Consumer Education

Are you looking to purchase a home today, but wish you could have gotten a lower rate on your loan? Well, what if I were to tell you that even though market rates today are hovering around 7%, you can still purchase a home with a 3.5% interest rate or even lower intrigued? Stick around as I go through how that's a very real possibility for today's buyers. I want to quickly answer these top four questions I get asked all the time. Listen for the details and how an assumable loan can benefit buyers and sellers. 
What is an assumable loan?
Is the contract written differently?
How do you know a house has an assumable loan and how do you find them?
And then how do you actually acquire it?
Example:
If I'm a buyer and I bought a house 10 years ago, and at that time I bought that house for $300,000, I put no money down, I got a VA loan and I got a fantastic interest rate. Whatever that rate was, we'll call it 3%. So I got a $300,000 loan, a 3% with a VA loan, no money down. Now, fast forward 10 years. Now I'm a seller, and as a seller, I have a loan and I want to sell that home for $500,000. And I had this original loan at $300,000. I paid it down for the last 10 years. So maybe today it has a balance of $250,000. That $250,000 still has an interest rate tied to it at 3%, and I still have 20 years left on my loan. As a seller, I then have the option to market an assumable loan, meaning a buyer has the option to purchase my home, keeping that loan intact.
Now, if I want to sell that home for $500,000 and my loan is $250,000, that implies that the buyer has to either get a loan for the difference, has to have the cash for the difference, and that's something that we're going to talk about when we talk about how to acquire the loan. But the basics of an assumable loan is the terms around that loan stay in place. They simply get transferred from the current seller to the new would-be buyer.

The cost of borrowing of a business, borrowing funds is still going up trying to slow down the spending that Americans and businesses are doing to inflict pain, right? We talked about this, that the Fed is trying to inflict pain. The Fed is trying to slow the roll to just slow down demand, slow down buying and allow supply chains to catch back up again.
The cost of everything is just not going to drop like a rock, but it's going to slowly get there where the cost of the things that we experience at the gas station, at the grocery store are going to start coming back to Earth, right? So let me point out a couple things.
So the cost of shipping; shippers have already said that they expect to realize a benefit in lower costs early 2023. So we're seeing these indexes that some of the things that's costing them, like the cost of gas is less? Some of their expenses are less. They're expecting that cost to then be passed on to the wholesalers, which will be measured in the PPI early 2023. Again, nothing happens overnight, but check out this drop. We saw 4.9% drop month-over-month, which dropped the annual percentage from 21% in September to 11% in October. Now that's a big drop given where we had been because we had seen it much higher than that, even upwards of 21%. So to see that kind of annual growth coming down tells you that the shippers are going to start passing on lower costs to the producers and the wholesalers and those wholesalers.
We saw the PPI came out this morning and it dropped from an 8.4% annualized to an 8% annualized. It was expected to come out at 8.3%. The month-over-month was only 0.2% and that was expected to be 0.4%. So all of that is showing that the annual is coming down because the month-over-month increase is slowing down. So the shipping is costing a little bit less. The cost of shipping, of getting the products from the ports to the fact or to the warehouses. That shipping cost is costing less. The wholesalers, their cost of goods, their cost of acquiring that product to then turn into the consumer based product. So that wholesale price is coming down. We saw on Thursday's report, the CPI came down, it was expected to have a month over month of double what it actually had.
The value and the equity that we have in our homes is abundant, even if it comes down slightly based on our expectation of our equity over the last two years.
We are still strong in equity. We're strong in savings. Many of us, many  us still have jobs. There's still job openings. GDP is expected to be positive this fourth quarter, which says that the economy is still churning and people are still buying all of these things way towards a strong economy, which is where I'm going to land. This plane also lands to a very strong real estate market.
Listen to this full episode. The summary is That's it. That's what it comes down to is the balance of supply and demand.  

Seller Concessions and Rate Buydown Explained
Let's walk through how you can actually buy down your interest rate! You can save hundreds, if not thousands of dollars by buying down your interest rate. But, there are some limitations to how much seller concessions you can receive, based on your loan and down payment. Let's also walk through the numbers of buying down your interest rate.
Today we're talking about a permanent buy down or really even any kind of seller concession and a limitation on the amount that you can get in order to buy that rate down. For conventional loans, whether you're buying it as a primary home or a second home, we're going talk about investments. With a primary home or second home, it depends on how much money you're putting down. So when you are putting down less, you can get less of a seller credit to help give you that rate. Buy down advantage. Let's talk through some of those numbers.
Listen to this 5 minute episode of The Double Comma Club, "Can I Buy Down My Interest Rate?"

What does a first time home buyer today have that they haven't had for the last two years and might not have next year? The benefits of being a first-time homebuyer in today's real estate market are PLENTIFUL. In this episode I talk about some first-time homebuyer loan programs and opportunities to take advantage of... including getting a lower interest rate! Buyers today can still get a great deal!
Let's go through the loan programs first, then the opportunities.
Veterans you have by far, the best loan program on the planet, the VA loan with zero down the low interest rates. No mortgage insurance is by far the most stellar opportunity to get into a home. If you are a veteran, you should be exercising that option right now because you haven't had it for the last two years because it was so intense.
The USDA is the way for the non-veteran to get in with zero money down. Now, you're going to have an upfront fee, but the monthly mortgage insurance is lower than any other program. So the USDA loan is a fabulous program to bring families out to rural areas to buy single family homes with no money down.
Down Payment Assistance. This is a tool that has been underutilized for the last several years, and the reason why is because sellers weren't accepting it. They didn't have to. Buyers were coming in with cash or 20%, 30%, 50% down. Sellers were looking for conventional or a cash buyer with more money. Down. Down payment assistance is for those home buyers looking to expand their opportunity to financial wealth and health through real estate. It is an opportunity to get in when you might not otherwise do so. Now, I will say with a word of caution, if you are using a down payment assistance program and putting no money down or the USDA or the VA, and we see slight pullback still on our home values when you buy a home, it could be that the value of that home goes down slightly before it picks back up again. You can buy a two, three, or four unit property as long as you're going to live in one of the units with as little as 5% down if your income is less than 80% of the area median income. 
A Freddie Mac loan. In the Denver market, it got very hard to qualify based on the income requirement, the 80%. So we would look for those underserved areas and we would purchase multi units in those areas. Well, Freddie Mac did away with focusing on or excluding those areas from the income requirements, and they just said, You have to fall within the income requirements.
 
To hear the rest of the options and opportunities, listen to this episode of The Double Comma Club, "First-Time Homebuyer Advantages in Today's Market."

As we continue to see FED rate increases to slow the economy, we are starting to feel the fear, and it all comes with a price. The price is fear, instability, and job loss. Which in turn creates volatility as markets react to economic reports without the stabilization of a Federal Reserve buying mortgaged-backed securities and treasuries. But, I want to break housing down into four buckets this month: supply, demand, affordability, and credit availability.
The housing sector is strong, well-funded and able to withstand short-term volatility. While critics continue to generate fear around instability, crisis, bubbles, foreclosures, and more, our job as real estate professionals is simply to support reality with facts. Listen to your DMAR November Denver Real Estate Market Update! 

Nicole has had a lot of conversations with first-time home buyers making assumptions that aren't correct. So that's what we're talking about today. She is busting eight home-buying myths. Nicole goes through the myth, misplaced logic, and the truth about home buying. There are a couple of them that may really surprise you about being debt-free before you buy, and shopping for the lowest rate to determine your lender. Listen to this episode of The Double Comma Club, "Eight Home Buying Myths."
1. You must put 20% down to buy a home.
2. It's cheaper to rent than to buy.
3. It's cheaper to buy a fixer-upper.
4. You need to be debt-free to purchase a home.
5. All lenders are the same.
6. You should go with the lowest rate.
7. Spring is the best time to buy.
8. Find the home before applying for the loan.
 

what is a seller concession? I mean, that's kinda like a dinosaur these days. I haven't seen one of those in several years. So a seller concession is when they agree to provide funds that support the buyer during the transaction. You can bump into a seller concession several times throughout the transaction. Usually, it's in the beginning. A buyer might use a negotiating tactic that says, I'll pay full price, but I'm gonna ask the seller to pay for all of my closing costs and my prepaids allowing me to come to the table with less cash down. They might also negotiate a price reduction in addition to a seller concession.
Those are two separate items and can be used in conjunction or separate from one another. A seller concession can also show up during the inspection period where you might choose to not have something fixed, but inline, get money back from the seller again towards prepaids and closing costs or a price reduction. So there's sometimes a conversation right now about a two one buy down or a rate reduction, and that might be a seller concession. I wanna double click on that because a seller concession can only be used towards a fires prepaids and closing costs. There are limits to what a seller can provide, both per the loan that the buyer uses.
Learn why it's exciting for buyers for the return of seller concessions in this episode of The Double Comma Club, "What Are Seller Concessions?"

Listen to this 4-minute episode with 3 quick tips on how to get rid of your mortgage insurance. It depends on the type of loan, and the current value of your home. But this episode is filled with good news in "3 Ways to Get Rid of Your Mortgage Insurance."
1. Call your servicer to talk about what you just heard in this epsiode.
2. If you can't reach them, reach out to Nicole Rueth at The Rueth Team303-214-6393 [email protected]

So you finally got in, but the rate is five, five and a half, six, seven. The down payment assistance is seven, seven and a half. And all of a sudden, it doesn't seem fair, but it's still locked in, right? It's still your mortgage payment that you can count on that isn't going to go up any further. And if anything go down because interest rates will go down. But when, so housing, it's a lock against inflation.
It's a fixed mortgage payment.
It's huge tax benefits.
It's income opportunities.
I can rent out a room because there are a lot of people who can't afford to buy. Could I give them access? I just had to purchase a home. I used a 7% interest rate. My payment's a little bit tighter than I would've liked. I'm going to rent out rooms, or I'm going to lock off the basement that might have stairs, and I can create a little kitchenette and create a little lounge area.
Can I get creative?
Can I add the garage?
Can I rent out the garage?
Some people are, whether they're doing a hobby, whether they're laying low, they're not going traveling, they just need extra space to do their craft, whatever that is. Or storage, maybe they had to downsize. I've got friends that rent out their garages, right? Can we get creative to offset?
You can do that with a home. You can do that with something you own. Not only can you make it your own, but you can also build it out; you can finish it out. You can create a space where you can then create income. The home has a multitude of positives. It has two negatives right now. The interest rates today and home price is going up. Let's talk about those two interest rates today. Where do I think interest rates are going to go?
I think we are going to have a volatile last quarter and could be a volatile first quarter of 2023. Many of the economists in the large banks are all thinking that we have not entered into a recession yet. That we might be in one today, but we will start to see a recession where people aren't traveling, aren't going out to eat, aren't paying for services, aren't still spending, and our consumer spending is still up. So if people stop spending, we will head into a recession. If you go back historically, during recessionary periods, interest rates go down, and in fact, homes appreciate minus one back in 1960 when they didn't. I'm not talking about inflation adjusted, I'm talking about HPI home price indexes appreciate in recessionary periods because those interest rates come down.
Where do I think interest rates are going to go? Listen to this episode of The Double Comma Club, "Using Current Market Volatility To Your Advantage" to find out.

Just because you want a different house doesn't mean you have to wait for the perfect deal in the perfect area to become available. You can, instead, create the home of your dreams, even if it's your first home, a starter home that you will sell later. You can build a home instead of waiting.
With home prices climbing and very limited inventory on the market, it may be more difficult to find your perfect home. So, why not just build it? The Rueth Team has new Land and Construction Loans so you can skip the house hunting and build your dream home. Land and construction loans are not only a great option for Primary homes, but for Second Home and Investment Properties as well. There are several loan product options that grant you stability in your rate, while giving you the opportunity to create a home for your family you know you'll enjoy for years to come.