I don’t know about you, but I am experiencing the "golden handcuffs" phenomenon.

Like many other mortgage holders, I have a great rate now and more than likely can't move without spending a lot more of my hard-earned money.

My wife and I were looking to downsize, so we reached out to a real estate agent and started looking around. We bought our Manhattan apartment about 14 years ago and refinanced the mortgage at 3% about seven years later. At this point, we decided not to give up that 3% rate to buy a smaller place at a much higher rate.

And we are far from alone.

To that point, CNBC personal finance reporter Jess Dickler references a real estate study in her mortgage story that states nearly 82% of homeowners feel “locked-in” by their existing low-rate mortgage.

After bottoming out below 3% in January 2021, the average rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage now sits above 7% — which is just too high for many homeowners to consider selling, Dickler reports. And since it’s unlikely rates will drop anytime soon, this has created a so-called golden handcuffs phenomenon.

At today’s rates, most homeowners would need to finance a new home at a higher rate than the rate they currently hold, adding hundreds of dollars a month to their mortgage payment. That has created an incentive to stay where they are.

“Even if they bought a cheaper house, their payments would go up,” Nicole Bachaud, a senior economist at Zillow, explained to CNBC.

However, there apparently is a tipping point for homeowners.

An industry report finds that homeowners are nearly twice as willing to sell their home if their mortgage rate is 5% or higher, and 71% of prospective home buyers who plan to purchase their next home with a mortgage said they would not accept a rate above 5.5% — that is the “magic mortgage rate,” according to a survey.

I will need to “run the numbers” before taking off my golden handcuffs.

So, what’s your tipping point?

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