Mortgage Rates Up to 7% as Housing Market SLOWS Before Election

Do presidential elections historically affect the housing market? Why on earth are mortgage rates still going up? And what are some of the best companies where you can grow your career? That and more on today's show. Hey everyone, it's Dave. Welcome to On The Market. This is one of our patented headline show where we bring you the latest headlines in real estate and in business so you can help keep up with the market and make smart investing decisions. And of course, to sprinkle on our own hot takes to help you separate what's actually going to help you with your investing career from stuff that's just hype. Usually I sit through the news and bring four headlines to talk about, but instead I have assigned to my esteemed panelist a topic or ask them to bring their own topic. So we have Kathy Fecke, James Daynard, and Henry Washington joining us today. Thanks you all for being here. Great to be here. Glad to be here, man. Good to see you guys. All right, well, let's just jump right into it. James, what story did you bring for us today? Well, as we know, we got a lot of things going on in the news covering the election. It's the big election day. Oh, there's an election this year? I mean, I see it every once in a while trending on Twitter. So I figured we should explore this a little bit more. It's not even Twitter anymore. It's called X. But yeah, you know, I wanted to bring in this article. I want to talk about this today because I keep hearing a lot in the community. I know, Henry, you're a flipper. I'm a flipper. And a lot of investors that are doing development flipping and doing that high return dispositions right now, we're feeling a slowdown. And there's a lot of consumer confidence slowing down. And I'm starting to see a panic when we just have to remember that things slow down when things change. I mean, Henry, have you had much showings activity on your listings or has that slowed down? The amount of bodies that we're seeing through our houses are down like 80% over the last 30 days. 80%. Yeah, it's big. Yeah, it's a little different here for a number of reasons that I could expand on if you want me to. But we're seeing maybe a little bit of a slowdown in the amount of body like the amount of showings I'm getting seems reasonable for the market that we're in. Yeah, I'm just curious if you think it's the elections or interest rates have crept back up. There's actually some data about this. I don't know if you have the same thing here, James. But in Redfin, they did a survey recently of prospective homebuyers and 25% of people who said they wanted to be buying a home right now said they were waiting until after the election to buy. So it does seem like people are deliberately choosing not to look at homes right now. I don't know if this is investors, but this is all homebuyers are waiting for a couple of reasons. But James, did you see anything similar? So the headline I brought in is called Do elections affect the housing market? And here's what experts say. And this is by the Motley Fool. And there's a bunch of different articles out there. But you know, what I think is important right now is people look at trends and facts, you know, investors, buyers were so emotional. And they're going, Oh, well, you know, there's all this pent up demand, like what Dave just talked about consumer confidence is down, they want to wait when when buyers are unsure. They kind of sit on the sidelines, they're trying to time rates, they're trying to time the election. And you have all these buyers sitting on the sidelines. And that's what we're seeing is the showing activities way down. And what this article really talks about is, well, what's the historical trends, and the historical trends are, it really doesn't do anything based on the election, it slows down sales and volumes, but it doesn't make the market go up. It doesn't make the market go down, it doesn't cause the interest rates to go up, it doesn't cause the interest rates to go down. Policy does, but not the election. Typically, the market stays about the same and goes up the typical appreciation rate. There's only been a few times where we've seen it go the other way, which was in 2008, home prices fell 12%. And then in both elections in the 80s, the market came down a little bit because of high interest rates in the economic environment. And so the economy and the policies and what's going on affects the real estate more. And I everyone is overthinking this right now. I agree. Because flippers are going, oh, I can't sell my house, the debt's high. Just sit down for a minute, it'll sell. Yeah, where I'm hearing investors go, well, I'm going to wait for this because I think this is going to happen. And we have to look at the trends in the history to really make those decisions. And one thing I'm really glad I did is we're closing on our purchase in Arizona today, actually. And my banker called me about 30 days ago and he's like, hey, you want to lock your rate? He's like, it could go down a little bit more. And I was thinking it could go down a little bit more too. But I was like, you know what, just lock it. And we locked in at 5.125. Thank God I did this because it would be a half point higher than what it is today, or if not more. Timing the market's one of the worst things we can try to do. And this article talks about like, there's no, it's going to slow down because it's more consumer confidence, but the market's not going up or down or rates. It all depends on what's going on in the economy and the policy that goes through. And I just keep hearing all this chatter, the market's going to explode up. I don't know. Have you heard of the term called the Trump trade? I've heard it. I have not. All right. Well, I'll share it in a minute because I think it has to do with your topic here, Henry, which is about mortgage rates, right? Cool. So we'll save it for me, but let's say I'm just happy that James locked in his rate when he did because a half point higher on a mortgage that James Danard can afford is probably like $2,000 a month. It's like $57 for James. It's like eight grand. I've never seen so much fear on both sides. Each side feels like if the other side wins, we're going to lose democracy. And that's scary, right? I mean, that's terrifying. So I could see where there is perhaps fear holding people back. Here's what I think it is. And maybe I'm oversimplifying things. Now, this is how I think they feel, not based in any sort of reality. I think the general public feels no matter who wins, they're probably going to want to stimulate the economy. And so they're hoping that whoever wins will help bring interest rates down so that they are waiting to jump in because the hopes are that interest rates will come down because the new candidate will want to stimulate the economy. But at the end of the day, I don't think it's going to make very much of an impact in the near future for rates. And also both candidates have policies that could have impacts on the housing market. But I don't know that the impacts they're planning for are the actual impacts that will happen. And honestly, nobody knows. And so I think people are just there's fear and there's a hope that they can get in with lower rates. Yeah. Well, I think one of the specific things in this Redfin survey I was talking about earlier that they mentioned was that if Vice President Harris wins, she has proposed a $25,000 grant for first-time homebuyers. So I think, I don't know, if it were me and I was a first-time homebuyer, I'd probably wait and see if I was going to get $25,000. So there is, I think, more in this election because so much has been focused on housing and housing affordability that maybe people are going to see which way the wind blows. Yeah. And I think it's just important to know how to take practical steps as an investor, not speculate. We can guess all we want. Market will go up, it's going to go down, but it's really like instead of building an appreciation, instead of thinking that it's going to be worth more, just pad your performa. If you're going and you think the market's going to be slower, you're dispoing in the winner or the election time, then add a couple hole buns to your term times. Absolutely. If rates are jumping up and down, assume the worst. And as long as you assume the worst in your underwriting, you can still transact because people get, it's like a little thing happens, a little blip and everyone gets cold feet. They freeze up, they lock up. And it's just like, forget the noise, look at the history, look at the economy, pad your purchasing. Yes, 100%. That is the advice for investors. If you are thinking about this, I literally had a conversation this morning. Think about this. I am in Arkansas. I am making an offer on a house whose ARV is 200,000. And I am debating, I made an offer at 40,000 and the lady countered me at 48,000, only an $8,000 difference of a $200,000 house. And I said, no, I said, no, I'm sticking to my number of 40,000 because I am underwriting a long hold time, even though it's a $200,000 house, which there's only like 10 of those on the market right now. Like I am sticking to my numbers because of the uncertainty. And that's the discipline I think you have to have as a investor if you want to be successful, because I don't want to be holding onto this thing for six, eight, nine months and be mad that all my profit got eaten up by holding costs. All right. We've got to take a short break, but stick with us. We'll talk mortgage rates and the Trump trade on the other side. Welcome back to On The Market. Let's move on to our second topic, Henry. I think yours is kind of related. We started talking about rates. I think that's what you're coming in with. Absolutely. So my article comes from realestatenews.com and the headline is real estate is in for a fright as mortgage rates return to 7%. Spooky. Spooky. So essentially the article is talking about mortgage rates have gone back up to 7% after we had the recent drop in interest rates. And the concern is that this surge could or is expected to have an impact for home buyers because now rates are higher, which means more people are again, priced out and causes a problem for affordability. Also, this can lead to a decrease in demand for homes and cause these longer hold times that we were talking about because there will be, or are less buyers because of the interest rates. And if you couple that with the election and the fear that we just talked about, I think that there's some truth to that. You're going to see longer hold times. The question is for how long do we expect these hold times to be? And the article kind of conveys this tone that is emotional. So it's more, uh, emotional and how people feel than fact, because there are facts that support both sides of the argument for the real estate market, right? There are facts that say we don't have enough inventory to support the demand. And so that the market should be moving quicker than we are seeing it move. And there are also facts that support that the market is slowing down and that there are less buyers. And so if people can't rely on the facts, so they don't know which facts to trust, then they rely on their emotions and how they feel. And right now it feels scary and it feels turbulent. And I think that that's going to lead to the slowdown. So what do you guys think about the interest rates at 7%? Do you think it's going to cause longer hold times or do you think it's just more of the same? I feel like so many people were confused that when the Fed cut rates, that this would be, Oh, you know, mortgage rates are going to go down to 5%. No matter how many times we scream it from the rooftops, that that's not what's going to happen. Um, I still thought it would happen, right? In one of our shows, we, we were guessing where rates would be and I thought they would keep going down and here they are going up. So we're, we're still in this really strange economy where the market is, is so strong. Our latest, um, jobless claims report was low again, which means fewer people are losing their jobs. And when the bond market sees that they, they rally and, you know, and they start investing in stocks with less fear about a pending recession. So that's, that's this place we're in of, if we want to see rates, mortgage rates go down, that generally means things aren't as good in the economy. And when things are hot in the economy, that generally means mortgage rates go up. So it's a mixed bag, right? It's somewhat of a strong economy. At least a lot of people don't think so, but jobs report is telling us that and mortgage rates follow. So. I personally think we're in for like a pretty slow winter, uh, housing market wise. I don't see mortgage rates coming down all that much for the next couple of months, because although the fed activity does have some impact on the mortgage rates, I actually think the presidential election is having an impact on mortgage rates, which I'll explain in just a second, but it's also just remember that it's just a seasonally slow time of year. And so like, it's probably going to be chilly and not a lot of transaction volume going into the winter anyway, but I told you guys about something called the Trump trade. And I'm not surprised you haven't heard this because only people who read about bond investors and bond nerds sentiment know about this. And I do. And you do need to understand the bond market if you want to understand rates. You do. So I read about bond yields and basically bond yields have been going up just as a reminder, bond yields almost perfectly correlated mortgage rates. And so if you want to know what's happening with mortgage rates, you look at what's with bond yields. And bond yields have been going up despite interest rates going down, which is a little bit unusual. But bond yields go up for a couple of reasons. Some of those reasons are inflation fears. Other times it's when other assets are doing better. Like if there is potential that the stock market's going to do really well, people won't invest in bonds that lowers demands that puts up yields. Both of those things are potentially going to happen if Trump wins. So that's basically what people think is if Trump wins, a lot of the policies that he's promised to do are stimulative, like tax cuts, for example. And we already see the labor market doing well. So with lower recession risk, that usually pushes bond yields up. And the second thing is he said he was going to impose tariffs. Tariffs tend to be or historically have been inflationary. And so when you look at these two things, you see it might be stimulative and inflationary. Both of those things tend to push up bond yields, which is probably why we see mortgage rates going up right now or is at least one of the reasons why mortgage rates are going up right now. So long story short, the reason I don't think rates will move that much is because even if Trump wins in November, he doesn't get inaugurated until January. Then you have to see what policies actually happen. And so I just think whoever wins, we won't know what they're going to do until probably February. And so a lot of the uncertainty that we're feeling in the market is not going to be answered by the election. It's actually probably going to be answered by the new president's first hundred days in office. So anyway, that's my tangent about bond yields. That is if we know who's president by February. No, don't say that. Please. Hopefully we know. Yes, I'm with you. I hope we just know. And the one thing about this article that Henry brought in, though, it's, you know, rates could be up towards seven percent. The market could really slow down. But we were just in that market nine to 12 months ago. Right. And things were transacting. It was fine. Yeah, it might slow growth, but it's like, you know, just remember, like, what is the experience recently with this? I mean, this was not that long ago. Rates were at seven percent. We're just right almost there anyways. Also, guess what happened 365 days ago? I won the flip. Rates hit seven percent. Well, yeah. And then what we saw, too, during that time is they started going into the sevens at the end of the year or low sevens. And then we saw this massive explosion. That first quarter of 2024 was a rocket ship for appreciation. I mean, Dave, that's why we timed that deal so well. Our flip off house jumped 10 percent in 60 days because of that ramp up. And that's right off that seven percent rate. And so, you know, I don't know. You can transact. It will be fine. You just got to adjust your numbers. Yeah. Underwrite better. Sit on the properties a little longer. They'll sell when they sell. You'll make money. People need houses. Well, yeah, I mean, I totally get that. But I do think, like, especially if you're new, it's a little nerve wracking to see. But just a reminder that, yeah, no one knows what's going to happen. People thought rates were going to fall. They did not. You could have locked in at James's rate. Now people are kicking themselves. Best thing to do is just admit that none of us know what's going to happen. And if you can find a deal that works now, do it. All right. We're going to stay on our politically themed episode today. So, Kathy, tell us what headline and story you're bringing. Prop 33 in California. And this is another rent control bill that has been turned down twice in the last two times. The California voters actually voted against rent control, which is shocking. But it seems pretty 50-50 right now. Basically, what this would do, Prop 33 would repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995. And that act really was kind of pro-landlord, I guess you could say, which is, again, shocking for California because it limits rent control on single-family homes, on condos, and on new apartments. And this, if Prop 33 passes, it would repeal that and allow local governments to decide whatever rent control they want. So, from what I understand, most counties are just going to keep what they've got because Gavin Newsom's already passed a law in 2019 limiting rent controls in general. Basically, it's capped at 5% plus inflation. But for many people, that's still too much. They say it's still too much. As they say in the bill, the rent's too damn high. So, even with that bill, people don't want to see rents go up, especially when inflation was at 9% plus 5%. Although it's still at 10% even regardless of what inflation is. So, we already kind of have rent control. But if Prop 33 passes, then single-family homeowners would have rent control and also new apartments. So, as you can imagine, I would think a lot of developers would not be so interested in building new apartments, which is desperately needed. We have a shortage of housing. They wouldn't be so incentivized if they have caps on the rent. Also, right now, if you are rent-controlled but the tenant moves out, you can raise rents. And Prop 33 wouldn't allow that. Oh, really? Even on turnover? Yeah. A lot of times, people under rent control will never leave, right? They'll stay in the same place. And it might be a studio apartment or a one-bedroom and now they've got four kids, but they won't leave because they have such low rent. But in this case, they could move. So, from a tenant perspective, it allows that mobility. But from a landlord perspective, I'll tell you what, I mean, I already don't invest in California, but I think a lot of other people would join me in that. And then there would be less rental housing, in my opinion. I mean, just living through it here in the Netherlands, they passed a rent control bill last year. It's a little bit more complicated. There's like a point system and I don't know, this whole thing. Long story short, rental prices have gone up like crazy because as soon as this thing went into effect, all of the landlords started selling their homes because it was just too risky to run the business. And so, now there's just less rental supply. And you know what? Housing prices didn't go down at all. It's not like the new rental supply hitting the market helped to make purchasing more affordable for the average person. And so, now what you have is just fewer rentals for the same amount of renters. That's going to set up prices because unlike the bill Cathy was talking about here, when a tenant moves out, you can reset it to market rates. And so, what happens is as soon as someone moves out, rents are going up 10, 15, 20%. And that makes it even more difficult for people who are trying to find a new apartment. So, obviously, it's a different country, different type of situation, but rent control is just one of those things. Every time it's been tried, liberal city, conservative city, no matter what, it just hasn't worked. It doesn't work in the way that it's intended to. And so, I get that it's politically popular, but it's just not grounded in any sort of research or any sort of evidence. Well, it hasn't been. I mean, it's lost twice. So, this could fail again. Ironically, the person behind the bill apparently owns apartments and they call him the slumlord. I don't know if that's true or why this would be allowed. But in cities like Berkeley, where if this passed, Berkeley would absolutely enact stricter rent control laws. That's what they've been trying to do. And when you've got a city like Berkeley, if you have any city that is constricted in growth, and in the case of Berkeley, you've got water around you. You're surrounded by water. And then behind is nature. It's a park. So, there's really no way to grow unless you grow up. So, then you would need more apartments to provide more housing. And if apartment owners don't want to come in, well, that's a problem. So, yes, rent is high, no question. But it's also California, and it's crowded cities, and it's never not been expensive. I mean, I think the problem with it is that we're trying to untie housing prices and rent prices. And they're tied together. You can't untie them. If you want to continue to have a supply of homes to rent, then housing prices and rent prices need to be tied together. And if you enact a rent control, people will do just what Dave said, is they'll try to get out and sell those properties. And then you have less properties available for people to rent, which is going to increase the prices. And if the prices go up and the rent doesn't go up, then that's not going to fix any sort of supply issue. So, I mean, I just think you can't untether the two and think you have to solve the problem. In other words, you have to solve for affordability and rent at the same time. Yeah, because it's going to diminish supply. Like, the math does not work. Land's expensive, money's expensive, construction costs are expensive. Let's keep your income down. Who wants to buy into that? That doesn't make any sense. And that's going to less units come to market. Multifamily permits have already slowed down dramatically because of this. Not just because of rent control, because of these costs. And then if you cap the potential and then the real estate in investing, that's going to be a major issue. You cannot pay for this. Banks won't even lend you money if your income is capped to a certain rate. It's like, how are you supposed to build this if a bank won't lend you money? I feel like California is smoking too much of whatever it is. They're like, California was the dream. 90s to early, you know, I'd say 2010. You know, specifically, we are speaking about the article, which is about rent control. And I don't necessarily think that that's the solution. That's not to say that I don't think we need some sort of better affordable housing and affordable rent solution. Like, as a landlord, I'm still all for finding an affordable rent solution. I just don't think this is the approach. And just a reminder that the writers at the BiggerPockets blog do a great job of breaking down issues like California's Prop 33. So go to BiggerPockets.com slash blog if you want to learn more. All right. Time for one final break. But we've got a business headline for you right after this. Hey, friends, let's jump back into the headlines. For our last headline, I picked something that was not election related. And it's just kind of a little bit different. Instead of talking about the housing market, I brought a headline that is the 10 best companies for career growth. Because unlike you three, I work full time. And I think for a lot of people working full time and trying to grow a career and buying real estate at the same time, great way to build your portfolio. You're a little easier to get loans. You have a little bit higher risk tolerance, risk capacity in my mind. So I wanted to share some of these with you. Let me just ask you, do you guys have any guesses for the company's top 10? Any you want to nominate? Amazon. Amazon. Yeah, they're probably. Yeah, it's not Amazon. The best companies for career growth. Okay. Career growth. So basically, it says that this is from the American Opportunity Index. It says it measures how well America's largest companies drive economic mobility and positive career outcomes for their employees. And that also helped fuel business performance. Having worked for Walmart. I knew this was coming. And saw how proactive they were in pushing people to grow their career, no matter what part of the company you wanted to. Like, I'd never worked for a company who pushed people harder to grow within the company. I'd be shocked if they're not on the list. Okay. James, you got a guess? I mean, if Henry's going to rep his backyard, I'm going to rep mine. I'm going to go with Amazon over Microsoft. I feel like some of these tech companies are a little capped out for growth because they already hit their bigger growth. But I do know they take care of their employees and they pay them in advance. Nvidia? Oh, okay. So I have to say, none of you are correct. At least in the top 10. I think Walmart, let me look. Well, I think Walmart is probably on the top 100. But okay, so- Amazon, yeah, is on there, but low. I don't think Amazon, because although corporate, I'm sure they make a lot of money, a lot, most of Amazon's payroll is probably in warehouses and- It's number 39. 39? Okay. Well, Henry, I saw this and thought of you because Walmart is not on the top 10, but another company in your market that you talk about often- Tyson or J.B. Hunt. Is J.B. Hunt is number six. They're a shipping company, right? Trucking? Yep. Yeah. So they are number six. But number one is Grainger, which I've heard of, they used to send those giant, did you ever get those giant catalogs that they sent to your house? They have offices here too, yeah. Oh, okay. So Grainger, which is industrial supplies and equipment. They're number one. Number two is Costco, which made me really happy because who doesn't love Costco? Costco's like the greatest place on earth. Ah, man, I wish we could have one here. We can't get one here. Are they banned from Arkansas? They're just not allowed anywhere near Walmart? They bought some land and we're going to build one and that got shut down. Yeah, I'm sure. The cops just were like, no, you can't build that here. So Costco, yeah, famously known for taking care of their employees. Number three was Capital One Financial. Then number four is the first tech company, Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook. Then we have ServiceNow, which I don't even know what that is. Do you guys know what that is? I've heard, yes. I've heard of ServiceNow. Are they a SaaS company? It is, yeah. Cloud-based software, IT service management, whatever that means. That's just like one of those very generic terms. Yeah, it's like Salesforce. Then we had J.B. Hunt, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and then it goes to a lot of financial companies like MetLife, Bank of America, KeyBank. But James, okay, Starbucks, number 13, that's in your backyard. That's in the backyard. That is in the backyard. I do have a question on this list, though. How is Best Buy on number 27? Who goes in there anymore? That is amazing. What growth is going on? Am I missing something with Best Buy? I went into a Best Buy this summer and I had the thought, I was like, this is the first time I've been in a Best Buy since high school. It's been 20 years. Don't they all look like they're under construction no matter what? That's just the aesthetic. Yeah, half the shelves are just bare. There's nothing going on in there. But I was traveling for work and the lighting in my hotel was terrible and I needed to record a podcast and you know what? They had LED lights. So thank you, Best Buy. That's why you're on this list. I bet you Walmart had those same lights for a fraction of the cost. All right, Homer, you're just rooting for your own company. But I do think, I don't know, I thought this was interesting because I do think going into a more challenging time to find deals, uncertain economic times, that as an investor, trying to grow your career and buy real estate at the same time is a great option. And finding these places that offer really stable careers, awesome way to do it. If it were me and I was starting my career, I would choose something that was completely AI proof or as AI proof as I could, or I'd be working to try and build AI, like working at Meta. And I think a lot of these financial companies, that's a good reason, like Costco, Grainger, these more like service manufacturing. Sure, AI will impact them, but it's, I think, a little less likely than like my job with data analysts, which is just going to get crushed by AI. And as a real estate investor, this is really great information to find out where the headquarters are for these top 100, because the employees there are making more money if they have more of an ability to get promoted in those companies. Way to bring it to real estate, Kathy. Thanks, Kathy. I appreciate that. Where's Grainger located? I don't know. I was about to look it up. I'm going to do it. Founded in Chicago. So maybe Chicago. All right. Chicago. There you go. All right. Well, those are our stories for you guys. And thank you all so much for bringing them. We talked a lot about the election, talked about mortgage rates and where they might be headed. And if you are like me and work full time, some places you can grow your career while you're building your real estate portfolio. Henry, James, Kathy, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having us. Thank you, buddy. And thank you all for listening. We'll see you for another episode of On The Market very soon.