Living In The Greater Seattle, WA Area with Aaron Morrow Podcast

Seattle Area Housing Holiday Market Trends | Aaron Morrow - Seattle Real Estate For Everyone

December 07, 2023 Aaron Morrow Season 1 Episode 1
Seattle Area Housing Holiday Market Trends | Aaron Morrow - Seattle Real Estate For Everyone
Living In The Greater Seattle, WA Area with Aaron Morrow Podcast
More Info
Living In The Greater Seattle, WA Area with Aaron Morrow Podcast
Seattle Area Housing Holiday Market Trends | Aaron Morrow - Seattle Real Estate For Everyone
Dec 07, 2023 Season 1 Episode 1
Aaron Morrow

Ever wondered why the real estate market slows down during the holiday season and how you can leverage that to your advantage? That's what we're unpacking with myself, Aaron Morrow, as well as some realtor colleagues and special guests of mine, Kristy Lucas and Eric Olson. We reminisce about those sweet deals we've helped clients secure just before Christmas and explore the unique aspects of selling homes in diverse areas not only in the greater Seattle area of course, but all the way out in Eastern Washington to near the Canadian border. We promise you a wealth of insights into the holiday real estate market that could help you land a fantastic deal when you least expect it.

We'll also guide you through an intriguing strategy for lowering monthly mortgage payments using a two-one buydown. By sharing a success story of a couple who used this strategy to buy their dream home, we aim to inspire and educate. But remember, comfort with the original payment is vital. As we wrap up, we'll stress the importance of homeownership, the need for professional advice from a lender, and the various affordable options available to first-time buyers. So, whether you're buying your first home or eyeing your next investment, we've got something for you in this episode. Buckle up for a lively and enlightening discussion that could change your outlook on real estate!

👋 Considering a move to Seattle, Washington or its dynamic suburbs like Tacoma, WA & Bellevue, WA? Dive deep into what living in Seattle and its neighboring areas truly feels like.

Explore through neighborhood vlog tours, city pros and cons videos, and get unmatched insights into relocating to the Greater Seattle area! Transition confidently with guidance from a native Realtor® who's eager to help you settle in your perfect home! 🔑

Whether you are moving in 9 days or 9 months, give us a call ☎, shoot us a text 📝, or send us an email 📨 so we can help you make a smooth move to the greater Seattle, WA area! 

Aaron Morrow Realtor Serving (King, Peirce, & Snohomish counties)
📱Call or Text: 206-451-3771
📨Email: aaronmorrow@livinginthegreaterseattlearea.com
📅Schedule a Zoom Call So We Can Meet "In-Person" 
https://calendly.com/aaronmorrow/1-on-1-zoom-meeting

This is my Intro to every Podcast and YouTube video 

This is my Outro to every Podcast and YouTube video 

Support the Show.

Thank you for listening! Check out all of our important links here!

Living In The Greater Seattle, WA Area with Aaro +
Become a supporter of the show!
Starting at $3/month
Support
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Ever wondered why the real estate market slows down during the holiday season and how you can leverage that to your advantage? That's what we're unpacking with myself, Aaron Morrow, as well as some realtor colleagues and special guests of mine, Kristy Lucas and Eric Olson. We reminisce about those sweet deals we've helped clients secure just before Christmas and explore the unique aspects of selling homes in diverse areas not only in the greater Seattle area of course, but all the way out in Eastern Washington to near the Canadian border. We promise you a wealth of insights into the holiday real estate market that could help you land a fantastic deal when you least expect it.

We'll also guide you through an intriguing strategy for lowering monthly mortgage payments using a two-one buydown. By sharing a success story of a couple who used this strategy to buy their dream home, we aim to inspire and educate. But remember, comfort with the original payment is vital. As we wrap up, we'll stress the importance of homeownership, the need for professional advice from a lender, and the various affordable options available to first-time buyers. So, whether you're buying your first home or eyeing your next investment, we've got something for you in this episode. Buckle up for a lively and enlightening discussion that could change your outlook on real estate!

👋 Considering a move to Seattle, Washington or its dynamic suburbs like Tacoma, WA & Bellevue, WA? Dive deep into what living in Seattle and its neighboring areas truly feels like.

Explore through neighborhood vlog tours, city pros and cons videos, and get unmatched insights into relocating to the Greater Seattle area! Transition confidently with guidance from a native Realtor® who's eager to help you settle in your perfect home! 🔑

Whether you are moving in 9 days or 9 months, give us a call ☎, shoot us a text 📝, or send us an email 📨 so we can help you make a smooth move to the greater Seattle, WA area! 

Aaron Morrow Realtor Serving (King, Peirce, & Snohomish counties)
📱Call or Text: 206-451-3771
📨Email: aaronmorrow@livinginthegreaterseattlearea.com
📅Schedule a Zoom Call So We Can Meet "In-Person" 
https://calendly.com/aaronmorrow/1-on-1-zoom-meeting

This is my Intro to every Podcast and YouTube video 

This is my Outro to every Podcast and YouTube video 

Support the Show.

Thank you for listening! Check out all of our important links here!

Speaker 1:

Hey everyone. It's Aaron Marrow here, local rifter in the greater Seattle area, again with my YouTube channel here. Living in the greater Seattle area, Aaron Marrow, I'm actually here doing our first live on YouTube, streaming to multiple platforms, including on TikTok, Instagram. We're also on Facebook and LinkedIn right now, just because I like to be on all social media and we have. I have two guests that are going to be coming on, and it's my team members, Christy Lucas and Eric Olson.

Speaker 1:

Today, we're just going to be talking about what's going on in the real estate market and kind of just what goes on cyclical around the holidays, and answering anyone's questions that might be coming on. If we get anyone that comes in during our live stream right now, I'm not expecting too many people, since this is our first one, but we'll also be throwing this as a podcast and you can go. I'll tell you where to go. Find that after I distribute it onto the platform, but without further ado, I'm going to flip it over so I can invite my guests in and, first and foremost, I have Christy Lucas to the stage and I have Eric Olson right here too. Again, both excellent team members are mine and Christy Eric. Why don't you both just tell me a little bit about yourselves and how awesome our team is.

Speaker 2:

Oh man, okay Well, I mean we're the best. I don't know. I just think we're a lot of fun, we like working with each other and we all like helping people.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, exactly, and hey, anyone on Instagram. By the way, instagram is the only platform that I cannot get to multi stream, where you guys can see Christy and Eric on this. On my multi stream platform, tiktok is lucky that I found a way around this. So, if you're on Instagram quick reminder I have a call to action at the top. You should be able to find a way to go to YouTube where you can actually find my live. Or if you're following me on any other platform, including Facebook, linkedin Tiktok, go watch the live right now. All right, guys. Oh, one more quick reminder Again.

Speaker 1:

We are all realtors here in the greater Seattle area. Our team has been doing this for quite a long time. We work with both buyers and sellers and King, pierce and Snowmish counties. We absolutely love working with people here in the greater Seattle area and we get call, texts and emails from people every day, from people just like you looking to make their move to the greater Seattle area, and we absolutely love it. So, whether you're looking to make your next home purchase or home sale in the next nine days, nine months, give us a call, choose to text, send us an email or my personal favorite is scheduling a zoom link with yours truly, which you can find in the description below, as long as you're on YouTube. If you're on my other platforms, head on over to my Lincoln bio and you should be able to find all that contact info. And I'm going to be redistributing this to Eric and Christie, so if you want to find their contact info, you should be able to find theirs as well. So back, we got the housekeeping items out of the way.

Speaker 1:

Today Again, folks, we are here to just talk about what's going on, how you know, just the market tends to slow down during the holidays. But you know how there's just some serious buyer activity out there around the holiday season. We get some good, serious buyers around the holiday season that are looking for the serious holiday bit deals out there. So we find on the flip side, sometimes it can be the best time to sell. But also I've had a lot of buyers get the best deals on houses like right before Christmas.

Speaker 1:

Every year I get someone into a house like right before Christmas and I would say it's the best deal they get all year. So I don't know if you guys can attest to that. That might just be anecdotal, but you know I've been doing this for 10 years and that seems to be every year cyclical. That's what I've been experiencing and including one of my video testimonials on YouTube is from a family that got into a house right before Christmas and that happened to them, where they got their house for thousands under list price, and again, it was all due to being a serious shopper around the holiday season. But, christie, eric, what do you think?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, aaron, and for everybody, my name is Eric Olson. I have the pleasure of working with Christie and Aaron and I totally agree with Aaron, I think, between a couple of different things right now rates coming down a little bit, and then, as we go into the holidays, a lot of people are traveling, focusing on spending time with the family, and so it does kind of narrow that pool of buyers to the people that are just really serious about looking, and between rates coming down a little bit and a lot of homes sitting on the market now for a month, I think you have an opportunity to get some really good deals this time of year.

Speaker 1:

Definitely, definitely, and, eric, you've been doing this for a couple of years now on our team.

Speaker 3:

Yes, February will be the end of my third year, so I'm about to enter my fourth year in the business.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely, and our team actually. Just, we've been in two different offices for our team for ever since I've been on the team and we've actually just kind of gone all in in a Bellevue, but we still again, like I said, we primarily, at least our team focuses on King Pierce and Snomish County. We've had between the three of us, at least on this podcast right now I mean, what's your furthest sale guys? I've been in Afreida, you know, in Eastern Washington. I've been right down to the border in Oregon. I've had weird sales.

Speaker 3:

So this is a little Custer Washington, almost to Canada, north of Bellingham, about a two and a half hour drive from here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely. So I mean, you know part of this business is you go where the business takes you and most of your focus is working with local people around your office or within your commute. You know your primary focus is who you can get to within an hour, right, but a lot of this time, or a lot of the times when we get all these past clients that we build up over the years that we work with, a lot of them end up being like oh well, we end up, you know, we want to sell and we want to move two hours away, you know, or somewhere, and you're like, oh man, well, you know, I really like you, joe. Ah, should I ship? You know you're stuck in that situation as an agent. Is it better to refer them to a local realtor in that service area to work with and partner with, or is it better to, you know, service them, you know.

Speaker 1:

So I think it all depends on. I think it's a case by case basis. You know there's been some clients where like, for example, like my clients that have wanted to take me up to would be Island. That was a little bit too far, so I've had to, you know, partner with rotors up there. But like you mentioned, bellingham, that would be a little bit too far for me. But you know, marysville I've done easily, you know so.

Speaker 3:

It's definitely like this Like the timeline is a huge factor. Like if your buyer is like, hey, I need to have something under contract in the next two weeks, well then we can make one or two trips up there, look at as many houses as possible and then make some offers on them. But on the flip side, if they if you know, if they have a couple of months and they're open to looking at different properties here and there they want to look at one property today, one property the following week, then that might be a situation where you want to get him in touch with a local realtor. But if they really need to get something under contract within the next week or so and they're willing to go look at a bunch of properties in one day and you have already that relationship with them, then it probably makes sense to go do that with them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that, christy. What do you, what have you experienced? Because you you've been doing this for as long as I have. So what's, what's your take on? Just kind of the holiday season and like especially right now, because we've kind of been going through this, heading out of now I mean, covid's still around, right it's not, as we're not in lockdowns anymore and you know things aren't as tight or anything like that. It's a completely different ballgame now with you know, everything is opened up. Open houses are good, but with the high interest rates, what is going on in this winter market that might be different cyclically than the previous holiday seasons that we've been accustomed to, because I've heard a lot of talks that this is similar to 2019, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I could. I mean, I can see that in some ways, I think this market is even more advantageous for buyers than 2019 was.

Speaker 1:

I agree with you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean now you can In quite a few price brackets, you can get inspections, you can negotiate pricing. You know buyer's points or seller pay downs towards your interest rates things that we weren't seeing in 2019 at all. Like there was more options for buyers in 2019, but you weren't getting under list price. You were still competing, and I'm not seeing that very much right now, although I think that will change in the second week of January, to be honest.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, I'd agree with you. Yeah, for sure, yeah, definitely, guys Like you said so many best deals of the year.

Speaker 2:

If this is like, if this is something you've been thinking about and you can like this, that's a very good reason to look now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agreed, agreed.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I worked at Auburn in South King County and right around here I live like the most competitive houses are generally in the 400 to a little bit over 500,000. And even right now in the last month those homes that generally would be going very, very quickly are still sitting for 30 days and you can come in even in the most competitive price point and sometimes get seller paid closing costs and other goodies as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, now maybe Eric, for cause a lot of the times, people that come to my YouTube channel or that I teach on my social media, especially on the buyer side, our first time home buyers that might not just understand some of the lingo when it comes to just terminology. So maybe talk about what, like those incentives might look like. Like, maybe talk about what. Just go more in depth of what you mean by incentives.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so you so depending upon how much you're down payment is and you can talk with a lender about this but if you're doing a 3% down payment, you can ask for up to 3% in seller paid closing costs and that can go towards helping cover a handful of different items, but ultimately it reduces the amount of money that you have to bring to the table at closing. And so for buyers that maybe have good income, have a good credit score, but their savings isn't quite there, that's a really strong opportunity to go make that offer and have a seller help you pay for some of those closing costs. I know when I bought a home a couple of years ago, that's what my wife and I did and ultimately that's what allowed us to move into our home is that we were able to get some help with closing costs and to help us meet that cash requirement to close on the home.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, that's some great feedback. Have any of you done a recent new construction transaction? I think it's been a couple of months since I've done a new construction deal. I think the last one that I did was a couple of months ago and the incentive we were doing on that one was there was a closing costs involved on that one, but they were also doing a rate buy down as well, which was very helpful in that situation, kind of doing that combination that was helping the buyer get some of their upfront costs taken care of but then also having the interest rates be taken care of as well, cause you know the interest rates are kind of floating in the sevens right now and I know they're kind of in general, coming down at least as what I've been following recently from our lenders.

Speaker 1:

I am always careful to talk about interest rates, especially when I'm being recorded but since I'm not a lender, you know, but have any of you had any sort of experience this year or recently with any sort of transactions with rate buy downs or any sort?

Speaker 2:

of buyers. Yeah, some feedback there.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the right now, especially if you have money to do your closing costs, but your main concern is your monthly payment. Then I think the two one buy down makes a lot of sense. I've helped a couple of buyers do that and so now, instead of having some seller contribution go towards your closing costs, you could have that seller contribution go towards buying down your interest rate. And there's several different buy down programs. There's like one year, two year, three year.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I've seen those ones.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, but I think the one that I've used a couple of times with buyers is the two one buy down.

Speaker 3:

So in your first year so let's say right now we're at roughly 7% so in your first year you would be making a payment as if it was a 5% rate.

Speaker 3:

So two down. And then in your second year you would be making a payment as if it was a 6% interest rate and then at the end of the second year you would go back to your original full payment. And then one of the cool things is a lot of lenders you can actually use that money. So the seller's money is put into an account and they draw from it each month to make up the difference of your payment. And if, within the next two years, rates do come down significantly, then you can use the money left in that account to help you with refinancing your home, which makes it a really great option for buyers, including like my sister and brother-in-law. That's what they decided to do and instead of paying upwards of $3,500 a month, they were able to pay $2,400 a month for their first year in their home that they bought for $580,000. So that made a huge difference for them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I know that that's a great point. Yeah, I'd say the one to buy down is probably the most popular that I've seen. You know they're yielding a higher return temporarily than just a permanent buy down, assuming that the strategy is that, knowing inevitably that rates will go down somewhat by some amount. You know, you know. I mean, no one ever has a crystal ball, you know. So I think just it's. You know, one thing that I'm always just careful with with my home buyers is just always making sure that they understand that, no matter what strategy they're using, that, whatever house they're buying, they're comfortable with whatever the payment is, without any sort of assistance that's involved or any sort of enhancement Indefinitely, like that's what the payment was gonna be.

Speaker 1:

You guys need to be cool with that for the life of owning that house you know, and we need to like go into, because I know when the strategy with just how crazy, how good of an investment when you could go. You know pre-COVID, pre-pandemic. You know the 30-year average, just for the greater Seattle area, on the return of increase on equity or home prices year-of-year. What was it around like four or five percent, or was it seven, I don't remember the percentage. It was in the single digits, but it was still something that was respectable, right. But even taking that number even into consideration, when you can almost guarantee that you get a return on your investment like that, I had plenty of buyers through the last you know seven years where they were able to.

Speaker 1:

When we looked back at it, the first thing when we sat down, you know, initially they excited where they want to buy the house, the dream house, and the only you know. Then they look into their finances with the lender and they cannot buy the dream house yet you know, it's just not in the cards. So then they're left with two options Do we continue to rent or do we actually talk about what's a more realistic scenario, what can we buy? Right, because you're going to be in this situation either way. Where are you going to continue to rent and be stuck in the same situation five years down the road if you're not going to change your work situation long term, right. So what they did is we found, you know, we looked at getting them into a condo with looking at again no crystal balls here, right, but looking at what the return on investment would look like, based on prior history of how the numbers were looking for that city, looking at how it has appreciated year-over-year on the trend. For you know, obviously we didn't factor in anything pre-2008, you know, after that hard reset with the market crash.

Speaker 1:

But they were able to get into a condo, you know, a small, I think it was a one bedroom, one bath, you know. But then they were able to turn around and two years later sell it by a slightly bigger condo, you know, take the proceeds from that and then two years later sell that condo and finally get into the house, you know. So this was like a six-year journey to get into the house, all the while not changing the job scenario, getting slightly incremental maybe pay increases, but not significant life-changing pay increases. You know what I mean. So had they have just kept renting for those six years and not changed their job situation, they would have never gotten to where they could have been gotten into the house.

Speaker 1:

So those are things that I just think of, that type of example of that story, that client that I worked with through those multiple I mean, because that was like six transactions that we've worked through together, right because help them buy, sell, buy, sell, sell, sell, sell to get them to that point that I mean that was amazing to get them into that. That and that's where that hits home. So I'm always able to take that story and talk to home buyers about what that looks like, because on the flip side and I don't know if I'm rambling, I do this a lot, but on the flip side I've talked to a recent client of mine that is still kind of looking and but they finally pulled the trigger and said, okay, we need to buy a house soon, relatively soon, in the next couple months. They're like hoping to pull the trigger in the next six months or so.

Speaker 1:

But this is the client that I've been talking to you for over like the last three years or so and they said they've been saving thousands of dollars over the last five years and they mentioned, I think, not one of their biggest regrets. But I think I think one thing that they're thinking is had had we have bought on a lower monthly payment. You know, like if we didn't try to save up as much and bought when things cost less, back then we would have been in a home by now, versus trying to save up for that higher down payment now, when things are pricier.

Speaker 1:

And then the thing is, you know, they always say the best time to have bought was back then. And well, the next best thing is to just buy when you can now you know, and the worst time to buy is waiting, you know, and just keep not buying.

Speaker 1:

But this I mean. There's always a caveat to that, because you always have to look into your personal finances. Sit down not only with the lender that you can know like interest, a realtor that you can know like interest, but also your financial advisor that knows your finances. But then you've got to have a team behind you that can holistically look at your finances and get you there so like if you. Home ownership is the goal, which I think it should be for everyone, based on what's going on with the scary numbers, on what's going on long term with all of these institutions buying up all the single-family houses right now, I mean.

Speaker 3:

I think I'm derailing this conversation.

Speaker 1:

now you turn in a completely different thing but, like, with what's going on with, is it Blackstone or right black, you know, is one of the mini con. I think the statistic and I always throw these out there because it's like lives are like oh well, you didn't throw the right statistic in there, but it's like, well, legally, I said I think so. Anyways, I think that statistic was like something I read an article where it's like in the next couple of years about. They said about 40% of the single family houses will be owned by private institutions, whoa and will be rental housing and there's not good big.

Speaker 1:

And there's not only that, but there are large pockets of the United States right now that the new construction is being built for rent, now not being built to own.

Speaker 1:

So like there's these areas that like these whole master plan communities in the United States now that you can go to, and you'd be like, oh, that looks like a really pretty house, I'd love to, sure, would love to buy it. And they were like, well, you can't buy it, but you sure could rent it from us, you know, for more money than it would cost for the mortgage right now, even with these crazy high interest rates. So like that's what's going on right now. So like I think that the American dream, now more than ever, that American dream of home ownership is, is under attack more than ever. And I think, getting people into home ownership and finding ways of making it affordable and especially for, like you know, seattle being one of, like the again, I think, one of the four, I think it's like the fourth most expensive cities in the US New York, la, they're, they're more expensive than us, but we're one, we're up there, we're in the top 10.

Speaker 3:

So like we're, we're an expensive area.

Speaker 1:

So, being an expensive area, figuring out how to help people get into home ownership and making it affordable.

Speaker 1:

You know, helping people get into home ownership is is is definitely the goal and our team does that.

Speaker 1:

We were specialists that helping first time buyers we over the year, but I think it's just, it's been also one of those things where, like watching it happen, we're like you know, when we first started or not first started, but like 10 years ago, we were helping people where it was easy easy to be able to help someone get into any type of house. You know, and now we're really helping someone come up with a strategy of this is what needs to be done for you to get into home ownership and a lot of people I talked to. It is not, unfortunately, it's not a quick road, it's. It's a strategic. Okay, I'm glad you came to me now, but I like how do you get people excited about something that they can't have instantly right now, like that's the. That's the unfortunate thing that we're we're dealing with in in our society is getting them excited for home ownership in the long term goal in the discipline of how to get what needs to be done to get them to to be able to get into home ownership.

Speaker 3:

And I can tell you one thing.

Speaker 1:

It's not. It's not the. It's not the. You have to not get that Starbucks coffee. It's not that you know, like there's.

Speaker 1:

That's not going to be the thing that gets you into a home quicker, you know, so let's. So if you're, if you're serious about wanting to get into home ownership, reach out to us so we can actually come up with a strategy. Because what I always tell people is that you have to be open to people Is there's nothing that's truly bad that's going to happen. If we have you reach out to one of our trusted lenders yeah, I think Bad is gonna happen, like to you. Like it's not gonna tank your credit. Like like when you reach out to a lender and they're gonna talk to you first. We're gonna have a conversation, we're gonna figure out holistically what's going on with your finances and how we can help you get to where you need to be in home ownership, and the lender can talk to you about what happens with the credit poll.

Speaker 1:

It's a, you know, worst case scenario. It's always just a slight ding on your credit. It's nothing crazy. It easily bounces back, but it's so worth it in comparison to getting a baseline on where you need to be, to Establishing where you need to go into home ownership. Because if you've never looked into it before and you want to become a homeowner, like when are you ever gonna start? You know what I mean? Like it's just you got to look into it, right? So worst case scenario, that the answer you always will ever get is not right now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah you know, that's but with us.

Speaker 1:

It's how you'll get, not right now, but this is how we can get you there. Not, uh, not right now, see you later. You know what I mean. Yeah, like that's that's the biggest thing is we do care and we want to help you Get into home ownership. So I think I think that's the thing that a lot of people are looking for. Is that human touch. And Will I be taken care of? Is someone gonna listen to me? Well, they truly helped me through this process and not just cast me aside if this isn't gonna work out for me.

Speaker 1:

Or Can someone think outside of the box? You know I might be a small business. You know, because there's a lot of Loans out there that maybe small business owners are like, I'm a newer small business. You know, yes, there's lenders we work with that know how to structure for small business loans, even if you're newer. So, like, reach out to us too. If you have a small business like, we will help you in, stick with you through a roadmap, as long as you know you're committed to sticking it with us. We're committed to sticking it with you know, sticking in with you.

Speaker 3:

And if you're someone that is Really serious about buying a home and you're actually thinking about it, then getting those numbers and talking with a lender gives you something to actually think about. I mean, until you really know, like, what you can afford, you're not really thinking about does this make sense for me. But once you talk with a lender and you really know what could work for you, that gives you something to actually think about. And, aaron, I love that story that you told about your clients. You know they were looking at this dream home and you were able to kind of help them look at the expectations of what a entry-level home looks like and then Working their way up to their dream home. It's kind of like when first-time buyers you know they look at you and they're like man, how are people affording these million, two million dollar homes? Well, that's not their first house. You know they're affording half of that on a mortgage payment and they rolled equity From their last home to cover the other most of them yeah, most of them like you got to understand.

Speaker 1:

Most of these people did not get there overnight and in most of them that was not their first home. They were doing upgrades. We call them in the industry. They're move-up buyers. They have upgraded over time, sequentially. You know the average home buyer Thank you, eric.

Speaker 1:

The average home buyer, I think nationally, owns a home for seven years, but like it's been going down year-over-year. Like I just shared with you a story of someone that owned a house for two years on average. Now again what I think what, now that I remember with you know when I went off on a tangent there was. I was trying to say that in this current market, I do tell my buyers to be careful, though, to when they buy that starter home. We are running the numbers. To be careful though that they're they can live with it for at least a decade. Like we need to like make sure that you are buying a home that you're comfortable with, that it's gonna be a good investment, a solid investment, that you're comfortable with the as is payments for 10 years. Like we need to be looking at all of that to be super safe with just how Everything is. You know what I mean in that way, because I like to be super conservative with the numbers for my clients to make Sure that they are protected on everything.

Speaker 3:

In that way, everything is under promised, over delivered, you know so but we touched on the two one buy downs and Just to clarify on that as well, you do have to qualify on today's interest rate. Even though when you use a two one buy down your first year, you are paying a much lower interest rate, you still have to qualify based upon today's interest rate.

Speaker 1:

Yep, yeah, agreed, agreed, yeah. And then one more thing to mention based off of that, which we might put a pin in this, just because we have gone over our 30 minutes and we can talk about this in a whole nother session, because I think this is giving me a good idea. We're the next time we all meet. We should just talk about affordability options that we're finding in our area to help first-time homebuyers. But One thing that we can circle back to in more detail is one thing that we're doing, especially with higher, higher interest rates, is we can find Listings or properties that sellers have currently listed where they the seller currently has a mortgage that might be assumable, meaning there's a very large chunk on their mortgage that they could actually pass off to the buyer you as the buyer where the interest rates a lot lower, you know, like maybe this seller bought During the pandemic, when it was in the twos or threes. You know 3% range, so in, you know you can finagle the numbers where it's, you know. So we can talk more in detail and we can maybe even bring one of my lender buddies on to talk more about that. But yeah, this was great, guys, again, we're over our 30 minutes here.

Speaker 1:

I Don't think we got any questions on this live. I wasn't expecting any, but again I'm so glad to have you guys on our first episode of this podcast. Thanks for joining us. Again I'm our Christy Lucas Eric Olson integrity home selling team out of Keller Williams Bellevue. From Aaron Marrow, greatest Seattle realtor YouTube channel. I co this channel and my other YouTube channel, which is the living in the greater Seattle area Aaron Marrow realtor YouTube channel that's more relocation based focused but cross pollinate on from that YouTube channel as well. Thanks for coming to this live everyone, whether whatever platform you found it on, and Hope to see you guys on the next one gonna be trying to do one of these every Friday around between 11 and new niche. I am very Uncomittal on the time right now just because of I think you just need to know what Very uncomittal yeah.

Speaker 3:

I'm very uncomittal.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's awesome. Okay, good, yeah, of course, thanks, guys will enjoy your day. Thanks guys again. One more reminder if any of you are looking to buy or sell In the greater Seattle area King Pierce, snowmish County Reach out to us, give us a call she was the tax and as an email or schedule a zoom call in the Description on YouTube. Thank you so much. Have a great day and until next time I hope to be showing you around town. Have a great day, guys.

Real Estate Market During the Holidays
Buy Down Programs for Mortgage Payments
Importance of Homeownership and Affordable Options