Why Are People So Surprised Nobody Is Grabbing Ultra-Low Mortgages?

The press keeps announcing how low mortgage rates are getting and then they seem surprised that so few people are refinancing or buying homes. It almost sound like they are being paid by realtors and lenders to convince folks to go out and get a loan while rates are so low. Some articles have been addressing some of the reasons so few are taking advantage of these low rates, but one big reason people keep forgetting is that rates have been very low for a couple years and there are not that many people left to refinance who qualify for these low rates. It is one thing to drop your rate from 6% or 7% to 4%, but for someone like us who refinanced last year at 4.910%, the 4.00% rate we could receive on a new 15 year loan does not seem worth the $2,000 to refinance. You can calculate the break even point of refinancing on my latest refinance calculator or using my older loan comparison calculator. How low can these rates go? If 15 year rates continue to drop well under the 4% mark (do I hear 3.5%?), we may actually start getting interested, but more likely now we are considering just going with another HELOC and replacing our primary mortgage with a line of credit. With an introductory rate of 2.99% and no closing costs, that could make more sense to many people with a lot of equity (i.e a LTV under 50%) to just take out a HELOC to pay off their mortgage and then just pay down the balance quickly.We have done it once before and in many ways that makes a lot more sense than another costly fixed refinancing. It seems that these days when people are refinancing more folks are getting smaller, shorter loans, as opposed to the larger, longer ones everyone wanted back in the early 2000's. That's good for the borrowers, but not so good for the lenders trying to make some money!