Mortgage Portability: Taking Your Rate With You

Porting a mortgage means transferring your existing rate, term, and remaining balance to a new property, instead of breaking your current mortgage and starting fresh — which usually avoids the prepayment penalty you'd otherwise pay for breaking a term early.

Portability generally requires closing on your new home within a set window of selling your old one (often around 30-120 days depending on the lender), and the new property still needs to qualify under your lender's normal underwriting.

If your new home costs more than your old one, most lenders let you 'blend and extend' — combining your existing ported rate with a new rate on the additional amount borrowed, weighted by size, rather than losing your original rate entirely.

Not every mortgage is portable, and porting rules vary meaningfully by lender — confirm your specific mortgage's portability terms well before listing your current home, not after you've already got a firm sale date to work around.