Real Estate Report: Mortgage rates continue to fall following Fed's dramatic interest rate cut

It's the Real Estate Report with Chad Takasui from Locations. Mortgage rates have fallen from almost 8% a year ago to just a little over 6% now. And I'm curious to see if in Hawaii this has stimulated any visible amount of applications for mortgages. Yeah, we're seeing an uptick in mortgage applications on both the purchase side of things, but also even those who had purchased back when it was 7, 8%. Now you usually advise people who are thinking of buying a home or anticipate the need to to get pre-approved. Are we seeing that in people who aren't necessarily ready to do a deal, but they're going to their bankers now? Oh, definitely. We, you know, and our industry professionals are definitely trying to get the word out to those who expressed need, get them pre-approved for financing, see what they can do in today's current rate environment. What do you think is going to happen to mortgage rates the rest of the year? I think we'll continue to see this level. You know, the Fed has indicated another rate cut maybe by the end of the year, but we'll see. Normally these rates, the new rate is already baked in before the Fed drops their rates. A lot of it depends on the economic reports that come out. And we probably ought to specify that all of this is based on guesswork going forward. It's watched more closely by realtors than just about anybody, but whatever, even the Fed doesn't really know what it's going to do because it's going to be data driven. Yeah, totally data driven. So if you're really a mortgage interest rate guru, you're following those same reports that the Feds are following. Well, and of course in Oahu particularly, we have the whole separate problem that we've always had, which is a lack of inventory. Correct. So you still have that in certain neighborhoods. We are seeing some growth in some neighborhoods in inventory. Ewa Plains, for one, is an example. So there's growing opportunity for some buyers in certain neighborhoods. One thing that I haven't seen sorted out yet, it seems like the people who make houses available because they downsize themselves to a smaller property are increasingly looking at condos where the shortage isn't quite so bad. Yeah, no, there's a lot of options for condos as far as inventory goes. I think the challenges with some of the financing on some of those buildings because of the hurricane insurance piece, because of deferred maintenance on some of the older buildings make it a little more challenging. So the inventory looks big, but what you can really do is smaller, right? That's an interesting point. So basically, what you're doing is hoping officials solve that problem and figure out some kind of insurance of last resort. Yeah, any kind of help we can get, intervention to help with that would help ease some of the affordability issues because there's a demand for condos. Yeah. Well, this is a better explanation than we sometimes get of what we tell you all the time at the end of this segment, which is if you are thinking you're going to be buying to your banker, get to the experts and find out where you stand. It's coming up on 7 16 and we'll have more sunrise for you in a moment.