The Double Comma Club

This is a really detailed episode about a new interactive software tool. Nicole explains here. At the end of this post you will have a link for the interactive view of this tool she discusses. Here's a bit of what is covered in this episode. Interest rates and home prices have gone up. We know that. And not only is it a question of affordability, but now it's also a buyer's discernment on whether or not that home or buying now is the right choice. Sellers are feeling this. They've been on the market for longer than we are used to. We got spoiled over the last couple of years. Sellers did with very quick turn times, very quick to go under contract. And so now, even though we're nowhere near normal with less than a month of inventory, it feels slow. So I wanted to propose a couple of alternatives and actually show the differences between those alternatives and options, both for a seller who's going to market and how do they want to list their home? And as a buyer, how can I strategize the best payment option for me right now? Whether what is more, most important to me? Is it cash to close? Is it the monthly payment? Is it the adjustment period? And then do I expect in a recessionary period that interest rates will go down because I want to start here before I get into the matrix that I'm showing you. This is a little bit of a different video that we typically send out on Wednesdays, because I want to give you a tool. This tool is clickable. You can actually open it up rummage around and look at the alternatives and request a strategy session so that we can set this up for your listing or for your specific buyer parameters. But I want to talk first just for a second on ARM, because that option is not going to be described here. I'm going to go over going through and buying a home with 10% down, buying a home capitalizing on a two, one buy down capitalizing on maybe a seller credit for a permanent buy down or discount points to pay, to reduce the rate, or should a seller have to reduce their price to get it to move. But what I don't show is ARMs simply because there are four columns and not five. So there you have it, but I do want to say that arms are going to work very similar. In fact, for the two, one buy down, category, I used the model within this tool for an ARM. So we could switch this based on the kind of ARM that you're looking at, whether it's a five-year, seven-year, 10-year ARM, and then what the parameters are for the movement of that ARM. The one risk that I want to present with ARMs, that the two, one buy down protects you against is what if, what if rates don't go down. The third number on an ARM talks about what is the maximum that ARM can go up. And a lot of times it's got a five in it or a four. So if today's interest rate for you for that ARM is four and a half, and the last number on your ARM parameters is a five. That means that that loan could go up to nine and a half percent. Would that wreck your budget? We're all counting on a recession and on lower interest rates, but do you need a plan B? So let's talk about these four options and consider a two, one, a two, one buy-down option instead of an ARM. They go hand in hand and they can trade out for one another. Want to access the interactive software? FOLLOW THIS LINK: https://bit.ly/3ucAWLj Nicole will be narrating it with the same information in this episode, but you'll be able to click some of the items to get more details as you follow along. Any questions, please call her: 303-214-6393

Now I know there have been headlines that the average rent in Denver has gone over $2000. It really just depends on what survey you're looking at. Either way, rents continue to go up. That's not going to slow down. As investors are paying more for their properties, they're going to be renting out for more. And those investors that bought properties 10, 20, 30 years ago are going keep up with the market rent. Ashleigh Gutierrez joins Nicole for this episode. Ashleigh's rent right now is $1705. And then she pays for a garage space, which is an extra $150. With everything all in, she is paying around $2,000 a month for rent. Here are the numbers for the story in this episode. $300,000 asking price. She paid $331,000 to lock it in. 3% down. Monthly payment of $1,999 plus insurance, taxes $2,500. It's more than rent, but she's now building wealth and paying her OWN mortgage, rather than her landlord's.  Listen to this story and a few more in this episode, Buying a  Home Today - Why I Shouldn't Rent.

These three shorts give a quick explanation and ways you can reduce your debt-to-income ratio. This episode covers: What is Debt to Income Ratio?, What are the debts included in your DTI?, and How to Optimize Your DTI. We hope you find these quick explanations and suggestions helpful. They go great with the longer episodes here: What You Need to Know About Debt to Income Ratio Why is Debt to Income Ratio Important When Buying a Home?

You can get an appraisal waiver and you can have an appraisal waiver. I wanna give everyone an appraisal waiver. It just doesn't quite work like that. Of course, there's a lot of talk about getting appraisal waivers, especially in a competitive market like today. So what is an appraisal waiver and what do you get to do once you have one? An appraisal waiver is something that's given by an automated underwriting system by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. So that implies that you can only get an appraisal waiver on a conventional loan. And that's true. You can't get an appraisal waiver on a jumbo loan, an FHA loan or a VA loan, but if you are putting 20% down or more on a primary home purchase and you have a good credit profile, there's a possibility that you could get an appraisal waiver. It also is dependent on the property that home needs to be in either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac database, meaning that maybe the current seller or a previous homeowner of that home had gotten a conventional loan. So if you're going out and you're purchasing a primary home and you want to know more about how appraisals appraisal waivers work and how you can get one, then you need to give me a call. We'd not only love to go to work for you. We'd love to put you in the most competitive position you can be when putting in your offer.

Strap in, this is a long one!  Last week the CPI came out not as expected. The percentage doesn't matter as much as the DIRECTION... it went up! This threw the market for a loop. Interest rates did increase and now the headlines are making you believe we are going into depression. WE ARE STILL IN A STRONG HOUSING MARKET. The likelihood of massive job loss and massive loss in the stock market is not likely... granted it may feel like it today. Interest rates increased from 5.5% last Thursday to 6.18% yesterday. As we go into FED week, the market was expecting a 50bp increase. However, with the increase in CPI, the FED may be forced to increase that rate even more. That possibility of change is what makes the market react. The market likes knowing what is going to happen. So when the possibility of change looms, it begins to move. Bottom line is that rates went up for several reasons, but we remain part of an incredibly strong real estate market. I want to talk about the interest rates first because they went from 5.5 on Thursday to 6.18% on Monday 5.5% . That is a massive jump. Especially if you are watching my live session. I said, hurry up and get under contract, take advantage of the interest rates that we have today because next week we're going into the fed. Now, even when interest rates started to go up, a lot of people are asking me how high do you think, they could go? And I was like six and a quarter, right? So we're here. We're at 6.25%. We made it, do we go much higher? I don't know. I don't know because the fed where we're at right now is a little bit unchartered. We've got this quantitative tightening that's happening and how aggressive the fed, uh, goes, is going to push interest rates. But what interest rates are doing right now is squelching demand. It's authentic demand reduction. Listen to this episode as I also cover the continuing reasons the housing market is so strong. GET IN NOW!

You can now use the income on an auxiliary dwelling unit to qualify to purchase or rate and term refinance your home. Well, that is a game-changer, especially for people who have an investor's mindset. How can I optimize the home I'm living in? Can I look at buying a two-unit, a three or four-unit, a single-family, a rentable basement? Well, those auxiliary dwelling units, those separate buildings in the backyard. They were not a legal unit. Now they do have to be permitted right and zoned properly. But those auxiliary dwelling units were just that they were an auxiliary dwelling unit, whether they were apartments above a garage or self-standing buildings in the backyard, but they weren't a legal unit. It's not like it was a duplex. It's a single-family home with an ADU. That ADU income had not been able to be used when qualifying for a purchase price or a loan amount.   Well, that just changed. That literally is a game-changer. Now I can afford more say I'm a first-time home buyer and I'm maxed out at $600,000 purchase price. If there's an ADU in the backyard and the market rents on that are $1,500. Now I'm not maxed out at $600,000 anymore. Now I can qualify for a $711,000 purchase price by putting 10% down. Those kinds of numbers need to be explored, especially given today's market with rising and rising home prices where people know you need to get in. You need to stop paying rent and start building your own equity. And that auxiliary dwelling unit will do two things for you. Now it'll help you qualify for more and put money in your pocket so that you can save for the next one. If you want to know more information, know exactly how much you can qualify for, please call me - 303-214-6393.

With the Denver market up 123%, since its peak in 2006, we have amazing wealth in equity. How do you tap into that wealth of equity, where you can give a gift of equity to your children, or to other family members? We can transfer wealth through real estate using gifts of equity. So what does that mean? And maybe what are some of the limitations with that?  Let's say I want to sell a home for market value. That home is $800,000 and I own that home and maybe I own that home outright, and I want to give it to my kid. I want to give them a head start and I want some money out of that home, but I don't need all $800,000 and I want to give them a head start. Maybe it's a grandchild or a niece or a nephew, and you want to give them the opportunity, maybe an opportunity you never had. You can do that with real estate. You can give them that gift of equity. If the market value of that home is $800,000. I can sell it to them for $800,000, but then give them a gift of equity of whatever you want. 5%, 10%, 20%, a dollar amount, maybe it's $200,000. That means as a receiver, maybe as, as your kid or as your niece or nephew or grandchild, I can get a loan for the $600,000 and not bring any money to the table. Maybe I'm just starting out with my career. I don't have a lot of money saved, but I have a good job. I can qualify for the $600,000. You just gave me such a blessing and such a head start, but I need to know there are some limitations, depending on the loan program I use first off, it has to be a family member. FHA does allow gifts that are either from a close friend or an employer, even, but in this case, a gift of equity, not just a gift of a check, needs to come from a family member. FHA also has another hook. If you have a credit score under 600, you cannot receive a gift of equity as your down payment. You have to still bring your down payment. So that's something that needs to be considered, and certainly may be a reason to get into our free credit optimization program. So let's talk about VA because VA has a benefit that if I can put a little money down. You get a reduced funding fee. Now, if you have any disability, you have no funding fee. So that becomes irrelevant. But if you're not disabled, you have a funding fee. And if you put 5% down or more, that funding fee is reduced. A gift of equity does not go towards that. You will still pay whatever the full funding fee is for your situation. Conventional, conventional has a situation where the borrower typically needs to bring their own minimum funds. A lot of times that's 5% or even 3% for first-time home buyers. The gift of equity needs to be a minimum of 20% down in order for the buyer not to bring any of their own money. FHA and VA don't require that the gift can be just the minimum down, but in the case of conventional, the buyer still has to bring, say 5% down. If the giver of the gift is only giving 10%, but if the gift is more than 20% of the purchase price, the buyer can bring no money of their own. So there are some fantastic opportunities in today's real estate market to continue generational wealth. If you want to know more about gifts of equity, I would love to sit down and talk through a program and a solution with you. We'd love to go to work for you

Everybody's starting to look at the fact that more homes are now going are, are reducing their price before sale. I talked about this in the DMAR report that we just did last week in the video talking about the fact that those people that had to do a price reduction were on the market for an average of 28 days. That is a massively long time compared to what we've been feeling and how fast the market has been moving nationally. That number is up to 24% of homes are discounting their price before they sell. Historically, that number is at a third 33%. We are still well below normal. And when we get to normal, it won't even feel like normal because we've been so fast for so long. Keep everything in perspective. Yes. I know interest rates are high and yes, I know home prices are high, but appreciation will continue because demand is going to continue. Existing homes cannot fill all the gaps in the past. Somebody had sold a home and purchased a home. Now they're holding onto that home and they're converting into a rental. Now they're keeping it in the family and selling it to a family member with a gift of equity. They are maintaining the home or they're aging in place. They're taking that equity. They're pulling some of that equity out and they're converting that home into a rental property and buying the next primary home with the equity that they've pulled out of it. That's what we're seeing a lot of in this market. We need to see more turnover. Obviously, we're seeing a little more inventory. Fantastic. None of this means that we're going to head into a housing bubble. Interestingly, last week we had several economic indicators. We had the unemployment state flat at 3.6. We had ism manufacturing index came in stronger than expected. Yes, consumer confidence is down, but that's based on the price of everything. Real estate is the best hedge against inflation. We are not headed towards a housing bust, will the economy slow? I hope so will spend slow. I really hope so. Because consumer spending is 70% of the GDP. I hope all of those things happen. I hope appreciation slows down. Would it shock me if we had a 0% appreciation next year, a little bit, a little bit, but I wouldn't be upset about it because I know that the value of my home is holding and that it is a hedge against inflation, the cost of everything. And that rents Listen to this episode for the full summary of the impact.

Months of Inventory for May landed at 0.67% or 20 days.  A balanced market, when supply equals demand, is defined by 6 months of inventory.  Yet, on the street, real estate agents and buyers “feel” like we are headed towards a balanced market.  Close to List came in at 105.33% telling us buyers are still paying more than asking on average.  If you look at over $1 million dollar homes, those went for 107.12% close to list. And median days on market were still a hot 4 days.  Yet some listings had few to no showings their first weekend on market and the median closed price actually dropped 0.24%. 197 more homes sold and 631 more homes went under contract than last month, while 72 fewer homes came on the market to choose from.  Given these numbers it’s obvious that the active listings count pulled on the last day of May, on a Tuesday, would jump 14% from last month and 76% from last year giving buyers 3,652 homes to choose from. Right?  Buyer demand as measured by the United States MBA Purchase Index dropped 12.3% during the month of May.  Mortgage purchase applications softened as interest rates hit an average of 5.62% for a 30-year fixed mortgage on May 7th per the Mortgage News Daily survey. Application numbers remained muted even while rates dropped 0.5% during the 2nd half of May. With all the graduations and holidays, did buyers not notice? Buyers and sellers alike are trying to figure out how to time this market.  A market in transition is sending mixed messages. Inventory is still painfully low.  Closing 5,445 units last month means we need 32,670 homes for sale for a balanced market, an unrealistic number given Denver’s propensity for being a sellers-market.  I’d be thrilled with even the 10,527 average active listings we’ve seen in May from 2008 through 2022.  There is a third of that today. But rising inventory will be the tell-tale of an easing market.  And we would expect to see rising inventory given consumer inflation of 8.3% and mortgage rates above 5% should cool buyer demand. Mortgage rates are expected to stay above 5% through 2022 as the Federal Reserve kicks off quantitative tightening on the 1st of June and plans on raising the Fed Rate by 0.5% in June and again in July.  We will know more as the Fed releases their Dot Plot Map at their June meeting; giving us clues as to where they see the Fed Rate going for the rest of 2022 as well as 2023 and 2024.  Many economists expect rates to stay where they are or even go a little higher as inflation continues to prove less transitory and weighted more on longer-lasting wages, housing, and the geopolitical events happening around us. These higher borrowing rates on top of our 18.42% year-to-date higher median closed prices could and should yield us longer days on market, higher active inventory counts, and softer month-over-month price growth as buyers become more decerning and slower to pull the trigger.  Sellers will need to adjust their strategies to continue to attract more buyers.  8.3% of closed transactions this May reduced their asking price prior to receiving an offer.  This compares to 6.9% in May of 2021.  Those properties that reduced their price spent a painful average of 28.4 days in the MLS compared to 7 days for those with no price reductions.  Sellers with homes on busy streets, odd layouts, or deferred maintenance might have missed their winning opportunity.  But for the rest of the sellers, pricing right and staging well will continue to reap rewards given our current months of inventory and close-to-list. Because buyers are still buying and willing to pay a premium.  Despite consumer confidence dipping 2.2 points, retail sales are up 0.9% month-over-month and 8.2% year-over-year.  Luxury sales, travel, and housing are all winners in the eyes of today’s buyers.  As the number one hedge against inflation, housing will continue to remain strong even as we move inches towards a balanced market.  Because while the wealthy are spending $195 million on Andy Warhol prints of Marilyn Monroe and $143 million for 1955 vintage Mercedes Benz as hedges, the rest of us can count on a good home continuing to grow at a good pace providing stability and financial security as our hedge against inflation. Until next time, that’s a wrap for this month’s Market Trends update. It’s my pleasure to keep you updated, Nicole Rueth of The Rueth Team of Fairway Mortgage

Historically, we are trying to determine the best direction for us individually and personally. And how do we operate? Because many want to operate out of fear. That is our natural go-to, but those that operate out of opportunity, create doors that open. We were talking about this last Thursday, when we did this ad hoc live talking about this weekend is a door that is opening. It is your choice to go through it. You don't have to, you can continue renting which people will because sales are slightly down and what's the option. Because demographics have not changed. We are still talking about the next two to three years of incredible buyer demand. Mortgage purchase applications are down yet. Demographics have not changed. So if people are operating in fear thinking that interest rates are too high, that I can't get into the home of my dreams, then the alternative is renting. The alternative is a 100% interest rate. The alternative is not building wealth, not creating financial stability and not creating the opportunities for multi-generational wealth. I mean that's it, it boils down to that. I can't say it any clearer. I get that higher interest rates make affordability a big question mark.   What we have is a slowdown today. It isn't about credit deficiencies. It's about consumer confidence. Consumer confidence is down. Yes, it's down. The cost of everything is up. Why wouldn't it be down? It costs more to fill my gas tank. It costs me more for my groceries. Yes. It costs more. My gosh. Have you been to Costco lately? That little basket of goodies is way more than it used to be and my kids are. Listen to the rest of this episode for the reasons why this window is ideal for homebuyers.