental property, but with interest rates over 7% earlier this year, they were stumped on how to make the math work. Then Mike stumbled on Roam, a site where listings highlight not only home prices, but also interest rates as low as 2%.

Roam focuses on listings with assumable mortgages, which let buyers take over the seller’s loan, as well as its interest rate. “We found a home near Houston with a 2.75% interest rate that saves us around $400 per month in interest,” Mike says. “It’s now a cash-flowing rental. My wife described me as a genius to her family. I now tell everyone that if they’re looking for a house, assumable loans are the best-kept secret.”

According to Roam founder Raunaq Singh, one in three loans is transferable, a fact he uncovered while reviewing contracts as a loan officer. He believes loan takeovers could be the key to unlocking America’s unaffordable housing market.

“Sellers are stuck in their homes because most got their loans in 2020 and 2021 when rates were under 3%. Compared to today’s 6.5%, it no longer makes sense [for them] to move,” he explains. Meanwhile, “buyers facing higher rates are priced out of the market. I was looking for a home in New Jersey and experienced this firsthand. It felt suffocating.”

On Roam, buyers save around $200,000 in interest over the life of their loan, while sellers snag a 5% premium. Since launching two years ago, the site has facilitated over $500 million in sales in 17 states. “And we’re expanding quickly,” Singh adds. “New Jersey is next.” (Other real estate sites can be filtered to pinpoint listings with assumable loans.)

Zoom out: Only FHA, VA, and USDA loans are currently assumable, but the Trump administration is exploring making Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans assumable as well, along with other options to make housing more affordable, like 50-year mortgages and portable mortgages (see below). In the meantime, Singh wants people to know that there’s no need to wait.

“Our main challenge is awareness,” he says. “I expected sellers would already be promoting this, listing their homes as ‘3% mortgage available!’ But many sellers don’t even realize they have an assumable loan. Neither do their agents. That’s when I knew there was an opportunity.”

Here’s more on how to make the most of assumable loans.

Zestimates are down—but don’t panic. Zillow found that over half of home prices have dropped since last year, the most since 2012. “Homeowners may feel rattled,” acknowledged Zillow senior economic research scientist Treh Manhertz. Still, if you compare today’s price to what you paid years earlier, most come out ahead. Need a net-worth ego boost? Click here to see how much your home has gained.

Housing forecast: Sunnier days ahead? The National Association of Realtors expects a 14% jump in home sales next year due to a drop in mortgage rates. And although home prices are expected to inch up 4%, certain cities are poised to become more affordable.

🫥 Where investors draw the line: The Stessa-ResiClub Q4 survey found that nearly half of real estate investors are gearing up to buy, though they are pickier than ever. Find out what mortgage rate and cap rate make the cut.

A $10 house? A beautiful brand-new 2-bedroom, 2.5-bath house in Austin, TX, is on the market for 10 bucks. No, that’s not a typo, just a strange new sales method.

Flippers are quitting. The Fall 2025 RCN Capital Investor Sentiment Index found that 52% of fix-and-flippers have switched gears due to higher costs and pivoted toward a more profitable niche.

Cheap apartment in NYC? Impossible. At least it was, until two teen whiz kids built this website.

Want your Thanksgiving guests to get along? Home designers swear this one piece of furniture is the ultimate secret weapon for a good time.

Can you guess America’s “friendliest town”? It’s literally straight out of a Hallmark movie: Christmas in Mistletoe, about a location scout searching for a picturesque setting. See if you swoon too.

Every billionaire these days has a bunker—Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman—but what do you do with these fortified hideaways if doomsday never arrives? That’s why a smarter investment, in both good times and bad, might be what real estate broker Jon Kohler calls a “Social Storm” property. Here’s why, according to the man who coined the term.

Q: What inspired you to sell “Social Storm” properties? “In Florida, we prepared for hurricanes. But at some point, I looked around and realized that society was in turmoil, so ‘Social Storm’ fit. When I first started using the term as a real estate broker, people begged me to stop, since they’d never heard a broker say anything negative. Shows like Doomsday Preppers made preparedness look kooky. Then Covid changed everything. Before, I had to convince people that bad things could happen. Now everyone knows they can.”

Q: What are the main features of a Social Storm property, and how does it differ from a bunker? “The main feature is being self-sufficient. A good water source is critical. You want to store hard assets like cattle, wildlife, timber, and farms, and have multiple energy sources, such as a generator and solar. But unlike a bunker, a Social Storm property is a place where your family and friends can be comfortable and have fun. A bunker is more the adolescent knee-jerk ‘I’m gonna buy bullets and build a wall and live underground in a decommissioned missile silo in Kansas.’”

Q: Are Social Storm properties smart investments? “They’re incredible investments because they’re also recreational real estate assets for fishing, hunting, hiking, farming, growing timber; some treat them like personal national parks for their families. So if tomorrow is a better day, these properties will go up the value just like they pretty much always have. But if tomorrow is a worse day, they’ll go up even more. They’re the perfect financial hedge. People focus on their stock portfolio, but if you don’t have a place where your family can be safe, who cares about stocks?”

Q: Do you have to be a billionaire to buy one? “No. They can cost as little as half a million. You’ll want a place within driving distance on two tanks of gas. People say they’ll fly to New Zealand, but what if airports and borders are closed?”

Q: Do you live on a Social Storm property? “I don’t talk about my own property—that’s part of the concept. Privacy and discretion are essential. No one wants their exact location known.”

Scroll down for more photos of Social Storm properties currently for sale.

You can’t take your mortgage with you when you move. And with 70% of homeowners sitting on rates below 5%, and 50% below 4%, it’s no surprise that the housing market has ground to a halt. But that could change now that the Trump administration is exploring portable mortgages, which can be transferred from house to house and already exist in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. If introduced, these loans could encourage homeowners to sell, freeing up inventory for buyers and loosening the so-called “mortgage lock-in effect”—at least in theory. But not everyone’s on board.

For starters, banks may not like portable loans since they could throw a wrench in mortgage-backed securities, which are bundles of mortgages banks sell to investors. With fewer loan originations, lenders might be forced to raise interest rates, the very thing the Trump administration has been trying to tamp down without much luck. Another problem? Loans in the US are secured by the property as collateral. Plus, poor buyers will still be stuck paying today’s higher rates—so who knows if they’ll be eager to buy at all?

Bottom line: High rates may not budge anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean buyers should wait for better days. In fact, here’s why a bad market can be good for investors.

Listing #1 in Florida costs $2,400,000. But Listing #2 in Georgia is asking for $6,590,000—which may be worth it for those extra-extra-large family reunions. Still, both properties meet Social Storm standards of self-sufficiency, so we guess it just boils down to who you want close by—for better and for worse.