Edit: unless you mean that the downside of 30-year mortgages is you hardly get to pay off the principal in the first several years and don't build much equity maybe? That's more a "long mortgages" thing.

If you’re willing to have your current mortgage be more expensive to avoid the “downside of being locked into a low payment, you could just pretend your mortgage had adjusted and go buy a house that suits your needs better.

Sellers arent willing to lower prices AND lose a low rate and buyers aren't willing to pay those prices and expect a buyer's market.

Nothing is moving and realtors are hurting.

Something has to pop the bubble, will it be massive job loss that forces relocation or sale for cash and move to apartment?

Who knows?

You could also convert a 3% mortgage to a 5% for example. Because the owners of the 3% mortage aren't that interested in it any more, you could get that at perhaps as low as 80% (a former coworker got as low as 65%) of the original value. So if you buy a home for e.g. $200.000, you paid of $50.000 and "buy back" the rest at 80% you're now left with $120.000 of debt. You then get a new mortgage for that amount, and even at higher rate, that might result in a monthly saving. When the remaining amount is low enough, you could refinance and get e.g. a 10 year fixed rate mortage for a really low rate.

I don't know if you can do that in the US, but that's pretty much standard in Denmark. Most people will do that maybe 3 - 5 times during the lifetime of a mortgage. For the most part is make absolutely no sense, the bank just do some paper work, have you sign and then you owe less, but at a higher interest.

The American financial landscape is too diverse to accommodate such sweeping statements. To many depositors default to the big banks. But that doesn’t mean everyone—or even most—who are under optimizing their deposits is better served by a credit union.

> people imagine a scenario where they'll need to withdraw cash in the middle of the Mojave so they need WF

If ATM access is your bugaboo, an online bank that reimburses everyonea’ ATM fees is the way to go.

But I've also noticed a stream of unrequested adoration towards credit unions, seemingly whenever any topic of personal banking pops up. A random person may simply lament about some fee their bank has charged, or the rate that their mortgage is financed at, or even mention in passing that they use a bank at all. That's normal-enough; people chat about whatever is on their mind all the time.

But quite often (too often?) upon the utterance of the word "bank," a whole cadre of people then immediately show up to sing a chorus (in unison) to remind them [and eachother] about how amazingly great credit unions are. Sometimes that cadre snowballs into a circus replete with a marching band, a dancing bear, and a trapeze artist.

"Oh, you still have a bank? Why aren't you in a credit union yet?"

"Yeah! Credit unions are awesome! People who don't use credit unions are just dumb or something!"

"Hey, guess what! My credit union even lets me access my money at 3:00AM the middle of the Mojave! These things are great!"

"Oh cool! The dancing bear is here again! I love that bear!"

---

The rather uniform predictability of this kind of spectacle can have a very daunting appearance to someone who never asked for it.

And thus the apprehension may be explainable easily-enough with one word: Contrarianism. "This group of people is telling me I need to do this thing; therefore, I must not."

Or, perhaps with a cautious phrase: "If it sounds like it is too good to be true, then it probably is."

We spend a portion of our lives seeking to avoid scams and pitfalls. We aren't always successful at it ("there's a sucker born every minute"), but we still try to seek to avoid being a mark. When see a bunch of guys having a great time playing 3 Card Monte on the corner, we either learn to avoid them or we learn to lose our money.

When an unsolicited and eerily-coordinated group of cheering fans crawl out of the woodwork without deliberate provocation and actively seek to impart change, it's justifiable and sane to turn around and run away. Especially when they haul out the dancing bear routine.

"The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know."

Consumers, for a product such as mortgage, will be fragmented and infrequent users, who will only be in-market for a mortgage for a ~3-6 month window every X years. For this audience, discoverability is what matters-- and they will simply go to a search engine and look for "cincinnati mortgages" for which Google will gladly show 8-12 ads with CPCs of $20. An objective ranking based on rates and fees is useful for the consumer, but not an ad network who would rather drive multiple clicks on paid ads. Being objective and useful isn't enough to play in the space, unfortunately.

I do not know about the US market: In the EU, mortgage markets are highly fragmented and its possible to live in one area and get a loan from a bank in another area

You and OP agree.

Broadly speaking, if you have good credit (or are wealthy) you’ll get a better rate at a bank or mortgage specialist. If you don’t, you’re more likely to get approved at a credit union.