“It’s NOT JUST THE PRICE..” Why NO ONE IS BUYING A HOUSE

Prospective homebuyers right now in 2025 are stressed out. There's no two ways about it. It is practically impossible to buy a home unless you are essentially wealthy these days. You need to have a well above average income to be able to afford a house in most areas of the country and even then doesn't mean it's going to be easy to buy depending on the inventory situation of where you're looking at. In fact, 92 percent of people who would like to buy a house right now are feeling stressed out about potentially buying one in 2025. And this comes from the homebuyer sentiment survey and it basically gauges how people feel about the current state of the market. And the reality is as a former real estate agent I can 100 percent confirm that buying a house has never been easy guys. Even when real estate was deemed affordable it was still hard to buy because obviously people made a lot less money then and saving up enough money for the down payment takes a tremendous amount of discipline and qualifying to buy a home is also kind of difficult in itself. All of your finances need to be in order to be able to qualify. But one of the biggest problems with homebuyers in general is that they just don't understand how real estate works okay because 80 percent of the homebuyers surveyed said that they are waiting for interest rates to come down and 76 percent said that they put off buying a home last year in 2024 due to high interest rates. But the reality is they're not buying because of home prices. I guarantee you all of these people would be buying if interest rates were 15 percent but the median home price was $200,000. You understand what I mean? That's the part that a lot of people don't look at. They just look at the mortgage rates because they are so conditioned by the media to believe that that's the main reason housing is expensive and they believe that if that doesn't come down that they'll never be able to afford a house. But the reality is interest rates can stay exactly where they are right now and housing can get more affordable. That's what's happening in many areas across the country where prices are dropping right now. About 48 percent of homebuyers said they're willing to wait between three and six months for mortgage rates to fall but mortgage rates probably aren't going to dip below six percent at least until maybe 2027 guys. Maybe if we're lucky. So that's at least two more years. So waiting three to six months is an absolute joke. And let me tell you something even if interest rates got around five percent which is what a lot of people want to see or even below five percent to be able to buy newsflash it's not going to make buying that much more affordable especially even if prices stay the same because the taxes on these properties the property taxes as well as the homeowner's insurance has gone up so much that it's eating away any potential savings that you think you're going to get from a lower interest rate right now. And let me just be clear about something the reason I talk about this stuff is not to convince anybody that they shouldn't be buying a house. The reason I talk about it is to actually inform people of what they're getting themselves into if they decide they do want to buy a house in this environment because you have a lot of challenges and a lot of hurdles ahead of you if you decide to do it. Check this thing out they call this Jeep the Apocalypse six by six. I've seen a couple of these things around Miami but that thing looks wicked. So naturally because so many people are conditioned to be on the lookout for the mortgage rate situation people are asking questions like how long should you wait for mortgage rates to drop? The true answer to that question is you shouldn't. You should not wait for interest rates to drop. If you're in the perfect position to buy a house today and you find the house that you've been looking for for the last six months and suddenly it magically appears forget about the interest rates buy the house guys. That's always been my advice throughout all of this. There is a high probability that mortgage rates won't fall at all in 2025 and if they do it's going to be very minimal first of all. And if anybody's thinking that interest rates are going to come back down to where they were during the pandemic and we're going to see rates in the low threes or the fours again it's not going to happen. It just isn't. As of right now Fannie Mae is forecasting that the 30-year mortgage rates are going to end this year at 6.6 percent and will end 2026 at 6.5 percent so essentially no difference from where it is right now. So you can be looking at mortgage rates being the same at least until the end of 2026 going into 2027. So the interest rates should not be a determining factor if you should be buying a house today or ever. And you might be saying well Michael that's kind of a lot what my real estate agent says oh forget about the mortgage rates you can always refinance later and that's where my opinion starts to differ from all the real estate agents that are trying to sell you a house. Okay because the argument that the real estate agents will give you to buy a house is that yeah you can buy it today and refinance when the rates come down but that's not always possible especially if the value of your home does not go up while the rates are coming down. In fact when interest rates are coming down there's a high probability that the value of your home is coming down as well because that's one of the reason interest rates are coming down to try and juice the economy and juice the market and get people back out there in order to buy. Look what happened during the pandemic right Why did we have ultra low interest rates? Because we got shocked into this crazy recession due to a global pandemic and having the low interest rates was enough incentive to get a lot of people out there to buy and refinance. Without those low interest rates we wouldn't have seen that huge uptick in activity. But here's why I disagree with most real estate agents on this. While I do agree with the part that you should not wait to buy based on what the interest rates I differ tremendously when we're talking about the reasons behind it because real estate agents will say that well if you wait to buy then you're also waiting to build equity in your house okay which goes back to the statement I made a little bit ago if interest rates are coming down to the point where you can refinance there's a high probability that the value of your house is dropping at the same time. So you are not going to be able to refinance that house that you just bought today if in three years from now it's worth less than what you paid for because you will not have the equity guys and you can't do a refinance if you don't have the equity and so these are short-term sales tactics for real estate agents to get to be able to sell you the house today because it gives you hope and belief that you're going to be able to buy the house and have a lower payment in the future which is complete nonsense because let's face it even if you are lucky enough to be able to refinance in the next three years which is highly highly doubtful but let's say you are right your top five percent of home buyers that gets to be lucky enough to do that you know what's going to happen your property taxes are going to go up your homeowners insurance are going to go up the repair costs to repair your home unexpectedly are going to go up and so even if you're able to refinance the house the savings that you're going to get from that refinance is going to be completely eaten away by those other increases to own the home that's just the reality i'm spewing facts here as a current homeowner and somebody who's owned investment properties in the past that's just the way it goes expenses for properties don't go down okay they go up they never go down here we have a house for sale that's surprisingly not a flip but they actually listed it back in august of last year don't know the price they listed it for but apparently it didn't sell obviously asking too much money then they decided well let's do what all the sellers try to do in this position let's relist it again for the spring market so they relisted it at 1.7 million now they're down to 1.65 as of february and still no buyers here's something else i want to share with you guys real quick too as i'm scrolling through this listing look what zillow insight says here that this is a buyer's market this zip code says the median time for the home to go pending around here is about 77 days this house has already been on the market for 82 days so what do they say at the end what is the offer strategy then this home has been listed for more days than the median negotiation is often possible in a buyer's market in other words low ball them guys low ball them when you see these zillow insights like this if you're looking at a property do not be afraid to offer significantly less they're asking 1.65 on this house right now shoot them an offer for 1.2 see what they say i'm not going to i'm not buying this house but i'm saying if somebody out there wanted to buy it do it shoot them this offer you might be surprised are they going to accept it probably not but it will definitely get the negotiations going and you might be surprised at the discount that you'll be able to get off of a house like that and by the way remember if you ever need help buying a home or selling a home anywhere in the united states i always got you covered all you need to do is use my link down in the description below and i can set you up with a real estate agent 100% for free and it's a great help to you and it's a great help to the channel and i appreciate if you use the service and one other thing i want to say about interest rates dropping before we change the subject here is that a lot of people buy and sell real estate based on their personal needs in life at the moment okay it usually has basically nothing to do with the current state of the market it usually has nothing to do with what's going on with interest rates or you know inventory anything like that most people sell or buy a house because of a major life change whether it's a divorce whether it's having a kid whether it's a new job something so to sit there and be on the sidelines and be waiting for interest rates to drop right now is a fool's errand but by no means am i encouraging to go out there and buy because i do not think now is a great time to buy it's a better time than it has been over the past two or three years but it's still not great but if you're somebody that really wants to buy a house and you are convinced that now is the time for you but you want to look at the most affordable places well i got you covered here guys because i saw a list of the most affordable states to buy a house in right now and i'm going to share it with you from the bottom to the top alabama median home price is $278,000 you only got to make $77,000 a year to buy a house there louisiana median home price is $251,000 you only need $76,000 a year to buy a house there missouri median home price is $256,000 and you need $74,000 a year to buy a house there michigan median home price is $249,000 and you only need $74,000 a year to buy a house there arkansas one of my favorite ones on this list actually median home price is $255,000 you need $73,000 a year to buy a house indiana median home price $258,000 you only need $72,000 a year to buy a house mississippi $246,000 homes $72,000 salary required ohio $238,000 homes $71,000 a year required iowa another favorite on this list arguably if i was looking to move to the midwest i would probably be looking at iowa median home price $229,000 salary needed $70,000 a year and then the top one is not a huge surprise and probably the least desirable but it is the most affordable guys west virginia median home price is $252,000 you only need $64,000 a year to buy a house there however the local economy in west virginia is very very depressed and a lot of people are leaving and that is the reason why it's so cheap there but if you have a good job there for some reason you can definitely make it work now earlier this week here in florida governor de santis was on the news talking about a plan for property tax relief for homeowners here in florida and he wants the legislator here in florida to hand out about five billion dollars towards immediate property tax relief for florida homeowners which if approved would save each homesteaded resident about one thousand dollars a year in property taxes so not bad thousand dollars a year saved is okay but what happened to eliminating property taxes just about a month or two ago we were talking about eliminating property taxes now we're just talking about lowering them you see this house right here is the perfect example of what's wrong with the housing market especially here in miami okay this house was sold back in may of 2022 for 9.4 million dollars arguably right at the top of the housing market okay then they tried listing it for sale just a few months later for almost 13 million dollars had it down to 11.5 million in 2023 then they even had a genius idea to raise the price to 28 million dollars back in march of 2023 nowhere near reality of what somebody would actually pay for this house and fast forward to today the house is listed for 12 million seven hundred fifty thousand dollars with no buyers basically three years later okay so this is a flip gone wrong no one's going to be paying this much money for this house apparently and i would argue that the house is worth no more than what the person paid for at the 9.4 million that's probably the max max of what this house is worth considering that was the height of the housing market so asking more for it now when things are already on the downswing is kind of ridiculous anyways back to what desantis was saying about the property taxes getting lowered one thing i do like about this proposal is at least even though it's not a complete elimination of taxes that they are targeting only homesteaded florida homeowners which is something that they kind of left out on the very first discussions about this because those are the people who deserve the tax breaks the residents of florida not speculative investors that come in and own you know multiple properties here they don't get the tax break like the homesteaded homeowner gets desantis actually said that of all the taxes that are impacting floridians right now property taxes are the most significant which i would wholeheartedly agree guys when i look at my life here in florida i pay more taxes in property taxes than for anything else you know sales taxes is seven percent statewide you might pay a little bit more depending on what your local taxes are sales taxes are only about seven percent here so lower than a lot of other states the gas tax is not very high you know gas prices here are even cheaper than a lot of areas in the midwest it's really just those property taxes we don't have any income taxes here in florida you know that's always the argument i get against florida like well you guys don't have any income taxes but all the other taxes there are really high to make up for it that's not actually true only the property taxes are pretty egregious these days and they're actually far worse in areas where housing is expensive like here in miami or over in naples florida or anywhere in florida where you're going to see multi-million dollar homes and because florida is such a tourist driven state then we have the ability and the luxury to pass along most of our taxes to the visitors that come here to the state while the residents get to reap the benefits so if everything goes to plan they're trying to get this property tax relief bill on the ballot for 2026 so it's still pretty far away guys and notice how i said earlier they're no longer talking about eliminating property taxes in florida they're talking about lowering property taxes in florida which like i said i'll take it something's better than nothing but it looks like that whole idea of no property taxes in florida is gone with the wind and you know one thing i've talked about a lot here on the channel is all the insurance companies committing fraud and overcharging people for homeowner's insurance here and this has been a huge problem here in the state of florida well guess what another one was recently caught red-handed and they actually now have to pay back 30 million dollars to the state's hurricane fund following allegations that they fraudulently submitted numerous ineligible claims for reimbursement according to the attorney general's office the company in question universal property and casualty insurance company very familiar name here in florida the attorney general in florida said that they violated the florida false claims act and now they have to pay back 30 million dollars essentially in restitution which we know for an insurance company isn't really that much money and then of course this money is going to go towards you know the hurricane relief efforts whenever there is a storm here then this money is used to help people out help people rebuild help people get out of the mess because what this hurricane relief insurance fund does is it provides reimbursements to residential property insurance companies for a portion of their payments to homeowners for hurricane related property damage and it can kind of help soften the blow when it comes to the losses for insurance companies but does anybody see the real problem with this here the insurance company gets caught red-handed committing fraud and yeah they have to pay 30 million dollars in fines but that's not a lot of money for an insurance company billions is a lot of money for an insurance company this is kind of like a rich guy driving down the street getting a speeding ticket is that going to stop them from speeding again no they might be a little more on the lookout for the cops next time but they're not going to stop speeding you get my drift so no matter what happens unless people go to jail unless these insurance companies essentially have the people responsible get locked up for fraud these shenanigans are going to continue indefinitely with insurance companies and there's basically nothing that you can do about it because if you have a mortgage you are forced to pay that insurance whether you like it or not so yeah i know how much it sucks guys it is pathetic but this is the world we live in so if you enjoyed this video make sure you are subscribed to the channel and if you don't want to wait for my next video to come out check out this one on the screen right over here and i'll see you in the next one