This Could Open Up Homebuying for Millions

Dave:
If the housing market feels sort of hard to read right now, you are not alone. It kind of is. Some metros are loosening up, others are tightening, sellers are testing prices, and buyers are testing patients. That’s why we’re here on, on the market to help you make sense of it all. Hey everyone, I am Dave Meyer. Welcome to On the Market. I’m here with Henry, Kathy, and James to talk about the latest data and headlines from the housing market. James, how’s it going? Congratulations, Seahawks making it to the NFC finals.

James:
Oh yeah. My voice is just recovering from the last game.

Dave:
. That was a great game. Kathy, how are you?

Kathy:
I am doing great. We have a big live event tomorrow, so I’m gonna have a busy weekend and taught my grandson how to ski. Oh, that’s fun. So that was super fun.

Dave:
Nice. Henry, thank you for, uh, taking time away from Barefoot Country Club to join us today. I know you were, uh, at Pebble Beach just now.

Henry:
I was, I was, I was playing Pebble at Barefoot Country Club, so yes, you’re you’re welcome that I, I stepped away , but don’t worry, I’ll be back in the country club here shortly.

Dave:
All right. Well we do need to get into our headlines ’cause there’s a lot going on and I’m actually gonna start today ’cause I have good news and I wanna share it with everyone. This is an article from Redfin and the headline is, monthly housing costs start the year down 5%. The biggest decline in over a year. The median US monthly housing payment dip to 24 13. Still very high in historical perspective, don’t get me wrong, but it’s got a bottom out somewhere, right? It’s good to see things starting to move in a positive direction. That means 5.5% from a year ago. Now. I just wanna make clear what I’m, I’m not saying that prices, housing prices fell 5.5%, but the combination of lower mortgage rates, they’re about 1% lower than they were a year ago. Market generally is flat in some markets it’s going down and wages have gone up.
And when you combine those things, housing affordability has gotten better six months in a row and we’re starting to see that improvement increase. And I’m excited about that. I gotta be honest, I know different people have different feelings about the market right now, but I generally think that any improvement to a housing affordability is a good thing for investors. It’s a good thing for home buyers, it’s a good thing for our country in general. And so I’m pretty stoked about this and I think it’s gonna bring a little bit of life into the housing market. Maybe not a ton, but I still think that there’s a reason to be optimistic that this is going to continue. Uh, are you guys seeing any, you know, improvements or change in attitude or sentiment about affordability where you’re operating?

Kathy:
I, I just wanna say I, I hope it lasts. That’s, that’s the thing. It feels like it might just be a pocket of time because when you look at the GDP now, the Atlanta Fed, that kind of gauges the eco, you know, where the GDP is right now. It’s really strong like in the fives. And if that’s the case then you know, you would probably see rates go up again.

Dave:
That’s true.

Kathy:
So yeah, it’s a pocket, it’s a window inti of time. If you’re trying to get in, this might be a really good opportunity right now ’cause we don’t know what the future holds.

James:
It’s always that missing the window where people are like, I’m waiting it out, waiting it out, waiting it out, and then they rush in because they feel like they start to miss it. I mean, Dave, you’re in Seattle now. There’s not a lot of homes for sale at all.

Dave:
Dude, in the neighborhoods I was looking at, I was like four or five properties since New Year’s have been listed. It’s crazy.

James:
There’s nothing I’m like, every time I go comp a house, we’re listing 10 houses in the next couple weeks as we held some back listed five this week we have 10 more coming up and this is gonna be like my test of what’s going on with this spring market, lack of inventory, do we see some sort of chase. But I mean we did put one on market two days ago and we had it listed for 8 25 for 60 days. Took it off market in December, just re-listed full price, cash offer.

Dave:
Wow, okay. Oh my gosh. Wow. That’s pretty good.

James:
I would say it’s a, that would be on the higher end of this neighborhood. It’s in CTAC, Washington, which is gonna be not like the really expensive part, but I mean 8, 835 grand in ctac expensive.

Kathy:
So that’s still a lot of money.

James:
Yeah. Yeah. So we’ll see. That’s crazy. I I, I’m, this is like the test quarter. If it doesn’t go hot, then we’re in for a long flat real estate market is how I look at it. Yeah. Are you guys seeing low inventory? ’cause it is like everywhere. I’m checking all sorts of neighborhoods and I’m like, where are the houses? This is like, why isn’t anybody talking about this? And I don’t think the data has quite came out yet. I’m gonna be excited for the end of the month, but there’s nothing in a lot of neighborhoods where I’m like, well if someone wants to buy a houses, it’s gonna be mine because there’s nothing else here.

Dave:
I was just doing some research and new listings are at the lowest point they’ve been in two years.
So
It’s like, it’s just kind of a weird situation where sellers don’t wanna sell still. They’re thinking that there’s no buyers, which is not really true. Mortgage demand is actually up like pretty significantly year over year, but just less people wanna sell into this market right now. The lock in effect still is there and I think buyers are being more picky. They’re negotiating harder, which they should. But like just, I think sellers just aren’t interested right now. And so there are some markets where I think there’s good opportunity because affordability is improving, but even if affordability is improving and no one’s listening to their homes for sale, I don’t think it’s gonna really create some great buying conditions, unfortunately.

James:
No, I do. I think over the next two to three weeks we’ll see how much actual inventory was being sat on and people wanted to wait through that, that kind of December months. And that’s, that’s what I’m also curious about. ’cause I did was talking to, um, a couple of my photographers and they definitely have shot some houses, so I’ll be curious to see what comes on.

Dave:
One thing that seems to be happening is like affordability isn’t proving, but do people know that? I feel like , no one recognizes that and it’s not enough to like get people off the sidelines. And so we probably need several more months of this and people to really start to see their monthly payments go down more than a hundred bucks a month to change their mindset about whether or not this is a good time to buy. I’m hopeful we’ll continue on this track, but no one knows where mortgage rates are going. So this could, as Kathy said, be a little pocket right now where you can get a slightly lower rate.

Henry:
Yeah.

Dave:
And in some markets, sounds like in your market, Henry, at least there’s some inventory to buy.

Henry:
Yeah, now I, it’s down from where it was like two months ago, two or three months ago. I mean, there was a lot of inventory, but a lot of that has, has started to get snapped up. But I know from investors we’ve got more inventory coming on the market ’cause a lot of investors pulled their listings in the winter and are waiting the 30 days so they can relist it and show zero days on market again. That’s a good point.

Dave:
All right, well overall I see this is a good thing. I am hoping affordability just continues to improve. That would be great. But I think right now it’s not really impacting behavior yet, but we’ll see how that unfolds over the next couple of weeks. Relevant to this, whether things are gonna change and if this is just a pocket like Kathy was alluding to, Henry, I think you’ve got a, a story that can inform that.

Henry:
Yeah, I do. I have an article from Reuters. The article talks about why the mortgage backed securities purchase that Trump talked about, in which I brought as an article on our last show, has not had the effect it’s looking to yet on lowering housing costs. So as we know, president Trump instructed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government backed mortgage giants to buy up 200 billion in mortgage backed securities. And the goal for that was to push yields down and thereby reduce mortgage rates and make housing more affordable because essentially mortgage, uh, payments would be lower. And what the data is showing so far is that it has not significantly lowered housing costs or mortgage rates yet. Nope. For example, like a 30 year fixed rate mortgage moved from 6.15 down to 6.09. So it’s a small change and it’s good. That helped

Dave:
Mm-hmm . Yeah.

Henry:
But it’s not enough to truly move the needle and get people to dive back in because now all of a sudden their mortgage payments are more affordable. But what they’re saying is the real cause for why this hasn’t moved the needle is because there isn’t enough inventory for people to buy. It’s really shining a light on the fact that yes, we had more homes on the market a few months ago when the market was air quotes down, but now that rates have come down a little bit and there is a little more affordability, there still isn’t enough out there for people to jump in the market and buy something.

Kathy:
You just, you can’t empty the ocean by with a few buckets. You know, it’s just, cannot manipulate the markets with a few billion dollars. It’s, it’s a, it’s not enough. So, you know, for those who maybe don’t understand the, the idea it’s mortgage rates are set by bond buyers and if there’s no bond buyers, then rates tend to go up. If there’s bond buyers they go down. So if the fed or president is gonna find a way to buy some bonds, it’s so temporary, you know? Mm-hmm . And it’s just not gonna make a huge impact. It’s the global economy that matters.

Dave:
Yep.

Kathy:
And really when it comes to bond, you’re talking about people buying US bonds, basically letting America have more debt. They have to have tremendous faith in the US and you know, there’s been a lot of, a lot going on that may be shaky for other countries of what we’re doing here. So it’s just, it’s not enough to make a difference.

Dave:
I read a couple of articles about this and I think it’s true. It, the analysis was that of buying mortgage backed securities would lower mortgage rates by about a quarter of a point. So 25 basis points. And we did see that that was like pretty accurate in the days after this was announced. And that impact and benefit is very likely still there and has made a positive impact on mortgage rates. The problem is there are many other things that are going on

Kathy:
Yeah.

Dave:
That are pushing mortgage rates back up. You guys mentioned geopolitical uncertainty. That’s absolutely happening. If you look at the dollar index, it’s going down, the dollar is weakening that you would expect these things to happen. I’m not gonna get into the Japanese bond market, but there are things going on there and you would be surprised how much that impacts what’s going on in the United States. But it does. And so I think the thing is mortgage rates did go back up, but I would say without the bond purchasing, they’d probably be a quarter of a point even higher than they were today. So like they’ve gone back up to six and a quarter without that bond buying, they’d probably be six and a half. But I do think we’ve probably seen all the benefit we will see from this. And this is why I’ve said I think there’s a high chance we do real quantitative easing this year. Yeah. Because I think the president has been very clear that he wants lower mortgage rates and Oh yeah. As we’ve been saying, it’s the only way we’re really getting it. I don’t necessarily think that is a good decision.

Henry:
Yeah.

Dave:
Quantitative easing is buying more mortgage backed securities or treasuries.

Kathy:
Yeah.

Dave:
But by doing it, by printing money, it would work, it would drive down mortgage rates. It it would, but I just, it’s not good. I, I really personally think if the market needs to correct, the market needs to correct. Like you can’t just keep kicking the can down the road and we are seeing affordability improve, it’s gonna be slow, but like that’s probably what the market needs. It’s probably the best for the long term for the housing market.

James:
Don’t you feel like it was starting to have like a little bit of a, a positive effect and then all of a sudden the Greenland comes out? The fighting with Powell, it’s just like, I think, I don’t know if that’s gonna get any better. How much did the, the ball market freaked out when we announced tariffs on the EU over Greenland, but didn’t rates show up like almost a quarter a point right after that announcement?

Dave:
Yeah, for sure. When these things happen, like Kathy said, the bond market is depending on the stability of the United States and anytime there’s threats to geopolitical order, people move their money into gold, for example, which is now at about $5,000 an ounce and you see the dollar weakening. And so yeah, I think there’s just so much uncertainty right now that’s very unlikely to get better. And as Kathy said, the economy, the GDP is going to keep going up. So we’re probably not gonna see a recession that pushes more money into bonds and brings down rates. So I think we’re stuck in the low sixes. Like I just think that’s, yeah, low to mid sixes is just where we’re gonna be,

Henry:
But that’s a good place to be. That’s where it was in 2017.

Dave:
Yeah. Mentally I think getting below six would be really nice for the market, even if it doesn’t have like that big of an actual impact. I think when people see that five, they get excited.

James:
That’s fair.

Dave:
I get excited .

James:
Yeah. Just get a five in front of it, I’m happy.

Dave:
All right. Well we followed our good news about housing affordability improvement with mediocre news that mortgage rates are probably not moving down anytime soon. Uh, I think, you know, they’re gonna be volatile. I think that is kind of the lesson here is like they were 5.99 for a day. If you see a movement of a eighth of a point or a quarter of a point and you’re in the market, lock it in. ’cause it’s probably gonna go back up. I think this idea that we’re like on this linear trajectory where things are gonna keep going down, a steady pace in the mortgage market is just not true. It’s gonna be up and down. And so if you see an opportunity, take it because you’re probably not gonna regret it. Um, at least in the short term. And if they do, if we’re wrong and they do QE and we’re going have 5% mortgage rates refinance, it’s fine.

Kathy:
Yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be a Dave Meyer right now and say, I think, I think rates are gonna go up and, and, and stay up. I hate saying it, I don’t like it. I think Trump is gonna do everything he can to have that not happen, but he only has so much power and ability to do that. Uh, so at least we think.

Dave:
All right. So that’s what’s going on with housing affordability and mortgage rates. Two super important topics for investors. So hopefully that’s helpful to you. We got two more stories for you though about 401k and a new executive order that might really impact investors in real estate. We’ll get to those stories right after this quick break. Welcome back to On the Market. I am here with Henry, Kathy and James going over our headlines. We talked about improving housing, affordability, great news, some mediocre news, fine news, flat news about the mortgage rate. I don’t know what you want to call it. Let’s move on to your headline. James, what do you got for us?

James:
Uh, you know, actually I feel like the theme of this show is affordability.

Dave:
Mm-hmm

James:
. And like Kathy said, you know, they’re coming up with all different ways to try to get homeowner costs down. The Trump administration’s been talking about tapping your 401k as a down payment for your purchase on your home and you won’t have to pay all the penalties.

Dave:
Mm-hmm

James:
. And so there’s a lot of chatter about this and I really want actually everyone’s opinion on this. ’cause at first I heard this, I was like, yeah, this could be a good idea. And then I started to be like, is it a good idea? Like I’m kind of torn on it. Right? The article’s labeled, obviously they don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s, it’s, uh, from housing wire tapping a 401k for home ownership is risky. Business experts say

Dave:
Mm-hmm

James:
. And a lot of what this article talked about was they think that the stock market would outperform and have more benefit for someone to keep it in their retirement than to take it and put it towards their house. Also, to point out that there’s only 40% of Americans are on track for retirement right now and that keeps falling behind. That’s

Dave:
Terrible. Yeah.

James:
Yeah. That’s according to Vanguard and that’s really recent December, 2025. And I think that’s just been falling and I think that’s not gonna continue to improve. I think as people are getting tighter and tighter and their bills are getting more and more like everything costs more today, right? Like

Dave:
Mm-hmm .

James:
It’s just eating up your ability to save. And the idea is to pull out your 401k to be able to afford a house. But this article argues that stocks historically have outperformed housing 7% to three to 5% annual growth. And in 2026 home prices growth forecast is only at 2.2. So they’re really pushing on this article that on paper it’s gonna show that the stocks are gonna outperform, but they’re also not thinking about a lot of different things like principal buydown paying down your loans and also rent increase and where you’re located. You know, I think it does depend on where you are.

Dave:
Yeah.

James:
But I felt like this thing was heavily, uh, written by people that wanted you to keep your money in the market.

Kathy:
Think about all the financial planners who were pissed.

Dave:
Yeah, exactly. That’s a great point, Kathy. Like this is directly going after financial planners business. Yeah. They do not want this to happen. Um, or all the, the funds that manage massive 4 0 1 Ks and stuff, like they’re, they would be hurt by this. I think there’s truth to both sides of this. It’s the way I see this debate that everyone in real estate has about is your primary residence in investment or not? And the answer is, it totally depends. If you use your 401k to go out and buy a dream home that is, you know, there’s no meat on the bone, you’re not equity, you’re not forcing any appreciation. How does that compare to the stock market? I think that’s up for debate. Like I’ve actually done the math myself. And it really depends, like James said, on location, it’s not clear cut any one way, but if you’re gonna go out and use a 401k to house hack or to buy a duplex or to to do a live and flip, like, then it’s a totally different question.
And so I think as an investor you would see this really differently. And I think I’d have to learn the details of this, but if someone was like, Hey, I wanna go house hack, should I tap my 401k? I think there’s a lot of scenarios where I would say yes to that. That’s probably a good idea. I personally am skeptical about the house, the, the stock market returns over the next like 10 years or so. But if someone was gonna say, Hey, I’m not gonna do all of that work, I’m just gonna go buy an expensive house in my neighborhood, should I do that? Or a 401k? It’s, that I think is risky because I do think people over es the average person overestimates how much wealth a like a primary residence brings. And that’s why I think people like Robert Kiyosaki and Grant Cardone say, don’t buy your primary residence because I do think people overestimate, usually it just keeps up with inflation. And so if you’re gonna do that, it’s probably not the best move. But if you’re gonna do a strategy like we talk about here, then I think it makes sense.

Kathy:
Yeah. It, this, this article drives me crazy and I could just go on my soap soap box here. .

Dave:
Please do do

Kathy:
It. Okay. So in this it says home prices grow around three to 5% annually by comparison, the s and p has been at um, nearly 7% returns. Okay, well let’s just assume that people who are taking money out of their 401k are not paying all cash. Yeah. Let’s assume they’re either gonna do a 3% down loan or a 20% down loan. Let’s say it’s 20%. Now if, if that house is making 3% annually in growth, you gotta times it by five. So you’re making 15%, not 3%. It’s just, I hate it when people compare appreciation of housing with what you made in the stock market because you’re not leveraging your stocks generally you’re leveraging the house. So you’ve only put a small amount down, but you get the 2%, 3% on the whole house. So it’s just not good. Math makes me mad and I agree with you. Like if you are going to buy your primary, maybe you’re gonna do what I do, put an A DU on it. Mm-hmm . Rent that a DU out or house hack, like you said, rent rooms out so that now your return return is even higher. Or maybe someone else is paying your mortgage entirely. You could keep investing in the stock market. You could take all that money and go back and put it back in your 401k. No one’s saying you’re not, not investing anymore. So anyway, drives me crazy. It’s just not accurate.

Henry:
Maybe I have an unpopular opinion about this, but I just feel like it’s your frick fracking money. So yeah. You should be able to access it when you want to anyway. Now I understand that corporations match and so like maybe you don’t get access to the money you didn’t put in, but it’s your frick frack money. So if you want access to it, I think you should have it. I don’t know, maybe that’s an unpopular opinion about this,

Kathy:
But I agree.

Henry:
I don’t think there’s a problem with it.

James:
I think people should be able to do what they want with it. I, but what I really loved about this article and how it’s written, this is why I picked this one. They gave a case study. If you had a hundred thousand dollars at the age 35, after 30 years, 474,000 will be lost in growth by pulling it and putting it in your house. The amount of our population at 35 years old that has a hundred thousand dollars in their retirement account is according to Yahoo Finance, less than 5%. Like it’s not a whole lot of people. And so like the benefit to this is the people that don’t have a ton, if you’re buying in some of these more affordable areas, like Henry, your average home in your area when you’re selling for a flips, like what, two 50 to three 50, right? If you’re doing a FHA 3.5% down loan, that’s something that’s actually achievable for people that can have a very big impact that they can get not out-priced out of the market. And so leaving 10 grand in the stock market versus being able to buy down and get your, your mortgage below a rent cost, it’s kind of a no-brainer. Like give people access a lock command. They have affordability. I just, I didn’t like this article ’cause I just thought it was very, very heavily skewed and it was completely negative in all the wrong ways.

Henry:
I feel like Dave wants to fight with me and I kind of want you to why, like I think the, the question with the article is, should people be able to access it and use it without penalty? And I think the answer to that is yes.

Kathy:
Yes.

Henry:
Now I agree with you that it’s not smart to access it and go buy a single family home that isn’t an investment. I don’t think that’s a smart decision, but people are make dumb decisions with their finances all the time. Like,

Dave:
I gotta think about it more. I I don’t have a strong opinion about it, I’m not gonna argue with you. I’m just like the 401k was like created to help people retire. Like whether it’s effective or not is a different question or if there’s a better system. But the whole idea was to create a tax incentive to people to save money that they use later. So changing that and saying you can use it whenever you want, it’s just like different like why are we giving people why tax incentive. I see what you’re saying. Yeah. Like why do they get a tax benefit to just go buy a house? Like I just want it to be fair to people and not just that, that I agree. People who that I agree chose not to put in 4 0 1 Ks or people who have had to keep their money in their 401k aren’t being disadvantaged by this,

James:
It, it could be a good concept. They gotta work through some details though. Like, I mean, should they do a loan to your own 401k so you pay interest when you do sell that property? I mean they’re just, it needs to be thought through but at least they’re coming up with all sorts of ideas to try to get home ownership going and affordable.

Dave:
Yep. Well I did a whole show on this channel about this, that a lot of the Trump administration policies are all demand side policies and all of them are meant to induce people to get into the market and buy, which I’m not against. I think that that can make sense, but if none of them to date have address supply issues, like I know that they’ve said like, oh we’re gonna open up federal lands. I personally don’t think that’s going to really help very much. So my whole opinion about this stuff in general is like if we’re gonna get these demand side support, great, that could be helpful in the short term. But they have to be paired with supply side solutions. And I don’t think we’ve seen many supply side solutions. So my hope is that we’ll start to hear some of those ideas in the future. Alright, well I don’t even know what we’re arguing about, but we have, we do have to take one more quick break. We’ll be right back. , welcome back to On the Market. I’m Dave Meyer, I’m here with Kathy, James and Henry arguing about, well we don’t even know what, but we have more news about potential Trump policies. But actually we have a real, uh, an executive order, right? We’ve gone from an idea to actual policy. Tell us about it. Kathy, kind

Kathy:
Of, this is from Time Magazine. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that his administration contends will help lower housing prices and stoke affordability by placing restrictions on big investor home purchases. Um, so there’s all kinds of articles that follow up saying is it really going to lower prices? Uh, Vox came out with an article saying actually it could raise your rent. Uh, the surprising truth about corporate investing and investment housing, that’s a really good article. But the bottom line is that the executive order isn’t really, uh, very clear yet. It’s simply directing agencies to figure it out. . So the order directs agencies to promote home sales to individual breyers and restrict federal programs from enabling big investors to acquire single family homes. So, you know, trying to get federal money to not be approving ensuring guaranteeing funding, facilitating securitizing these sales. And so nothing’s really been done besides, we want you to look into this and do something. But to me that actually is a pretty fantastic solution of, uh, you know, maybe, maybe federal money isn’t going to subsidize, uh, the institutional investors, um, and give them loans and so forth.

Dave:
I think that’s great.

Kathy:
Yeah. But then you get these other articles saying, yeah, but you don’t under, like, you gotta look at it like it’s providing supply in many cases if it’s bill to rent. But I think it sounds like there would be a carve out for build to rent. So as long as you’re bringing on new supply, that’s okay, but we’re just not gonna fund you taking single family homes away from other, from from regular people.

Dave:
Yeah. I I think there’s stuff in here to like, but there’s a lot that we don’t know.

Kathy:
Yeah,

Dave:
I agree. Like I don’t think programs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that are designed to promote home ownership, that they should be subsidizing loans for private equity companies to go buy single family homes and rent them back to people. Like those companies have access to plenty of other capital. Yeah, they’ve got capital. They can get loans from plenty of other places. The government does not need to be subsidizing them because of that though. If this is the extent of it, I don’t think it’s gonna really stop them because they have access to capital from so many other places. Yeah. It’s called private equity. They have tons of equity that they could go out and buy stuff with.

Kathy:
Yeah.

Dave:
And I’m sure there are banks that only exist to lend to private equity companies. Like I’m sure they’re still getting loans probably at lower rates than you and I get. Uh, so I don’t think that will matter. Um, so I, I don’t really think this is gonna have that big of an effect the way that it’s written right now. I do agree with you Kathy. I think build to rent is good. I did see that carve out and I think that’s good because you don’t want to decentivize anyone from building housing right now.

James:
Kathy, you work with a lot of builders.

Dave:
Mm-hmm

James:
. I can say I feel like all the builders I know including us, we aren’t making very much money right now.

Kathy:
Oh no. No. In fact, we might be losing a lot of money right now except for our build to rent community.

James:
The land base is high. The costs are high. Rates are high. The demand for some of the products down rates are coming down and it’s just been, you know, it’s that that is a common message I hear from very experienced builders. It’s like, dude, this is tough right now and there needs to be something done. ’cause either there, there’s two things that are gonna happen. We’re gonna get no more supply ’cause people just aren’t gonna build it ’cause we’re not gonna sign up to lose money.

Kathy:
Yeah.

James:
Or you know, sellers that have had their property for a long time that are banking on this for their retirement, they gotta come down on price, right? Mm-hmm . And so we’re at this like weird lock-in, like they wanna talk about the lock-in effect. This is the lock-in effect dirt and builders. It’s like no one can budge right now.

Henry:
Mm-hmm . Yeah.

James:
And so there definitely needs to be something. But I totally agree with Dave. Like you can’t give it to the people that have all the money. There needs to be a really critical conversation to go on here and it’s just, everyone just talks about it. But this is not like an overnight fix that that’d be, they gotta think this through because it’s there is gonna, I mean, permits down, I know in Seattle, like town home permits are at all time lows getting issued. Really?

Kathy:
Oh yeah. Oh, it’s brutal.

James:
Like we don’t see it now ’cause there’s a lot of town homes that aren’t selling, but there’s gonna be this gap where there’s nothing and it’s gonna be a major problem.

Kathy:
Yeah. So subsidized builders maybe subsidize, um, a, a first time home buyer if you want and they pay it back later. I don’t know. But subsidizing, um, wall Street, I, I’m not a fan.

Henry:
No. Yeah, I think it’s a step in the right direction. I don’t know that it solves the problem, but I agree with you guys about building and I think there’s even more issues with building, especially trying to bring new supply into areas where you’re adding density because cities are running into issues with sewer capacity and they’re halting building in lots of, lots of parts of the

James:
Country.

Henry:
Really? Yes. The

James:
Poop’s got nowhere to go. Yeah.

Henry:
There’s too much poop. . Yeah. Too much guys.

Kathy:
Too much poop guys. I was gonna say that earlier. It’s like talking about bringing on supply sounds so simple, but you’ve got water issues, you’ve got traffic issues, air pollution, uh, you know, there’s a lot to bring in on more supply than just building a house. And, and that’s why it does take so long. It’s like, where’s the water coming from? You’ve got Arizona where they don’t have it. You know how getting rights or in, in Salt Lake City, you know, it’s like sure people wanna move there, but there’s caps on, on the resources that people need to be able to build housing.

James:
You know, I always laugh the cities want more units, so they’re upzoning everywhere. Right. Like in Seattle now you can take a 5,000 square foot lot and you can cut it in a four parcels. It’s coming right up the It’s crazy. Yeah. Not coning four parcels. The fees that the city collect on this, I mean they’re charging I think anywhere between like, you know, 18 and $22 per square foot as a permit fee.

Dave:
Yeah. Wow.

James:
It’s an up zone fee. And so that’s not helping the cause I can tell you that much, but it’s like they’re charging more, the money doesn’t get where it needs to go. And so it’s just like this constant battle that goes nowhere.

Dave:
It’s crazy. I read this article about Seattle that they’re like, multi-family permits are down this year, so the Department of permitting is not making enough money. So they decided to raise the cost of permits for single family homes. Oh boy, . It’s like, okay, yay. That’s gonna help .

James:
Do you know why

Dave:
Made this decision?

James:
What you, how long it took to permit a big multifamily building in Seattle? It was like a four year permit. It’s insane. It’s

Dave:
Like, no wonder if people aren’t doing it,

James:
You wonder why you’re not getting any money. It’s ’cause you’re doing a bad job. You don’t get paid for doing a bad job. No one wants to work with you anymore. So it’s like, why don’t you focus on how do you get that permit issued in nine months so people don’t get stretched out for four years? Uh, and the reason a lot of those permits exploded because by the time these guys were ready to build rates had spiked, rents had flattened and values had dropped and they couldn’t even build it. So they killed off their own inventory. Don’t get me started on that . That is just absurd.

Dave:
All right, well what a great place to end. Now that we’ve argued about all these topics. I don’t even know who stands where on each of these topics, but hopefully you all got something out of this. ’cause we, we shared a lot of opinions about a lot of potential ideas. And I think the interesting thing here is that, you know, even last week, some of these are ideas, but we’re starting to see some of them come to life. Like we have seen in executive order, things are starting to take shape. So we’ll definitely keep you posted as we learn more about each of these topics.

James:
C can we get one prediction before we sign off please? I got the Seahawks 25, 21 tight game

Kathy:
Ram’s 30 Seahawks 29. Oh, okay. 29. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t even know if those numbers add up in football, but that’s what I’m predicting.

Henry:
Who you got Henry? I mean, I’m from Bakersfield, which is like an hour north of LA buddy so go

Dave:
Rams. All right James, I’m with you on the Seahawks. We’ll we’ll fight them.

Kathy:
Alright Henry, we’re a team again.

Dave:
I know. What are we betting stakes. Stakes are stakes. Next time we see you guys,

Henry:
Oh, uh, let’s do stakes and let’s do stakes in Seattle in March.

Dave:
All right. Stakes are stakes. Rams. Were Seahawks. Go Seahawks. All right. Thank you guys all for sticking around and listening to us ramble about all this stuff. . We appreciate you all listening to this episode on the market and we’ll see you next time.