Some locked-in owners will sell, though probably never in a flood, and rate lock-in does not permanently cap inventory either. Call it golden handcuffs, the lock-in effect, or plain affordability. An owner sitting on a low fixed rate who wants to trade up takes two hits at once: a higher price on the new home and a much higher rate on a much larger balance. Picture owing $350,000 at an illustrative 3% and moving to a home that roughly doubles the loan at a rate several points higher. For a lot of households that payment simply does not work, so they stay put. What gets people to move is life: a job relocation, a growing family, a downsize, aging parents, a home that no longer fits. Those transactions happen in any market. The catch with the idea that lower rates "unlock" inventory is that most sellers are also buyers. When a locked-in owner lists, they usually buy something else, so the sale and the purchase roughly cancel out and net supply barely moves. Lower rates would coax some owners to list, but they would also bring buyers back, which is why the market tends to sit near an equilibrium rather than swing hard either way. The deeper issue is a genuine, long-running shortage of homes from years of underbuilding, and shuffling existing owners between houses does not fix that. Nobody can promise where rates go, so we would not bank on a rate drop to solve inventory. Buy, sell, or move up when it is the right time in your life, not to time the market.