ZILLOW: Housing Market Update | Mortgage Rates SKYROCKET

Y'all, I put an offer on a house and it was accepted. Again, you guys, I put an offer on a house and it was accepted. I'm very, very excited to tell you guys exactly what happened. And that's going to be at the end of this video. We're also going to go over Zillow's most recent housing market update. And I'm going to show you guys so much of their data that is completely inconsistent and the opposite of what the reality of the housing market actually is. In our first segment, we're going to go over residential mortgage rates. And I'm going to show you guys how much mortgage rates have skyrocketed over the last few months. And having said that, happy Friday and welcome back to Real Estate Mindset. So our first segment, we're going to talk about residential mortgage rates. And by now, you should know that residential mortgage rates follow the longer end of the treasury. So the ones that are a little bit older, like the 10-year, 30-year, 20-year, but we're tracking the 10-year. And the 10-year tracks residential mortgage rates pretty well, you guys. And as of today, it's about sideways. But I wanted to go all the way back to right about here, which is February 27th, 2026, because I want to show you guys how much this has actually skyrocketed since about the end of February, right when we started the war. So you guys see that it's gone up about 63 basis points. So it was at 3.952%. It's now at 4.56%. Now, as of today, this is how mortgage rates have been impacted by the 10-year going up. On the upper left, you guys see right here, the 6.65%. That's your conventional mortgage. Now, a lot of people think it's a slam dunk better deal than an FHA mortgage, which is absolutely not correct. It could be better than FHA mortgage if it doesn't come with mortgage insurance, which you basically need a 20% down payment. But look at guys, the FHA you can see is about 40 basis points lower at 6.23%. One of the biggest and really the only disadvantages of having an FHA mortgage is mortgage insurance never goes away on an FHA unless you have 10% down and you wait 11 years. And really, you guys, that's the only reason you would want a conventional over an FHA because you've got a lot of ground to recover being that the interest rate is lower with FHA. I also wanted to go back and take a look at what interest rates were right before the interest rates started going up. So you guys see, I went back to February 27th of this year and residential mortgage rates very, very briefly dropped under 6%. So roughly there were about 65 to 66 basis points higher right now than they were February 27th of this year. This next screen is very, very important to understand because it's really screaming at mom and pop saying, hey, you guys, interest rates are going to continue to go up. They are not. Again, I repeat, they are not going to start going down unless, of course, finally have our great economic depression. But right now you guys are looking at CME FedWatch, which is the market predicting what interest rates are going to be. And I went all the way to December. So the Federal Reserve meets December 9th. And this is what the market is saying is going to happen. Now, first of all, this first little bar right here is where we're at today, which is 3.5% to 3.75%. And that's the federal funds rate. That's not residential mortgages. So this is the interest rate that banks lend from. They jack up the yield and then they lend the money to us and other people. But this is saying, you guys, there's about a 41% chance that interest rates are going to be about a quarter percent higher at the end of the year and a 30.5% chance that they're going to be 50 basis points higher with 8.7% chance saying 75 basis points higher. So why have we all been suffering so much and why has inflation not gone down? And the answer to that is because the overwhelming amount of government fraud. In other words, you guys do not count on residential mortgage rates going down this year at all unless the Federal Reserve purchases mortgage-backed securities like this on this chart right here. And I wanted to go back to when this first started happening. You guys see that it didn't happen prior to 2009. Look at that zero, zero mortgage-backed securities held by the Federal Reserve. It started happening right about here, January 14th, 2009. So this has been going on for 17 years. And I lost my house during this time frame and they promised us that this was never going to happen again. So they started selling them off right here at the end of 2010, right here into 2011. And then look at this, the end of 2012, they enticed Wall Street to come back in the housing market because it could never recover. And so they started purchasing mortgage-backed securities, again, incentivizing investors in Wall Street to come back into the market. And let me show you guys what happened right here. So right when we got out of lockdowns, not only did they drop the federal funds rate, which we just went over to 0%, they also started purchasing all of those mortgages at light speed. Look at that. So this is all purchasing. And by them purchasing like this, it artificially drove the interest rates down even more. Because remember, you guys, we had about a 0% to 1% federal funds rate right in this pocket right here, but interest rates never got to 2% and 1%. They got to 2% and 1% because of the velocity of mortgage-backed security purchasing, which is also known as quantitative easing. Now you're looking at purchase demand. So even though they're saying interest rates are at least under 7%, demand hasn't really come back. And the demand is in blue. And if you kind of want to know where demand has been, you got to go back prior to the lockdowns, which is right here going back to about 2016. So demand in a normal, I guess a normal housing market is way up here. Right now it's way, way down here. Now it's inched up a little bit from like historic lows in 2024, but it's nowhere near healed. So all the people that are saying that the housing market is incredibly resilient and things of that nature may be true in their housing market. But overall, you guys, the housing market and the demand in the housing market is an absolute dumpster fire, despite what realtors are saying. And part of the reason why it's a dumpster fire is because people can't afford to buy a house, not normal people. Maybe if you're filthy rich, you can do whatever you want. I'm not filthy rich. The people that I know are not filthy rich and we're all struggling. But what I wanted to show you is just how unaffordable payments are by going to Zillow's affordability calculator. I really recommend you guys come here to see just how bad the housing market is. This goes back to the dot-com bubble of January 2000. And you guys can see during the global financial crisis, we peaked at a debt to income ratio, meaning how affordable our housing payments. We peaked up 44.2 percent and then it plummeted downward. You guys, what I really wanted to demonstrate here is when we change this to 5 percent down, it's a little bit easier to see. But here's what I wanted to show you guys. March 2022, we had interest rates that were under 4 percent. So we had interest rates that were under 4 percent in March. And the debt to income ratio was still 38 percent, which means if the Federal Reserve buys mortgage-backed securities and the federal funds rate is lower to zero percent, debt to income ratio is not going to go under 38 percent because we've already been here, you guys. And the big difference from 2022 is most, not all, most houses are now more expensive. So if they drop the rates down again to where they were, it's only going to eliminate any further options to blow up the housing market bubble. And you guys can see on the left of your screen, March 4th, 2022, interest rate average 3.96 percent. And we still had a 38 percent DTI. And that was before property taxes really, really exploded and homeowners insurance exploded. So even if we got to that interest rate you guys see on your screen, the debt to income ratio is going to be over 40 percent still because the prices are too high. Now, some people are still going to want to buy a house and that's OK. Fine. People purchase houses for different reasons. The housing market is hyperlocal. We know that. And if you do decide to buy a house right now, you already know, I hope you win. And the best way to win is to understand what you're doing and to look at the math. And one of the biggest things you guys could pay attention to is how mortgages actually work. And you do that by researching an amortization schedule like you see on your screen. And what I've done, you guys, is taking today's interest rate conventional at 6.65 percent with a loan amount of 500,000. Now, I always get people saying you're wasting your money in rent. And I agree with that. I'm paying 100 percent of my money in my shelter that goes to rent. But if you purchase a home, about 300 percent can go towards your mortgage. So what is worse? Either way, obviously, I want to own a house. I'm just saying you've got to understand this because look at a $500,000 loan at today's interest rate of 6.65 percent is going to cost you in just interest $655,000 in fees. The total amount you pay back, not counting taxes, insurance, maintenance, HOA and things like that, you're going to pay back 1.15 million dollars. The reason is, is because amortization schedules are a ripoff and they are designed to keep you in debt with the lender for the rest of your life. Now, it's really easy to see that when you look at the middle all the way to the left in red, you see that the first year of payments, because this is front loaded with interest, you pay $33,000 in interest. Meanwhile, for principal, you've only paid down $5,400 and your mortgage payment is $3,200. Now, when we go to the last year, we go from $33,000 in interest to only $1,300 paid in interest. If only the last year you guys was every single year and you see that $37,000 is paid towards your principal. Mitch, being that we're talking about mortgages, my next question for you is, would you please explain to mom and pop what a hidden mortgage is? We've been talking a lot about these second mortgages that nobody knows about and we've been warning people, if you're going to buy a house, look local, look at the local debt because that local debt creates a hidden mortgage on your property. Can you tell them about that, Mitch, so they're warned when purchasing a property? Depending on location and demographics, school district bond debt receives roughly 80% of all property taxes raised and obviously, in order to satisfy the demands, be it fraudulent and truthful and both, they receive 100% of the money demanded by the school districts in the form of operations and maintenance, that's O&M and interest and a sinking fund. The problem is that most of the money raised by property taxes for schools today goes to the interest and allegedly, the sinking fund. We haven't seen any sinking funds that are actually working that are truthful, meaning they're not using the money to put it in a bucket to pay down future debt. Further, games are played with inter-fund accounts and money is moved from one bucket to another bucket. In addition, part of the property taxes that goes to the state comptroller who creates another source of revenue for the state through the property valuation study, so the state comptroller themselves is participating in a fraud. To make the point, in the case of Godley, Texas, the average outstanding fraudulent school district bond debt is roughly $120,000 and the value, the median valuable home is roughly 160 grand. So there's a hidden second mortgage of roughly 75% that nobody in Godley and nobody in the state of Texas agreed to pay, nor did anybody agree to go bankrupt to support their school district. So meaning you have a hidden second mortgage that according to the Supreme Court of Texas on May 7th of this year, you have no rights whatsoever to protest the existence of the property taxes, to protest the overvaluation, to protest the overtaxation, and you have no rights afforded you under the Constitution of the United States of America according to the Supreme Court of Texas. Bottom line is, pay your taxes or we'll take your property. The abject definition of RICO and we're working on it. Yeah, we're working on it really, really hard as we're about to show you, but before I get there, let's jump into Zillow's most recent housing market update and I'm going to show you guys all of the insane, insane inconsistencies. Now in the mortgage section, we talked about payment, we talked about debt to income ratio being literally historically high, but so is the prices of house when compared to income. So this is the home price to income ratio. This is by long-term trends, really important to source your data because there's so much discrepancies in the data. And I just wanted to point out just how overpriced the house is, not just from, again, not just from the payment standpoint, but the price standpoint as well, even during the peak, around the peak of the global financial crisis, the house price to median household income ratio was about 6.78, meaning almost seven years to pay back your house. But when we fast forward, look at this absolute insanity, guys, this created a bubble right here from 2020 to 2022. We never paid for this mistake by the federal reserve. We started to pay. Look, it started to go down. You guys remember that? And then what happened? They bailed out the banks. Remember Silicon Valley? Remember the bank term funding program? Look at that. And they re-inflated the housing market instead of allowing it to correct. But comment below. Maybe you disagree with me. Let me know what you believe happened. Before jumping into the Zillow article, I wanted to do a full mortgage payment calculator, counting the property taxes and the homeowner's insurance. And you guys see $500,000 house, 5% down payment. And I want you guys to practice this on your own. So you see what you're getting yourself into. Today's interest rate of 6.65%. I'm using a 2% annualized tax rate. My tax rate is 3.52%. Homeowner's insurance, about 3,500 PMI, 0.55%. I'm not using HOA. But really what I wanted to show you guys is over 30 years, if you buy a $500,000 house, you actually pay back three times as much. More than three times as much. You guys see this here? After property taxes, homeowner's insurance, PMI, and your principal and interest, you pay back $1.529 million. That's why I'm screaming at the rooftops like, hey, you guys, they're lying about the housing market. It is so toxic. It's insane. But I also believe in owning. I want everyone to own. But I want you to be incredibly, incredibly careful. And I want you to take your time and look for the deal of your dreams. And I'm going to get to what I'm buying here in a second. But let's move on to what the hidden mortgage actually looks like. And here's an example. If you guys live in Aldine, here's what your independent school district has created as far as debt. Roughly $2 billion. And the collateral, remember you guys, is your ability to pay property taxes. That's the collateral. You have to pay it. That debt is doing nowhere. In fact, all it's doing is it goes down a little bit here, and then it skyrockets back up. This is a pattern in practice. You've got to be very, very careful. And speaking of being very, very careful, you have to be very, very careful at the narrative that's being created by the top housing market data provider, Zillow. Look at this, guys. Home shopping season shows signs of life as sales, new listings rebound. Zillow June housing market report. And look at this little bullet point right here. Lower mortgage costs. Interest rates went up and sales jump. Offer hope, but it's sales are still in the trash can, even as inventory growth hits a three year low. I'm going to read that again. They're saying even as inventory growth hits a three year low, that sounds concerning, right? But like when we look at housing inventory active listing count, we got 1.1 million right now. It's right here, you guys. Which means this is actually the highest it's been since November of 2019. So what is that, guys? About six and a half years. So we have more active inventory for existing homes in six and a half years. And Zillow never even mentioned it. Why is that? Let's go over their first three bullet points. The first one is as home sales jumped 5.9% from last year, according to Zillow's June market report, reversing May's decline. And then this article comes out yesterday, literally yesterday, US home prices hit all time high as sales slow and mortgage rates rise, which is the exact opposite of what we just read. Whatever. Let's keep going. New listings grew. Wait a minute. Wait. New listings grew 3% annually. I thought this just let's scroll back up here. Okay, let me scroll back up here. Okay, where is it? Even as inventory growth hits a three year low. But wait a minute, you guys. It's still positive. We have a high of six and a half years. It's still positive. And they're saying, oh, inventory growth three year low. Why do they leave like that? If not to press you into buying right now. And then the third bullet point, lower mortgage rates. Again, you guys, this is for June. Lower mortgage rates helped push the typical monthly payment 2.5% below year ago level. So they're saying, okay, again, this is where I'm going to show you guys. This is for June. So June had lower mortgage rates than May. According to them, the only problem is, is when I actually look at the residential mortgage rates and I look at May 7th, you guys see May 7th right here. Interest rates were 6.37%. They were actually lower than that at the beginning of May. And look at, and then they stayed during the half of the month to 6.36%. Look at that, you guys. And they went a little bit higher. But look at when we compare that to the beginning of June, it's much higher than the beginning of May. So when we take the averages, June residential mortgage rates were higher than May, despite what Zillow is saying. And just a couple of things I want to highlight from Zillow's most recent housing market report. First of all, they're calling this the 2026 housing recovery. But we've just been listening to them for the last five years about how strong the housing market is. So at what point did they decide we're going through a recovery? I'm not a hundred percent sure. They go on to say, like a great novel, 2026 has been a rollercoaster of emotions in terms of setback and your narrative. I'm going to add your narrative has been a setback as well, Zillow. June's chapter was pointedly more upbeat than May's with sales 5.9% higher than a year ago and 9.2% higher than May. They go on to say affordability continued to improve. What do they mean continue to improve? Mortgages are still $1,000 higher than when lockdowns happened, you guys. So what are they saying? Oh, here it is. They're saying it's down 2.5% from a year ago. Okay, that's what they're saying. But that's before taxes and insurance, which means if over one year, taxes and insurance are over 2.5% higher than your mortgage payment is also higher than the little bit lower that they're saying that interest rates are lower. Again, we just looked at interest rates and they were higher when compared to May. So what the heck are they talking about, guys? Comment below. Maybe I'm getting the sideways. What do you guys think? Either way, you guys, I'm going to run through some bullet points and then we'll go to Mitch. Typical US home value is now $372,000 and they're saying that month over month in June, house value is up 0.7% and year over year 1.1%. They're also saying there were over 1.39 million homes per cell nationwide in June. Where's the record at there? Do you see what I'm saying? So only optimism then. So only fake optimism because I don't see the record amount of inventory. Put that right there, Zillow. Go ahead and add that right there. You're missing it. Bullet point two, active inventory was 0.9% higher than a year ago. Inventory rose 2% from May. But again, that little bullet point, they're like, oh, three year low, three year low. So they're pushing their narrative hardcore. New for sale listings totaled 403,000 in June. That's also up 3% from a year ago. So also up 3% from a year ago, down from May, now going into sales, 381,000 homes were sold in June, according to the preliminary Zillow sales count now cast. That is 5.9% higher than a year earlier and up 9.2% in May. And then here's the thing. These figures will be revised mid month. So why not just wait to put the numbers out until they're final? Why finalize them after the narrative push? Is it because you don't want to taint your narrative? Probably. Comment below. What do you guys think? So Mitch, I'm going to tell the viewers now about what I'm doing as far as buying my house. I want you to tell me and the viewers whether or not you think this is foolish. Now, I've been telling people for the last four years to wait on the sidelines, improve your purchasing power and try to find the deal of your dreams. Unfortunately, in my situation, you guys, my box of where I'm trying to move is so small. I don't have as many opportunities as I would have liked. I can find, however, multiple houses with proper wedge, meaning well, well under market value. But when I add the property tax and homeowners insurance, it quickly becomes unaffordable. So what I've decided to do is downsize where I live right now. I'm renting this house, which is roughly 2,600 square feet. I'm paying a whopping $2,700 per month, but I have found a home for under $200,000. So for about $190,000, it has roughly 35% of wedge in the property. And the layout is perfect for how I'm living my life. Now, if I buy this house, which I've made an offer, it has been accepted. My monthly shelter expense goes from $2,700 to $1,700, meaning the difference there is a thousand dollars a month. Plus I pick up all of the interest I pay towards mortgage, and that may allow me to break my standard deduction on my income taxes. So there's a lot of advantage there, but the biggest advantage is I'm dropping my monthly output by a thousand dollars. I walk into about 30% of equity, and I'm now living on something that I can actually pay off. Now, is it my overall dream home? Mathematically, yes, because I love to save money. I love the equity. I love the lower mortgage payment, but I had to settle on a smaller house because I do not want to keep renting. I want to find the deal of my dreams. Now, Mitch, I understand that most people can't reduce their rent when they purchase a home. Back about five, six years ago, we can do that all day. And it was almost like a slam dunk. Yes. Buy a house. Obviously, right now, we still have issues with the bonds. We covered that. We have issues with property taxes. We have issues with our homes being leased. So even though I'm paying a thousand dollars less, and by the way, I can pay it off in 13 years. So if I pay the same as what I'm paying now, home's paid off in 13 years. So can you tell me whether or not this is a good decision, Mitch, in your opinion? I think we have to back up for a second. Everybody has to live somewhere. If you can buy a house that is a fixer-upper, and you're good with your hands, not good with your hands, don't even think about it. But if you're good with your hands, and you can get a deal and create instant wedge that helps offset the cost, as in the real estate tax cost of that house, you're vastly ahead of the majority of the population. That really is the key to this. And Travis has looked at houses before, but there was really no wedge in them because by the time the repairs were done, it didn't make any sense. A couple of those houses were beyond help. So this particular circumstance is the right way to go. But if that model of what Travis is doing by creating instant wedge by virtue of the price can be done by other people, well, yeah, it makes more sense to own. It always did. It always will. The problem is that the prices are where things are due to the inflation, and inflation is a direct result of fraud at multiple levels, including property tax over valuation. That pushes the values artificially up, which makes getting wedge that much more difficult. But if you can find it by virtue of the price, or you can create it by virtue of the condition of the property, that is by far the most superior answer to solving the problem. So far, so good. And by the way, to the viewers, it took me three and a half to four years and about 10 offers to find this house because I was not willing to settle. Now, I was willing to adapt because, again, you can get yourself into big trouble owning. And I have. I've got myself into trouble. I've had a foreclosure. That doesn't mean it's not a good idea to own. What it means is, is right now is an absolutely terrible time to own. If you just go out there, you go buy a house. Odds are you're going to be a backholder, probably have a foreclosure. Whereas if you just waited, you probably find a deal like me. That's really what I'm saying. And again, don't forget this. You guys, if you want to know what I'm doing, you can always go to my website. I've made you guys free courses to buy a house, but not just to buy a house and figure out wedge and cashflow, but also how the heck does a mortgage work? It's all right here. Go to my website, realestatemindset.org. Scroll down. By the way, those are some amazing advocacy stories. I got so many stories. You guys, someone's going to sue me. When you fight like this, you got to deal with really, really evil, petty people. And having said that, thank you guys for keeping me in this fight. And if you guys can please help us by paying attention, you can also donate. It's right above my head. You see that right there. But if you want to learn real estate, take this course. If you click this button, if you click this class, two courses come up, you guys, because one course wasn't good enough. I wanted to give you guys back more than just one course because you guys brought me this far. I cannot do this without you. You guys know I'm just a normal person. I can barely even speak. I'm not even an academic. I'm here for you. And because you guys decided to keep us here. So thank you. Two courses, how to buy a house. That's more about mortgages and how to get a good interest rate, things like that. And then how to do a market analysis. So important if you want to learn what wedges and how to find a home under market value. I also made that form right there for you guys. Subdivision analysis form. It's so easy to use. If you just use it, I've made this so easy for you guys. Now, when you're done with this, don't forget to go to mockingbirdproperties.com. This is all of our advocacy stuff. We're trying to eliminate property taxes. Obviously spearheaded by Mitch. Mitch has educated millions of people as to what exactly is going on with property taxes. If you guys want to see the court stuff, you guys want to see the letters. It's all right here. And there is an overwhelming amount of information. I recommend whether you're an attorney, if you want to sue your cat, whatever it is, start here, figure out what's going on. Now, if you guys want to track what Mitch and I are doing, we want to ask you guys to please join our substack. This is what it looks like right here. Real estate mindset substack. This is where we're dumping most of our advocacy. And you guys see, I have a recent article, the 21st century wrote to the housing act. The Supreme court just destroyed home ownership, but mainly it's the videos that I want you guys to watch that video right there, full force of the U S constitution under that and emergency writ and the advocacy playbook. And then the fraud fighters summit. It's all right here. You guys get exclusive content by coming here. So please go there, subscribe. It's for free, but you can also pay $8 a month and get all of those articles for free. And that's part of our way of giving back to each and every one of you that has helped us along the way. And having said that Mitch Vexler, what do you think about all of these things? Do you have any advocacy update for us? Other than a very long meeting that took place yesterday, there are meetings that will be taking place in Washington next week over the issues that most of the viewers know about. There will be more than likely a complaint filed. And as soon as it's done, we'll put it and we'll post it immediately to the website. The emergency writ to the Supreme court of the United States, based on the actions of the Supreme court of Texas is what that meeting is about in Washington next week. There may be a couple of meetings. So we're getting in a position where technically we should be ready to file both within the next 10 days. The documents are almost airtight. There's a lot that has to be gone through from a standpoint of being able to ask questions and depositions and be able to ask questions to get to the point real quick in front of the jury and the judge. So that's being smoothed out. And I'll spend the most of the day today, tomorrow and Sunday getting that task accomplished with the goal in mind that within 10 days, both documents should be ready to go. So we're doing the best we can. We're going as fast as we can. Crimes were committed. The evidence already exists. It's on the website. It's not even up for debate. The prior courts admitted fraud occurred. The problem has been the courts won't let me in courtroom and they're prohibiting adjudication. And that violates the constitution of the United States of America. And under no circumstance is that acceptable. So we will do what we have to do and we will follow this where it has to go. We're asking for help from certain individuals in Washington. And we expect that help to be delivered. Very good. And just for the viewers, I wanted to show you guys just briefly, just some of the stuff that we got accomplished this week, just some of it, you guys. And I try to give you guys a little bit when you go to my post tab on YouTube. So you guys see here, I got two letters that I posted. One was from July 9th, which was yesterday. And this was to the city of Godley. The state attorney general is intervening now. And they're like, Hey, you better give Travis what's due to him. And then also Montgomery central appraisal district on July 7th. But I got two letters regarding two separate municipalities that same day. If you guys scroll down here, you guys say I also got one from July 7th from the state attorney general for Godley independent school district. And I'm wondering if I'm starting to get all these letters because I filed this by myself, pro se, which is a writ of mandamus against Godley ISD. Now, I'm not saying anyone's guilty. But what I am saying is, is I want to find out what's going on. And you guys owe me the documents. You violated the law and I'm going to hold you accountable. And that's what you guys see right there. Now, if you guys want a more detailed update on some of the things that happened this month with the advocacy, don't forget. Saturdays, we try to drop a brand new video on Substack. It's not on YouTube. Go to Substack. See what happened to us this week and join the battle. And having said that, guys, if you're out there just trying to figure out what's going on, you guys already know we wish you luck. And we hope you win.