Preview of what we’ll cover today:

📈 Inflation Reality: how rate hikes and cuts shape the housing market

💰 Refinancing Rules: when it makes financial sense (and when it doesn’t)

🏦 Mortgage Fees 101: which costs are negotiable and how to lower them

🔒 Lock It In: why waiting for lower rates can backfire

💸 Borrow Smart: use the bank’s money and keep your assets working

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More About This Episode:

As mortgage rates fluctuate and the real estate market adjusts, pilots and investors alike are wondering, what’s next? In this episode, Ryan sits down with Christopher Zarnik, a fellow FedEx pilot and mortgage broker, to unpack today’s housing and lending landscape. Christopher also shares practical advice on navigating today’s market and invites listeners to reach out with their mortgage or home buying questions.

Go Deeper Into The Episode:

0:00 – Chris Zarnick’s Background

7:19 – Challenges and Opportunities in the Mortgage Industry

9:34 – Current Mortgage Rates and Market Conditions

21:32 – Impact of Fed Rate Cuts on Mortgage Rates

28:13 – AI & The Job Market

29:44 – Real Estate Market Trends

Resources:

Positive Rate Mortgage: https://www.positiveratemortgage.com

Retire Pilots – https://retirepilots.com

Get your FREE Retirement Toolkit – https://bit.ly/3ZmZsaX

Pilot Tax – https://pilot-tax.com/

The Pilot’s Advisor Podcast is also on video. Watch & Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3EIEBW2

Connect with Pilot-Tax: https://pilot-tax.com/

Episode Transcription:

(Note, this is an automated transcription. Please forgive any errors.)

Ryan Fleming  00:04

Chris, welcome to another edition of the pilots advisor podcast. We have a very special guest today. I’m going to let him tell, tell you guys a little bit about himself, but what he is. His name is Chris zarnick. He’s a fellow FedEx pilot, and he’s a lender, and I’m going to give, let him give you all the details, but I think it’s great to have him on the podcast today, lots of things going on in the real estate community, the Fed, we’re hoping cuts rates tomorrow, hopefully 50 basis points. I don’t know if that’s going to happen, but we’re going to get Chris’s perspective on all of these things today on the show. Chris, thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate

Speaker 1  00:40

1. Ryan, thank you so much for having me. I watch every single email that you send out with the link to the podcast, and watch every single podcast. It’s great information, and I learn something every time, and it’s just a joy to be here. I’m pleased to be here. Thanks for the

Ryan Fleming  00:58

opportunity. Well, I appreciate that. It sounds kind of painful to me to listen to me to listen to all my podcast episodes, but I I appreciate you that you do that. Do that. I get some some good feedback. I don’t know how much people really listen to them, but try to put good content out there. Have good guests. And I’m excited about today, because obviously I think there’s a lot of great information that you can get to our listeners. Why don’t you start out with just telling me a little bit about yourself, your background? I know we have some similar background, but and then we can dive into some some good questions about lending and the rates and everything else

Speaker 1  01:32

Sure, absolutely, grew up in Connecticut, went to the Air Force Academy. Tough loss against Utah State last weekend, by the way, we need some we need some help in the secondary but regardless, graduated from the Air Force Academy. Went to go fly T 38 at Reese and Randolph. KC, 10s, after that at Barksdale and Maguire. Then I got out and joined United Airlines, furloughed in 2003 went to fly KC 135 and that’s when the mortgage business started. Was in that, in that 1998 timeframe, when I got on with United, and then I went on to fly the 135 got hired by FedEx, and oh five, and here I am.

Ryan Fleming  02:15

Yeah, interesting airline background. I find it intriguing. So you’ve been in the mortgage industry since 98 you said, 98 Okay, well, you know, pilots are Type A. Many of them are intelligent human beings. And so I think it’s always interesting to see somebody that gets into another industry besides just flying airplanes. And I can tell you that I enjoy working with pilots because I am one, and I find it just easier to talk, to be honest, give that tough love. What’s your experience?

Speaker 1  02:44

Yeah, I first of all when I got on with United, you know, here you’re Go, go, go in the Air Force, right? And your 100% of your time is chewed up with doing something, and then all of a sudden you get to the airlines at United. And I was a second officer, a line check airman. I had an incredible amount of free time, and so I needed, I knew that the after reading wooden wings, and after reading flying the line volumes one and two, I was like, Oh, my God, the industry I’m in is volatile, and I need to have some kind of backup. And that’s why I decided to join the reserves. And I decided to have to do the mortgage business, because I learned that, you know, I could, I could do all three jobs, and if I lost one of them, yes, it would hurt on the income side, but I could the time that I could use to make up in the other businesses. I could probably make up some income. And thank God I did that, because Sure enough, I got furloughed in oh three and I lost one of my main jobs. You know, yes, it did hurt, losing one of my sources of income, but I made it up the time that I would spend at United Airlines gave me more time to do the reserves and the mortgage business. So I really didn’t lose that much. It was it hurt, but it wasn’t that bad. So I was glad I had

Ryan Fleming  03:54

a second and no different in investing, we talked about diversification, and I actually talked to my clients about this all the time. Because the thing that’s tough about flying in the airlines is your whole life is dependent upon your health as well. And we’re going to most people end up, over the course of career, having health issues too. So having a plan, having a backup plan, having some diversification of income, is a huge thing. So I applaud you on doing what you’ve done, you have a great name around the airline world, as far as being the go to guy. So what can you dig in a little bit on, on why you’re the go to guy? And then, of course, I want to ask you, when you’re ready to talk about it, about the Fed, and how you see this affecting everything going forward, because we have a little bit of an interesting situation going on in the real estate world right now, with rates being so low, like they were before and where they are now, people’s buying power kind of got cut in half.

Speaker 1  04:53

Yeah, for Absolutely. Inflation is for real and inflation in. Real Estate Market is for real with respect to the mortgage industry. You know, I got started in 1998 as I said, I worked for other banks for a little while, and kind of learned the business from them. And then once I once I learned everything that I was going to learn, I decided to go out on my own and and when I did, it was, it was huge investment. I had to put a lot of capital into the business, because you got business, because you got to get all your licenses and everything else. But once you get there, now you own the business, and you’re you’re the one that’s dealing with the customer directly. You don’t have to talk to your boss and ask them for Hey, can I do this, that or the other thing? You’re the decision maker. And I think that’s what vaulted me from being Joe Blow mortgage broker, into being able to offer really low rates, really low costs, and probably most importantly, great advice. Because in being in the business, as long as I’ve had, I’ve been I’ve done over 2000 transactions. A lot of them are refi. So I’m probably half refi, half purchases, but you get involved in a lot of different when you’re in transactions. Like, for example, right now I have a deal where person’s buying a house and his back deck is on his neighbor’s yard, and he has right now, there’s a lease that they have, but the next door neighbor isn’t going to grant the lease. He’s not extending the lease. So how do we structure that deal? How do we create an easement? How do we what do we do to make that deal happen for him? And I have that kind of knowledge and experience in order to be able to help, you know, the customer do that. But, yeah, I’ve been in the mortgage business for you know, as I said, since 98 owning your own business, it’s, it’s a lot and, and I, by the way, I fly a full line. I don’t, I drop trips. I don’t really pick up ever. And, but I, I know it’s so well, and I’ve been doing it for so long by myself. I don’t have any processors, I don’t have any branch managers. I don’t have anybody. I am the only person in the business. I’ve got 32 loans in my pipeline right now. Yeah, it’s it the mortgage business. The rates are really good right now, and we can talk more about that later. But yeah, that’s kind of what I do in the

Ryan Fleming  07:18

business. Well, something that stuck out to me, that you said, that I can relate to, is any industry that you go in, you got to get your experience, same with the flying world, getting your hours learning how to fly airplanes. You learn the mortgage business from various banks or lending institutions you worked for, no different in the financial advisor world, most advisors end up cutting those ties at some point in time and going out on their own, because they can offer the customer better things. They can offer their clients better you know, you can go out there and find the best stuff versus being tied and told what to do. And it sounds to me like from what you’re saying is you can actually tweak and control and actually keep costs a lot lower to help the overall product for your customers to be more beneficial for them, is that what I’m hearing,

Speaker 1  08:05

that’s exactly what I’m saying, is I don’t I don’t have to charge processing fees. I don’t have to charge underwriting fees, or origination fees, or any of the other fees that are, by the way, all negotiable. I don’t have any of those fees to any of my customers. So I bring the fee, the cost to get a loan, down, and then I bring the mortgage rate down, because I lower my commission to I don’t need to generate a high commission to pay all of these people to do what they do, because I’m the one who does it, and as a result, I’ve got a good mortgage interest rate as

Ryan Fleming  08:38

well. That sounds very interesting. It sounds to me like if anybody’s out there shopping right now for lending, it would benefit them to at least do a cost comparison and see if you could beat what they’re doing.

Speaker 1  08:49

Yeah, I’m more than happy to take phone calls. I provide free rate quotes. I don’t pull your credit report to get a rate quote. And yeah, I’m more than happy to compete.

Ryan Fleming  09:02

Yeah, when I see, you know, advisors go to certain institutions to learn the business, and then if they’re still there 15 years later, I’m like, what happened? And I, I hate to say it this way, but I just like to be honest, it makes me feel like it’s that guy that is still at the regional airlines after 20 years, like never really graduated and went on to the majors, and it makes me wonder why. So it’s interesting to hear your perspective on going out and being independent on the mortgage side, because I know various stocks on that as well. Can you comment? You talked about how many of the fees are negotiable, and then, of course, since you control that whole pipeline, it sounds like it’d be very beneficial for someone to talk to you. Can you just talk? Talk overall? You mentioned that rates are really good right now. And I think there’s probably a lot of people that, because their their biases, has been so trained to the low rates we had a few years ago, that they don’t understand the overall picture of where rates are. And. Then if you look at historic rates, I mean, I can remember back in the day, if I got a six or 7% rate, I was ecstatic. But I’ve got our barometer changed lately. Yeah.

Speaker 1  10:11

So I think the most recent barometer that everyone is is familiar with is pre covid. Pre covid, we were in the high threes and low fours for interest rates. Rates had come down from the five, so everybody was pretty excited about that. Covid hits, the rates dropped down into the twos, and then the punch bowl wasn’t taken away soon enough, and I think President Trump calls Fed Chairman Powell, too late. Well, he started raising the interest rates too late, and we went through an inflationary period. He started to raise them in March of 2022 but the very first raise was only a quarter of a point. And subsequently they raised it 50 basis points, 75 basis points, and interest rates started to go through the roof, and you you started to see the high sixes and the low sevens. Well, now that they’ve done their their interest rate increases and it has taken effect, and inflation is coming down. It’s down to about the 2.8% level right now you are seeing mortgage interest rates follow those inflation rates. That’s mortgage interest rates follow inflation rates, and subsequently, we have finally gotten to a point where we’re down in the mid fives for VA rates, and we’re in the we’re below 6% on a 30 year fixed conventional rate. Finally, and this is causing a lot of demand, and it’s causing a lot of refinances, because people were in the mid sixes and the high sixes for both VA and conventional as early as you know, three months ago. So it’s a great time to refinance. Hard to know exactly what the future looks like, but we have an idea of where it’s going, but now is a great time to refinance. For sure,

Ryan Fleming  12:05

when you talk about refinancing, I’ve always heard that there are certain rules of thumb, per se, where it makes sense to refinance. And of course, I know if you’ve held a loan for a long time and you’re on the backside of that amortization schedule, it might be a totally different conversation. But can you tell us a little bit about how you think of the rules of thumb, whether it makes sense to refinance Yeah, the

Speaker 1  12:27

general rule of thumb, I think everybody, pretty much has this in their mind, is if it goes down 1% it’s time to refi. It makes sense to refi. I think that I’ve heard that rule for the last 27 years and be doing this business. And now, 27 years ago, the average home price was probably around $200,000 so 1% was a good rule of thumb. But now houses are 500,000 600,000 or more, and loans are that much so if you wait to get to 1% to refi, that you could be waiting a long time, while, while in the interim, if you can save three quarters of a percent, or even sometimes a half a percent, on the larger loan amounts, it makes sense. What’s the what’s the definition of sense? How long am I staying in this house? How long is it going to take me to recoup the cost that I invested to get the lower rate once I hit that recoupment period. So let’s say the recruitment period for the cost is 24 months, or 20 months as long as I’m going to stay in that loan for that period of time, that makes financial sense to me to lower my rate and save three or $400

Ryan Fleming  13:34

a month. So once again, it’s a lot more complicated than just that 1% there’s other things that you got to look for. But outside of that, then it becomes a math equation, like so many other things, right? Exactly.

Speaker 1  13:45

So some on some of my VA loans right now, the cost to refi on a VA Earl, an interest rate reduction loan, $1,500 the recruitment period is two months on some conventional loans. Unfortunately, in places like Florida, they got really high closing costs, because they have intangible taxes and the title fees are really expensive. It’s might be $8,000 to refi, so it would take you a longer period of time. So you just got to go do the math. You got to see, hey, if I can lower my rate three quarters of a point on a $700,000 loan and save $350 a month, and it cost me $1,500 to do it, and I recoup my my funds in five months. Do it. I would do

Ryan Fleming  14:25

1. How’s somebody going to get like, what’s the best way for someone to get in touch with you? If they have questions? Of course, we’ll try to get that in the show notes. Make it easy. So if, if we have listeners out there that want to talk to you, they can flood your inbox and put

Speaker 1  14:38

Sure absolutely hopefully nobody will forget the name of my company, because you say it every day that you go to work. It’s positive rate mortgage. I like it, and I named it that way because I was trying to figure out, how do I link the two? Because most of my clients are pilots.

Ryan Fleming  14:55

Yeah, of course you say positive rate and I’ll just say gear up without even knowing what you’re talking about. Is. Exactly. So give us your perspective on, I think you kind of alluded to it, but your perspective on where interest rates are going right now and then, give us your two cents on the Fed and where we’re at right now with the Fed and what you think is going to happen. I know you can’t predict the future. None of us can, but we take all these data points in the industry we’re in and we’re having these conversations, so definitely have a higher level of knowledge, and just want to pick your brain on that,

Speaker 1  15:28

sure. So they’ve actually already built in a 25 basis point cut in the November meeting and in the December meeting. So that’s where we are with respect to interest rates. They’ve already built that in. So you’re going to a lot of people, a lot of my customers, are saying, well, I want to wait and see what happens with if they’re going to lower the rates, they already are going to lower it, and it’s not going to have any impact where we will have an impact. Is what the Fed says after they lower the rates. They use cryptic language to give you an idea. If they’re if they’re going to continue in a cycle of interest rate lowering, or is this just a one time deal in order to to to and wait to see what the data points are moving forward so hands down, they’re going to lower the rates, but we need to wait and see what the language is going to be afterwards, and if they’re going to continue that cycle, because they never just do it one time. They usually do it in a series of lowerings of interest rates, like they did last year. They did it in September, November and December last year.

Ryan Fleming  16:35

Well, I know that pilots want all of the upside and none of the downside. So the next question becomes, you know, should people wait for those lower interest rates because of a trend that might be coming?

Speaker 1  16:47

I would say no. If you have an opportunity to refinance now, and it makes sense to refinance, you should take advantage of that right now. The reason is, if the rates go lower, if you lock something in now you have established that’s your highest interest rate that you’re going to have if rates go lower. The beauty of dealing with a mortgage broker. I will cancel the lock with that lender, and I’ll go put you with another lender because interest rates went down. But we’ve established the Top Worst case scenario. The Fed could come out tomorrow and say, You know what? We’re really concerned about inflation, and as a result, we’re going to lower rates today. We’re going to probably lower them again in the future. But inflation is a sticky wicket right now. It’s increasing it, and it actually is increasing right now, albeit very slowly. And so they if they say words to that effect, you’re going to see the bond market take off and interest rates go up. And if you’re not locked and you’re waiting for rates to go lower, you just lost that opportunity, and now you’re going to be stuck with your your higher interest rate for a longer period of

Ryan Fleming  17:54

time. That’s interesting, yeah, so you can lock it in if things get better than you have the ability to be flexible and get that lower rate. So that’s that’s great mortgage broker. Of course, it makes mortgage payments a little bit higher, but I’m an advocate of putting as little down as possible. I like using the bank’s money so that I can use my other assets to continue working for me, I don’t like it locked into a dead asset like that, or another way I always explain it. You have Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos go buy a property. They could easily pay cash for it, easily, but they don’t, because it doesn’t make financial sense.

Speaker 1  18:30

Yes to that point. On a conventional loan, minimum required payments 5% down. Mortgage Insurance on a $500,000 loan is less than $100 a month if you have a good credit score and your debt to income ratio is below 40% so if you’re borrowing right now, rates are below 6% if you’re borrowing money at 5.875% which is tax deductible, so net to you, the cost might be 5% can you Do better than 5% with your money in the market where your money is compounding and growing and getting larger? I’m going to say the answer, your answer to that question is yes, I can get greater than a 5% return. So why would you not borrow the money? You should borrow the money and keep your money invested because it compounds, grows and gets larger.

Ryan Fleming  19:19

Absolutely and, you know, over the long term, I don’t think that that’s hard at all. I mean, obviously, as rates go up, you know, it gets to be a little bit more of a difficult conversation, but, but the other side of that’s liquidity. I mean, unless you have a home equity line of credit or some other vehicle to get access to those that equity, you could get yourself in a bad spot. I’ve watched many people over the years, whether they had a 30 year fixed or a 15 year fixed mortgage, and they paid it down and dumped so much money into it to try to pay off that loan, because that’s what we were taught, you know, many, many years ago, and then all of a sudden, life happened. Well, they had a couple $100,000 of. Equity in their house and they couldn’t get access to it. So right when you actually need to get access to that equity, suddenly the banks don’t want to work with you, because guess what? You just lost your

Speaker 1  20:10

job Exactly. And the other thing to take into consideration with that is you’re going to get equity in your home through appreciation you are, you’re going to get a little bit through principal reduction and the way that an amortization schedule works. But if you look at an amortization schedule, it’s 99.9% interest upfront and 99.9% principal on the backside. You will never be in your loan for 30 years. You’ll most likely will be in it for two years, three years, five years, seven years. Life happens. Interest rates change. So you refinance and get out of the loan. You decide to buy a bigger house, you decide to buy a smaller house, you decide to buy a second home. So your let equity do what it does through appreciation. You manage your money through investing in order to make that compound grow and get larger.

Ryan Fleming  21:03

It’s almost like you just set me up. I have to bring this up. So let me ask you a question, does your home appreciate at the exact same amount? Whether you have 5% down or 20% down, or you pay it off your mortgage

Speaker 1  21:18

exactly, it’s gonna it’s good. Appreciation is going to do what it does. And by the way, real estate has been up 77 out of the last 83 years. Think about that. So get your buy your house, put down. Look at what you want to spend as far as a monthly payment is concerned, subtract out the taxes and interest in insurance, and what’s left over is for principal and interest. Take the interest rate, put it in a mortgage interest rate calculator that gives you a loan, amount to borrow, make up the difference between what you want to spend and what your mortgage payment is use. That’s your down payment, and then go live your life in your in your new house, let your money appreciate and do what it does with with with somebody like yourself who’s going to make that happen for them.

Walter Storholt  22:14

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Ryan Fleming  23:18

Yeah, you know, I have my real estate license for many years. I think real estate’s, you know, it’s a great thing. I personally like to market a lot better through my experience with both of them, but that’s a whole separate conversation. Yeah, let’s see here. What else do I want to ask? Is there anything that you want to get out there that, you know, I’ve been asking you a bunch of questions that you do? You want to redirect our conversation a little bit, sure?

Speaker 1  23:39

I think, to reiterate, I think it’s a great time to lock interest rates. I think the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate. Their mandate is for inflation and for jobs. And right now, inflation, if you look at the run rates for inflation, month over month, they’re actually increasing now. They’re increasing by point 1% or point 2% and normally, if that was the only thing that they would be concerned about, they would not be lowering the interest rates tomorrow. They would they would stay Pat. The second mandate they have is jobs and the jobs reports have been horrendous. Last month’s jobs report was 22,000 jobs. And if you break down that 22,000 jobs, like half of them, like half of them were government jobs, a quarter of them were hospital related jobs, because we have a growing population, and there’s more need for people in that industry. But these aren’t GDP related jobs. And if you’re if we’re that anemic in creating jobs, the Fed’s second mandate is going to take over, and that’s why they’re lowering interest rates. You recently saw the interest rates take a dip last week. Why was that? Because of that 22,000, number, but more importantly, the. Annual revision of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was down 911,000 jobs for the last 12 months, and this time last year, they were they revised it down 840,000 jobs. That’s 1.7 million jobs in the in two years that don’t exist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported to the Fed that they did exist. And the Fed keeps saying, the economy’s fine, the jobs are fine. They’re not fine. And so right now, the jobs is what’s the most important for the Fed. But I have to believe, with the big, beautiful bill and with other policies that President Trump is creating that at some point, jobs are going to start to rise. And when they do the jobs narrative and mandate goes away, and now, now they’re going to focus on inflation. And inflation is not coming down because inflation, and I’m sorry with all this mortgage geekery, by the way, but the inflation, what? What the Fed, what this fed, is doing. And by the way, Powell is not an economist, he’s an attorney. He is looking purely at data points. They look at a 12 month average, which is rear word looking they’re always going to be behind what’s going on and what needs to be done. And so if you’re looking at last September’s inflation numbers and replacing it with this, or you’re looking you’re replacing last September’s numbers with this September’s numbers, those numbers are going up, and they will go up next month and the month after that. So the Fed has no that, that inflation mandate. They can’t get to their 2% rate, it’s very difficult to get to the 2% rate, so I think we’re in a position where we’re going to start to see interest rates potentially increase if jobs increase, and as a result, that’s why I’m a big proponent of locking right now. Lock now get your best interest rates that you could get, and watch and wait and see what happens, because it’s going to take six, 812, months for the next level down if there is a level down. So so that’s my my take on interest rates, and what you should do with respect to that, as far as dealing with me, I once again, love the opportunity that you’ve provided me to come on the show. I my my tagline for my company is advice, great rates and service. If you decide to deal with me, I’m the only person you’re going to deal with because I’m the only person in the organization. I wouldn’t have a good reputation unless I closed all my loans on time with good interest rates, good advice and great service. And so I welcome the opportunity for anybody to contact positive rate mortgage, and I’d be delighted to help anyone out. Well, I think

Ryan Fleming  27:54

that there’ll be a lot of people that will probably reach out to you that haven’t heard about you. I know that many people have. I know you have a great reputation amongst the airlines, amongst FedEx. I know many, many clients and also friends that have used you and with nothing but good things to say. So glad that we could have you on the show. I just hearing you talk about the Fed makes me realize you know, and I know knew this, but how much more complicated it is, and I hate how archaic our system is with data points that you know looking backwards, when we know, we can start seeing what what’s going forward. And of course, you know, one can predict the future, but you can start seeing what’s going on. And I it makes me even more scary, or it makes it even more scary to me, because I’m looking at AI and automation and all these other things that are being dumped into these, these major tech companies right now, and I think that our world is going to look very, very different here in the next few years. From a jobs perspective, there’s going to be a lot of jobs that are just naturally going to go away, even though companies are going to become more efficient. There’s going to be other opportunities that exist out of that. But I think that we’re in for some big changes in the next few years. And it’s, it’s, uh, it’s rather scary.

Speaker 1  29:10

Yeah, it is. I agree with you. There it is kind of scary. Hopefully, hopefully the AI will get to a point where they’re enhancing people to do their jobs better and create more efficiency, more so than replacing them. That’s my hope, because you you still need the person to do, to pull the lever and do the job, especially in our in our business,

Ryan Fleming  29:32

or people need to make money to live off of, and if they don’t make money to live off of, they’re not buying products that these companies are actually putting out there. So yes, you know, it kind of kind of all goes together. So I’m going to start tying things up here a little bit. I have one other question to ask you that I’m curious about, when we look at real estate, and I know real estate’s local in nature, but so many people locked in loans at three and 4% and they don’t want to move now, real. Real estate costs have continued to go up. You’ve talked about how they’ve been up. 73 out of the last I think you said 78 years. 83 years, Yep, yeah. And so, so we real estate is increasing in value. For sure. Rates are where they are. How do you see this log jam of people that don’t want to move because they have those those those low rates. And then I think a lot of people that have refinanced from those three and 4% loans are only doing it because they have to, because they need to, like, get access to that equity, just wondering where you see that all going and seeing if we can get this real estate inadequacy fixed in the

Speaker 1  30:37

future. I you know, a great question, a lot to unpack. In short, interest rates dropped five years ago. For about two years, almost everybody refinanced. And as a result, I think we’ve I think we’re looking at a 10 to 15 year position where people are not going to sell their house, sell their houses, because they don’t. They’re so in love with that 2% interest rate, and they should be that they’re they’re the normal supply that’s available out there is just no longer there, and it will not be there for a while. So people ask me all the time, should I wait to buy a house? Because I think interest rates are going to be lower in the future. Well, if interest rates do go lower in the future, what’s that going to do to demand? It’s going to skyrocket demand and it’s going to skyrocket prices. So I think there’s another level of price appreciation from where we are right now. I think there’s a little fatigue in the market. I’m licensed in 34 states. I talked to realtors all over the place, and prices are leveling and coming down. Nobody’s bidding over. Ask anymore. Nobody.

Ryan Fleming  31:43

It’s starting to become a little bit more of a buyer’s market. I’ve noticed that,

Speaker 1  31:47

yes, it absolutely is and and as in Florida is is overdone and Colorado’s overdone. But the reason why they’re overdone is people are used to that covid appreciation. They have priced their homes with the covid appreciation in it, meaning 10% per year increase in appreciation. So there’s nobody if they lower their prices, which they’re not doing, and that’s the only thing that you can do in order to attract a buyer, is to lower your price. I mean, you could spend money on the house, put new heating, air conditioning, new roof or whatever, but you won’t get that return. So the only thing you can do is lower your price to move the product, and that is going to start happening. But once that start happening, and the interest rates go down, if they’ll go down, you’re going to see the real estate go back up again, and once again, you’re getting your equity through appreciation. So that’s that’s my take on where we’re looking at in the future. I don’t think

Ryan Fleming  32:46

it’s gonna get better too. It’s time owning that house for the appreciation that you really get that equity built. So very interesting. Chris, thank you for coming on the show. We hope you come on the podcast again sometime in the future. Is there anything else you’d like to leave with, leave us with, before we tie this up?

Speaker 1  33:04

No, I would love to come back and talk about first time home buyers and how to how to have pilots. Our age are starting to have kids that are buying houses. How do we help them get in this market? How do you, how do we use, potentially use your income as a non borrowing, co borrower, to help that person buy their first home. There, we could do an entire podcast on that. There’s other topics that we can talk about as well. So I’d love to come back and and see in the future Absolutely.

Ryan Fleming  33:35

And I’m sure people will ask about that specific topic you just brought up, like, Hey, Chris, brought this up right at the end, so we’ll get that on the calendar. We’ll definitely do that. We’ll get the show aired. I’ll grab all your information. It’ll be in the show notes for anybody out there, and just once again, thank you for taking the time and and being on the pilots advisor podcast.

Speaker 1  33:54

Thank you, Ryan. It was great, great to speak with you. All right. Yeah, you too. You

Speaker 2  34:03

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