What Do I Do If I Can’t Refinance and Can’t Afford My Payment?

The rate you’ve been waiting on might not come. What’s actually available to you sits with your lender, and there’s more on the table before a payment gets missed than after. Waiting on a lower rate has already cost some people four years and a second job.

Why Hasn’t the Rate Come Back Down?

Four years ago the line going around was “date the rate, marry the home.” Buy now, refinance later once rates settle. A lot of people took that seriously.

CNN told the story of Patrice De La Ossa this week. She sold a house in Phoenix carrying a 2.25 percent mortgage and moved to Tucson so her son could live at home while he finished at the University of Arizona. The new place came with a 6.8 percent rate. She figured it was temporary. Her son has since graduated. She’s still on 6.8 percent, paying roughly $900 a month more than the Phoenix loan, on two mortgages she describes as almost identical, and she’s taken a second job to cover the gap.

The rate never came back. Freddie Mac’s weekly survey put the 30-year at 6.71 percent as of September 3, the highest print of 2026, up from 6.66 the week before and 6.50 a year ago. Mary Lee Blaylock, president of Coldwell Banker Affiliates, told CNN plainly that “date the rate” isn’t how it works anymore. Buyers should plan on living with the rate they sign.

How Much Would Your Rate Need to Drop to Make Refinancing Worth It?

More than most people are sitting on. The rule of thumb CNN quotes, from what it calls many financial advisers, is that a refinance earns its cost when it cuts your rate by a full percentage point. Against a 6.71 percent market, that means the loan you’re refinancing out of needs to be sitting somewhere around 7.7 percent before the trade clears.

Almost everybody who bought in the last four years is somewhere between six and seven. The math doesn’t get there. Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist, told CNN the same thing without the arithmetic: at these rates, a refinance doesn’t make sense for most people unless there’s a specific reason for it, like folding in credit card debt or paying for a repair. That’s a rule of thumb, not a lending standard, and it’s worth running against your own loan rather than taking as gospel.

How Many People Are Stuck in the Same Spot?

More than there used to be. Redfin’s read of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s National Mortgage Database found that by the third quarter of 2025, 21.2 percent of mortgaged homeowners were carrying a rate of 6 percent or higher, up from 17.1 percent the year before. Twenty percent were still under 3 percent. That was the first time in five years more homeowners sat above 6 than below 3.

That figure is a year old already, not a live count, and nobody’s published what it looks like today. What it tells you is that this isn’t a small or unusual position to be in. A rising share like that doesn’t mean everybody in it is behind on payments. It means a lot of people are carrying a rate they expected to be temporary, with no evidence the plan is coming back around.

What Do You Do If the Payment Doesn’t Work and the Rate Won’t Either?

Get in front of it before anything’s missed, not after. A refinance is a new loan, and you have to qualify for it, which is a lot easier to do while you’re still current than once you’re behind.

CNN’s other homeowner is a masonry contractor in East Moriches, New York, carrying 7.2 percent on a payment of about $6,000 a month. Three of his six employees stopped working for him this year, his jobs take longer, and his income got less predictable. He told CNN he’s struggling to make payments on the loan he already has. Nobody stops paying a mortgage on its own. It goes unpaid alongside everything else that’s already stretched thin.

That’s the same household at a different stage as the person who bought expecting to refinance. If the payment doesn’t work and the value isn’t there either, the conversation is with your lender about what it will actually consider, and there’s more than one answer to that depending on your loan and your situation. What isn’t on the table anymore is a fifth year of waiting for a rate that hasn’t shown up in four.

Jacksonville, Florida is home base, and distressed property is most of what lands on my desk. Happy to talk through where you stand if any of this sounds close to your own situation.

JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if talking beats typing.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR®. Momentum Realty. SFR® (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

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