I'm grateful to have an affordable mortgage and home, but I never intended for this to become my forever home.
Mitzi S. Morris
On May 3, 2025, I clutched my husband's hand as my father-in-law took his last breath. After receiving the warning call, it took me an hour to drive to the hospital to be at my husband's side.However, if this scene had played out even four years earlier, neither of us would have been there in time. We would have been more than 500 miles away in North Carolina, where my husband and I had moved in 2015.Within a few years of our move, both of our mothers passed away, and by the time the pandemic swept the US in 2020, we realized we needed to live closer to our dads.In 2021, as 30-year fixed mortgage rates hit record lows and home prices soared, we sold our North Carolina house for a nice profit and bought a place in Kentucky closer to family, locking in a 3.125% rate.It was meant to be temporary, and it wasn't our dream home — it was what I called our "get-us-there" house. Pickings were slim where we wanted to relocate, and this home was the first we found that met our minimum requirements. In a rush to move before we had to hand over the keys to the North Carolina house, we bought the Kentucky home without even seeing it in person.Now, nearly five years after arriving, we're stuck.
