Financing

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."

I want to talk about interest. I want to make this all about what's going on with the fear around interest rates. When are they going to come back down? That's a huge question right now, and I'm bringing it up because I'm getting asked that a lot.
I was on a Market Trends committee meeting yesterday with DMAR and that also became a debate, whether it was going to be eight months or 24 months from now before we see some sort of drop in interest rates. We have experts on Housing Wire and on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and NAR, all confessing some predictions about interest rates.
The Federal Reserve has a single mandate at this time. They are typically a two-mandate agency working on the things that people purchase, the price that people purchase things at, which is really inflation controlling the price that Americans pay for the products they buy. And then the second thing is providing a space where those people who want to work can find jobs. This is keeping unemployment low and keeping inflation low. Right now we've got a lot of wage inflation, which is driving up our overall inflation, our core inflation if you will. We've got headline and we've got core, and I'm really talking and focusing on core because headline right now is coming down because gasoline is coming down, but core is staying strong. So as I'm looking at interest rates over the next two to three quarters, I'm really watching employment, specifically unemployment, because when unemployment starts to go up, the feds measure right now, their target is 4.4.
Headline inflation一commonly known as the CPI一includes more volatile food and energy price data, whereas the core inflation index excludes it. Headline inflation is better, but core is concerning.
There are still core components to inflation that are holding on. The biggest one is wages. The Fed wants to calm wages, they want people lose their jobs and go get another job for less money. They want people to stay unemployed for a short period of time to stop spending. They need demand and supply to come back in check that is going to control inflation and allow it to drop back down again, which is going to help our bonds and our interest rates. It hinges on employment.
I still believe that we're not in a recession yet. We're seeing manufacturing slowing down. We're seeing unemployment that went the wrong way. Unemployment has to go up all the things. That is why I think we're going to see interest rates dip at the end of next spring.
Listen to the full episode for more details on this logic and insight from Nicole in this episode of The Double Comma Club, "Focus On the Payment, Our Economy Works In Cycles."

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.

So while we were sleeping, we were seeing the European bonds were selling off, which we opened up Monday morning to this bond selloff here in the United States, dropping the bond prices and raising our interest rates.
Powell was just in Switzerland trying to speak to the Switzerland bank and convince them that he's got everything under control. I'm gonna debate that right now. I think they were a little late to the party.
It's starting to become habitual that he's not really forecasting what's happening because he's looking at metrics that are passed. He's primarily looking at unemployment, which isn't a leading indicator. It's a lagging indicator. He's looking at inflation, which is also looking backward.
If you also look at the CPI numbers, the inflation numbers that we're comparing year-over-year inflation to, we're going to start seeing inflation slow down again second quarter next year. And that's because of comparison inflation rates right now we're very low last year, so we're replacing them with high numbers. We're replacing really low numbers and that's keeping inflation high. As those numbers increased last year, that comparison rate is now becoming more in line. We'll start to see that happening in October.
So if rates are at seven or above seven depending on, we are seeing a little bit of the bond market revert back from its extreme yesterday. It's like, oh wait a minute, that was the European market that set our markets on fire. It wasn't even anything in the United States. It was a sell-off of bonds in Europe that caused our bond market sell-off the next morning Monday morning. So Powell goes through all of these conversations to say during the last Fed meeting, "I'm going to define what I want to see in a housing correction." A housing correction includes two things from his perspective, those two things are increased housing supply and decreased housing demand. Come on, that was a given.
Listen to this complete episode, "How Does the Global Market Movement Influence the US Real Estate Market."

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?
 
Nicole Rueth, SVPThe Rueth Team750 W Hampden Avenue, Suite 500 Englewood, CO 80110303-214-6393www.TheRuethTeam.comConnect on social media: Follow me on FB: https://www.facebook.com/theruethteam/Twitter: https://twitter.com/nicoleruethLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rueth-team-fairway-independent-mortgage/YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPMdb94tUNMMsUTgdWRMDKwNicole Rueth (NMLS 239840) is licensed to practice on behalf of OneTrust Home Loans (NMLS 46375) in the states listed below. For full compliance verbiage, visit theruethteam.com/compliance/.AZ, CA, CO, FL, ID, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MS, MO, MT, NE, NM, NC, OK, OR, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI, WY.