September Mortgage Update: Get Ready For The Rate Rollercoaster

It is your September mortgage and housing update. We're going to have a lot of fun in this video. We're going to be talking about some of the statistics of what's happening in the housing market, but we're also going to be talking about something that could happen that could make rates better. Okay, now this part's very important. I am a mortgage lender. I can help you everywhere in America, except for Utah and Rhode Island. And if you're like, why not Utah and Rhode Island? Guys, I didn't do the licensing. Every state is separate licensing. Those were the last two, and I was like, I'm done. I'm done. So my team and I can help you everywhere in the United States, except for there. I want to start with mortgage rates because mortgage rates is what everybody's talking about. As I film this, our mortgage rates in America is the traditional Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, conventional loan, no buy downs, meaning you're not buying down the rate. Is it over 7%? Yes, it is. Now, is this the highest that we've seen within the last four years? No, we've had spikes like this on and off for the last few years. A lot of times what you'll see is when rates start to go up, buyer demand goes down. That's what we're seeing right now. It's a tale as old as time. So then you have all the mortgage lenders and the real estate agents saying, guys, rates have only gone up a quarter or half a percent, but you can negotiate so much more. Get in right now. And as a buyer, you're like, but I'm scared. Rates are over seven. Okay. So let's talk about that. Here we go. 40, this is national market. So this is looking nationally. Now I want to be very, very pointed when I say, look, real estate is very regional. You could be in a market that has no inventory. This will not apply to you likely, but most of the country right now, many parts of the country, it is a buyer's market. So 45% of sellers offered concessions up front. So what that means is you're looking at a listing and it's saying seller to pay closing costs. Seller will pay for a rate buy down. Okay. That's almost half the listings nationally. Now here's what you need to know. It's highly regional. So for example, Atlanta, 73% of the listings were offering some sort of seller concessions, 67% in Charlotte and 67% in Phoenix as well. So there are parts of the country where you're seeing seller concessions offered more upfront. There's still parts of the country where you're going to compete with 12 people to get a house and you're going to pay $50,000 over appraised value. Now of that, you also had 16% where buyers were getting partial seller concession and a price reduction. Here's what you guys need to know. And I'm clapping. Wake up. This is important. Guys, even if the listing doesn't say they're seller concessions or they're willing to do a rate buy down, ask for it. Ask for it. If you don't ask, you don't get. I don't know what it is, but a lot of people are like, well, this house is saying they'll give me money and this house won't. I like this house better, but I want the money. Have your real estate agent write an offer on the house you like and ask for what you need. Ask for the price reduction if that's what you want. Ask for the seller concessions. They may say no, but at least you asked. And that's one of the big things we're going to be talking about throughout this video is because what we're starting to see with buyers is they're picking the house, not based on the house, but based in many cases off of the rate being offered or the concessions being advertised. And I am your girl sitting here in this chair saying, please, please. I know this feels dramatic. Negotiate, negotiate, just because they're not saying they'll do it doesn't mean they won't. Okay. So what else do I want to say about that? Rates. The reason why I wanted to start this video telling you guys all the states I'm in is because recently Pulte. So if you don't know who Pulte is, he runs FHFA. Basically he controls Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He's on X all the time. He actually declares what's happening with housing policy on X before he tells the people who actually enact it many times. Check them out at Pulte, P-U-L-T-E. So recently he came out and he said, Fannie and Freddie are going to be doing a lot of mortgage-backed security buying. And you're like, well, why do I care about that? That's a weird tweet. You care about that. So if you look at rates this year, when rates were low in the beginning of the year, guess what stimulated those lower rates? Fannie bought mortgage-backed securities. And look, he said that in response to a report where they had showed that the amount of holdings that they had of mortgage-backed securities for the last few months had diminished. So he's saying we're going to buy more, which could have a very positive impact on rates, meaning we could see a decrease. Now, is this a decrease if this happens that would continue for a long time? No, guys, it's a market moment. Now, if I was a conspiracy theorist, which clearly I'm not, I would guess that they would probably do this before the midterms. That's just a guess conspiracy theory. Now, if you guys see rates drop and you watch this channel, maybe you follow me on Instagram at Jen Beeston on X. I think it's Jen or Jennifer Beeston, whatever. You follow me somewhere besides YouTube. Guys, the minute rates drop, I will be like, they're dropped. They're dropped. We'll call everyone we know. We'll call their parents. We'll call their cousins because it won't last long. If it happens, it would be because someone was buying a huge chunk of mortgage-backed securities and it would not last long because we still don't have what we need for lower rates. As long as inflation is high, as long as the economy, the people who control everything are concerned about inflation, we will not have lower mortgage rates for a sustained period of time. So if you see a drop, I am telling you right now, my homeowners, you jump. You're not going to wait. You're not going to say, oh, I think it will go down to 4% in six months. Uh-uh. It would be a market moment. Okay. Now for my buyers, if you're like, should I wait? Should I wait? Guys, make sure you're working with a lender that can do a rate renegotiation. Look, we don't know if this is going to happen. This is a conspiracy theory, right? It could, it may not. So I would always advise, lock your rate. Okay. If you're comfortable with where rates are, lock it. If the rate goes down, most of the loan programs I have, of course, consult with whoever you're working with on my team. We can renegotiate your rates if rates drop dramatically. Okay. I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong because a big part of me feels like we're going to have a market moment for maybe a month and then we're going to see rates go up. And I think we could hit eight by the end of the year. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm telling you right now, if that market moment hits and you're a homeowner and you're in a position to refinance, do not wait. Pull the trigger and go, because I do not think it's going to last longer than a couple of weeks to a month. If it happens, that's what we saw in the beginning of the year. I'm just looking at history as a predictor of the future. Now look, Pulte said that they're going to do this, but he didn't give a date. And we don't know if he actually will. He also had said that they're going to look at lowering loan level pricing adjusters. What those are is that's what gets packaged into your mortgage rate. And Fannie and Freddie have a lot of loan level pricing adjusters. We've been hearing that for two years and nothing's happened. So take what I say with a grain of salt. Honestly, take what he says with a grain of salt. Okay, moving on. Why builders are cooked. Let's start this way. 66% of builders are using sales incentives to move houses. So what is that? That's paying all your closing costs. That's doing a rate buy down. That's giving you the refrigerator. It's giving you a toaster oven, whatever they're giving you. 66% of builders are using sales incentives. 38% have cut prices and the buyer traffic still isn't moving. Even offering the concessions, even offering the lower rates, right? Because that's the thing. So many people are saying, well, if prices were lower, if rates were better, houses would sell, especially all this builder inventory would move. But if they're offering a 4% rate and they're reducing their price, why aren't they moving? This is interesting. So I'm tying all this data that I'm getting from different sources together. A recent report came out that 73% of Americans viewed the backyard as an essential for buying. 71% said a patio, deck, outdoor seating were non-negotiable. Gen Z will actually pay more for a yard. 83% of Gen Z will pay more for a yard. And you're like, Jen, how are you tying these two things together? New construction over the last few years, the lot sizes have gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. And they've been missing out on what's actually happening with consumers. Consumers after COVID, like pre-COVID, no one was as worried about having a yard. After COVID, everybody wants a yard. So if you suddenly have where buyers, especially the newer generations of buyers are saying, no, we want a yard. Yes, we want outdoor. Yes, we want to be able to have a barbecue. Yes, we want to be able to have a patio. Yes, yes, yes. We want all this outdoor private space, but you're building houses where I've seen some new construction where literally the outdoor, it's like this for two garbage cans and your dog to go out. There's nowhere to sit. There's nowhere to barbecue. That is going to be a problem that builders are going to have until they get through this inventory. And unless they wake up to what consumer wants, people want backyards. People want space. People want privacy. Now look, people also want well-built houses and it hasn't helped builders a lot of the stuff that we've seen on social media. Social media, I would argue, this is the first real big generation of a good amount of new construction. There's a good amount of new construction built between 2020 and 2024, new construction being built, but also people on social media sharing the quality. We've all seen the horror stories. We've seen the mold. We've seen the lawsuits, which has made a lot of buyers hesitant. But when I'm talking to my buyers about new construction versus existing, the biggest thing that they say to me, they want a yard. And look, builders are going to continue to feel the pain. Okay. One more study. I know we're leaning down because we dropped our notes. Okay. The National Association of Realtors came out with a report this month. And what they talked about was data centers. That's right. We're all interested in data centers. You see it across the country. You see people in their local communities fighting data centers coming into their backyard. We saw that especially with Kevin O'Leary. Did you guys remember all of that? That project went from being a super center to smaller, to smaller, to smaller. So data center proximity is becoming a question that home buyers are asking. I'm so happy for you guys. I am so happy. I've been screaming about, and some will say data, I say data, centers for like close to a year, right? Because I've had the clients where they've said to me, hey Jen, I want to move. There's a humming sound, right? Or utilities have gone up. One of the stats that I thought was very interesting, let me see if I can find it. Bear with me guys. Oh, so 56% of the people who are asking the data center questions of the real estate agents, their biggest, 56% are asking about water use, which is great because water use is a concern. 61% are concerned about ongoing costs and infrastructure. I was looking at, I'm trying to see if I wrote it down. I really hope I did guys. I was looking at the energy costs and basically energy costs over the last four years, five years have gone up 15 to 20%. But where you've seen it go up more is where there are data centers and they haven't had any sort of arrangement with the city where it doesn't get pushed on to the consumers. So there's a couple of different questions. If you're concerned about data, data centers that you should be asking your real estate agent. And also like, here's what you need to know. They're not going to be professionals on this. You need to do your own research. This is a whole new world. But if I was shopping, I'd be curious about distance, audible noise, planned grid infrastructure, because that's the thing. Does this area have the grid infrastructure to support this huge center? Community benefits versus tax offsets and utility rate exposure. Is this new center that's already there, can it impact your utilities or no? This was interesting as well. I know you guys were like, you're just reading your notes today, Jen. I know. I don't usually do percentages and stats, but sometimes they're very interesting. So 92% of US counties don't have any data centers. None. Okay. 92%. 1% have 10 or more. So what we're really starting to see is it's areas where they're concentrated. Okay. Virginia is a great example of that. We all know Virginia has concentrated data centers because of Washington. But you see these hubs around the country. And that's really what you need to think about is, do you want to be in a county where they're concentrated? And how does that affect your water? How does that affect your utility bills? And how does that affect, is there noise? Is there anything that can be an issue? So I think it's great that as homebuyers, you're waking up to this. There were some studies also done to see if it's affecting sales prices at this point. And at this point, there's nothing conclusive saying that being near a big data center makes your price higher or lower. We're early days with this. Okay. But I think the big thing is being educated, informed consumer and know what you're getting into. Like if I was buying right now, is that something I would be looking at? Yeah. I mean, that was something I was looking at when I bought last year. I was looking at, okay, where are the data centers? Where could they potentially build one? Okay. Just because that's something I'm personally concerned about. I don't like 5G towers either. Once again, maybe I'm a conspiracy theorist. So look, overall rates here, which means more negotiating room as a buyer, have a lender if you're getting qualified. And I said this a couple of months ago, I said, look, qualify half a percent higher. Same thing. If you don't want to be in shock, qualify half a percent higher just in case rates continue to trend throughout the year. If we have a magical moment, jump, jump on it. Very important that I mentioned this. If we have that magical moment, we can do lock and roll, which is lock and shop. We can lock your rate while you shop. And look, we have to make sure it financially makes sense because sometimes there's a fee for it depending on what they think the markets are going to do. But that's another way if we see a rate drop to take advantage of it. So just make sure you're working with a lender that knows what they're doing. And look, I'm here guys, three times a week. My team and I want to help you. I want to be your lender. 786-933-2077. Check out our Google reviews. I am legit. The team is legit. Check us out. Thanks for watching.