It’s a special new episode for the How to Buy a Home podcast with David Sidoni, the How to Buy a Home guy – the Friday question of the week. Every week on Friday, David will be answering listener topical questions about how they can purchase their first home. This week, we dive into this one: “As a first time home buyer, if I can buy now in early 2021, should I buy now, or wait for the market to slow down, or even drop?” We go deep on the major factors influencing house pricing and why tenants should never let landlords exhaust their finances. Send your questions directly to David on Instagram @DavidSidoni, or Facebook message @HowtobuyHomeGuy.
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Should I Buy My First Home Now, Or Wait? Question Of The Week
As A First-Time Home Buyer, Should I Try And Time The Market, Or Buy Now As Soon As I Can?
2021 is going to be a game-changer. Every Friday in 2021, I’m going to add a question of the week episode. The questions come from you. Let’s do this.
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This is How to Buy a Home, the show that teaches you how to turn your fattest monthly bill, your rent into your largest automatic wealth builder. The cool thing is you can do that a little sooner than you think. You can do this just by getting educated. I have been getting many of you readers reaching out to me and I truly appreciate it. This is exciting. What I’m going to try to do is a new weekly bonus episode and you get to create it. If you’re new, smash that subscribe button and you can read all these questions answered weekly.
Free answers. It’s like cheating off the smart kid’s paper and not getting caught. I went wide when I named the show How to Buy a Home. There’s a lot to unpack there. I’m going to let you pick the topic. Once a week, I’ll answer the burning questions that you have about being a first-time home planner or being eventually, you’re going to turn into a first-time home buyer and you’ve got questions along the way.
[bctt tweet=”As house prices go up, the cost of your loan goes up as well. ” via=”no”]
This question is one I’ve heard a lot and truth be told, it’s one that I’ve heard my entire career. It usually goes like this, “Tell me the real deal. I mean the inside stuff. Should I buy now or should I wait? I want to get the best deal.” The short answer is if you’re renting, you should buy yesterday or a year ago. I don’t know how long you have been paying rent. Truly, that would have been the best time for you to buy back when you signed your first lease.
Think about it. You saved up enough for that first and last and security deposit and you got your first apartment. That’s when you should have purchased your first place. Maybe you should have stayed at your folks’ crib for a little while longer, saved a bit more money, a little bit more than your deposit, security, your first and last. It’s not that much more. If you don’t know, you can go back to every single episode I’ve ever done because I mention it all the time.
The answer to the question is you should have bought then, that would’ve been the best deal. Since you asked me, “Get me my deal.” For those who don’t know, I’m in Southern California for most of my buyer’s talk. I’m not sitting here on the top of Mount Smarty Pants trying to preach to all of you. I’m not acting like I’m all that and I got it all figured out. It’s 1:00 in the morning and I’m doing this show because I screwed up a long time ago. It sucks that no one’s telling you how not to suck as much as I did when I was in my twenties.
First Apartment
I do not think that I’m some all-knowing economic god doling out wisdom to the uninformed masses of young renters. No. I am the moron who made the mistake myself and I rented for way too long. I want to tell the entire world that you don’t have to be as clueless and as ignorant as I was. Let my epic fail be your guide into an exciting and more prosperous life. If in 1991 when I got my first apartment and I time traveled and I got to talk to 2021 me, I would have said to my older self, “You are bold.” I would have said, “I want to be sure I get the best deal and I don’t lose money. Should I buy now or should I wait?”
The bold me would have told the 1991 self, “First, you’ve got to save those green Dr. Martens. They are so dope and you’re going to want them someday when you’re older. Don’t throw those away. Do not give those to Goodwill. Buy now.” As a guy who was lucky enough to have lived out most of my dreams
in my 20s, I love my life in my 20s. I didn’t miss out on any life experiences but it’s not because I was tied down to a house or I lived in an apartment. Only looking back now do I realize that I could have still not missed out on anything in those years. By age 28, I could have had an extra $300,000 by doing no more than what I did in my twenties, making a payment for housing on the first of each month.
I get a purchase to 21 years old for a little down, lived in a condo like the apartments that I rented for eight years. I would have paid the same money on the first of the month and I still could have been an idiot with everything else. With my credit cards, I could have not started a retirement account like I didn’t. I could’ve still gone out and done all the cool things I did back in the day because even when I was an idiot, I still always made my rent even though I was living a bonkers life. At 28 years old, at the end of that fun time, making those payments, I could have had $300,000 more, been $300,000 richer and I could have traded up for an even better home that would have made even more money.
[bctt tweet=”Nobody knows where real estate will go, but it’s always worth the fight. ” via=”no”]
The year 1991 sucked for buying a home and it still would have worked out for me. If I bought in 1991, prices would drop soon after and then recovered a little bit and I would have sold in 1998. Selling in 1998 in hindsight, would have been Looney Tunes. That would have been before the biggest and longest price increase in housing history. If I sold at the bottom of the market in 1998 before all the prices shot up, I still would’ve made $300,000 without getting any of that historic increase. The mortgage rate when I would have purchased in 1991, 9.25% and buying would still have been the way smarter thing to do. I’m going to help by opening my wound, pouring salt on it, squeezing lemon juice deep inside there while someone forces me to watch everyone I hated in high school make a billion dollars buying GameStop stock.
Buy Now Or Wait?
Let’s get to the question you’re asking now. Forget this time travel stuff. If you can buy in early 2021 or if you’re close and you can buy relatively soon, should you buy or should you wait and try to get a better deal later? If you’re trying to attain your maximum financial gains and you’re looking specifically at the economic impact of your purchase in the short-term and the short-term, I mean 3 to 6 years, then the numbers say, “Don’t wait.” As of early 2021, the prices are going up and they’ve been going up through 2020. The forecast says that they’re going to keep going up. Read episode 38. That’s the 2021 housing forecast.
It’s filled with tons of data directly from the leading economists out there who have way more PhDs than I did. I researched a lot for that and found you guys a ton of information. You shouldn’t have read this episode if you read that one because all the info is right there. A home bought in early 2021 will be worth more in 2022, and a home not bought in 2021 will cost more in 2022. According to the data and the analytics, the home you buy now will probably cost 5% to 10% more in 2022. It doesn’t get more simplistic than that.
Secondly, the mortgage interest rates are stupid low, historically low. If you don’t have a clue what that means for you, it is the cost of the money that you’re borrowing to buy this home is at the lowest cost that it’s been in history. That means the rates have nowhere to go but up. They are on the floor now. The floor-on bottom. If you get a loan, which almost all of you are going to have to do to make this purchase, you pay for that loan and the price of paying that interest is factored into your total price of the home.
Knowing these interest rates have nowhere to go but up, the longer you wait, the higher the total cost of the home that you eventually buy. Because of these two things, that cost for that home is going to be more if you wait. One, prices are going up. Two, the cost of your loan is going to go up. That’s the
bottom line. That’s general and you know me. Everyone’s situation is different. You should be consulting with a unicorn real estate team consisting of that unicorn realtor and a trusted lender to help you get the whole picture, to help you reach your specific goals in the best ways for you individually. What I said is how the numbers work on a general basis.
If you want me to break them down, I will. Prices broken down goes like this, price is easy to figure out. A $300,000 home based on projections will cost $315,000 or $330,000 by the end of 2021. That’s 5% or 10%. What about the loan? This home will have the largest loan that you’re ever going to have in your entire life. The rate on that loan is monumental. This is a humongouzoid part of your entire price. It also then becomes a big part of when and why you should do this purchase at that time. The mortgage rate has a little bit more math but these numbers should make it crystal clear.
Now of $300,000 loan at 2.85% interest is going to cost you $1,241 a month. For this discussion, we’re only talking about the principal and the interest. That’s not including the taxes and insurance. I don’t want to confuse things with that. Those of you who have read the show regularly know that Principal Interest, Taxes and Insurance are PITI. We’re going to give you that $1,241 a month. That’s the PI of the PITI to show you how these numbers work. A $300,000 loan at a 2.85% mortgage interest rate is going to cost you $1,241. The 3.85% in this little equation is the high rate. The, “Don’t wait for that rate. That’s terrible.” That rate is low that my lenders had been able to get that rate for all of the buyers of my career. The buyers would have named their firstborn son after me or daughter and let me live in the house that we purchased rent-free for the rest of my life. It’s that low. In this scenario, it’s up a point.
1% up to 3.8% is going to cost you $1,406 or $165 more a month. Maybe you’re thinking, “No biggie, David.” Maybe you can wait and pay that extra a month so that you don’t have to stress with the hassle of buying in the competitive market that’s happening in early 2021. I’m here to let you know that hassle, first of all, that’s not going away. The short supply of homes, that’s not going anywhere for a while. You might as well jump in and battle it out now and get the better prices and the better interest rates. Here’s the kicker on that $165 a month. One point it’s going to cost you that much more than a month. That doesn’t sound like that much but multiply it by 30 years. If you pay interest on a house for 30 years at today’s low rate, 2.85%, that interest is $146,642.
Real-Life Stuff
Let’s see what happens if we go up 1% to 3.85%. That interest is $206,312. A difference of $59,671, $60,000 more that you’ll pay over the life of the loan by waiting and missing these low rates. That’s the numbers. That’s the data. How about some real-life stuff? I had a phenomenal call with some super rad young audience out of Boston. They listened to the show, hit me up, DM-ed me. We talked. We had a little Zoom fun. They saved a ton of money trying to get ready to buy the first house and they’ve been thinking about doing this for over a year. In fact, they got a prequalification for a loan in March 2020. They started poking around and then nothing happened for them. It didn’t work out. They didn’t have the right person. They didn’t reach out to me, so I couldn’t get them to a unicorn.
[bctt tweet=”Like all great things, buying a home always delivers a huge number of benefits. ” via=”no”]
Before they reached out to me, they’re working with a realtor and they got frustrated with the tough low supply of homes out there. They were bummed out that they’ve saved all this money, they had their dream set on buying their house and suddenly, they’re caught in these bidding wars. As we talked about this and I told them some of the tricks that you can do to win these bidding wars, they figured out that if they’d reached out to me in March 2020, they would have found themselves a warrior unicorn to help them fight the battle and they would have bought their first home in 2020 which means they would have gained 8% appreciation in 2020 and then kept it going 5% or 10% in 2021. Can you imagine that being up 18%?
Instead, they’re working with the unicorn now and I’m sure that they’re not going to make the same mistake waiting too long again. I’ve said unicorn many times that the words lost all meaning. For those of you who don’t know, that’s an experienced agent who wants to help you plan for the purchase, maybe months or even years before you even look at any homes. It’s a unicorn because that’s rare. There aren’t a lot of real estate agents who work in that capacity.
What we’re looking for is that person who’s not going to open doors for you and write a contract. They’re part of your long-term goal planning, life and financial planners to help you gain maximum purchasing power. I’ve got a story a little bit later on that I’m going to save for the end that you have to read. I was in a room with a bunch of real estate agents and realtors talking about you, first time home buyers and what you’re looking for when you’re choosing your representation. It’s scary. You’ve got to be careful out there.
When COVID didn’t tank the market like everyone thought it was, if you don’t know that story, read episode 38, that’s the 2021 forecast episode. In the beginning, we talk a lot about the real numbers and the data from 2020. The summary is that the prediction of all the things crashing and tanking because we were in a pandemic and nobody knew it was going to go on. The crashing and tanking didn’t happen. We were way off. We started cruising into 2021 with prices going up but still we had low inventory. January 15, 2020 were the lowest interest rates of all time. It was this perfect storm of things that happened and prices were still going up. The election was over, the new year was happening. It was crazy. There were massive, huge amounts of buyers out there trying to capitalize on the low mortgage rates. The smart ones were realizing, “This sucks. It’s going to be a battle but let’s jump in the octagon and try to get in now before the prices continue to go up.”
I’m here to boost you up. I know it’s scary. I know this is not how you dreamed about buying your first home. Nobody thinks that this is the way it was going to be but it’s worth the fight. There will be multiple offers and you might even lose a home or 2 or 3. It’s going to happen but it’s worth the battle. It’s only happening to you because your life happened to be set up that this is the time now when you were going to buy and you happen to be buying at this historical time in the housing market. I don’t mean historical. This is an amazing historical time. I mean this time in history. I wish I could change that but I can’t. It can suck. All great things, doing something hard, always has big benefits.
That’s got history on your side, that asset, that historical data is what you need to intake and give yourself the positive juice so that you realize, “This is where I am on the timeline. I know that historically, this is going to work out well for me.” You are aware of that. That’s your suit of armor when you go into battle to get your offer accepted, your sword, your shield. It’s knowledge. It’s madness out there. It’s like Black Friday. If you’re prepared, if you realize, once you do win the battle and you do get the home, remember you were in battle, which means every winner has 5 or 10 losers. That means there’s a bunch of buyers out there who missed out and they’re going to pay more likely for the next house that they purchase.
That means your home value once you do win the battle is going to start going up immediately. The sooner you get in, the sooner you get to catch that price appreciation. Trust me, that appreciation is going to be a lot more than the $100 you save on a PS5 at Target after you finish your turkey dinner on Black Friday. The answer to the question is if you’re in a position to make this happen, make this happen. If you’re not, that’s fine too. It’s where you fall on the timeline. My boy, Chris Griffith from episode 32, an incredible loan officer, works a lot with veterans, super with a VA loan and everything else. He says it this way, “Budget and save and reverse-engineer plan with a purchase of a home, being
the end goal, figure out what the parameters are of that goal and then work backward with a solid real estate team to help you plan the path and then you’re going to get there with tactics, techniques and tools to help you save budget and pay down debt.” That’s how you reverse engineer.
For those of you out there now who have done that, you’ve done the reverse engineering. You’ve got your plan and ready to go, here are some more detail on timing the market. The question, “Should I buy now or wait and get a better deal?” Based on what we know from the history and the pros prognosticating, at best it’s going to be 4 to 5 years before the market goes up, flattens out and goes back down. This means it’s going to be 5 or 6 years before you see a decrease in the prices, maybe 3% or 5%. Let me remind you of something I said in episode 38 in the forecast, this explains what happens if you’re seriously waiting to lower the prices or are looking to purchase when the prices are lower. You can’t lower the prices.
If you’re waiting, if you’re trying to time the market to get a great deal, first of all, you’ve got to get in a time machine and go back to 2008, 2009 or 2010. Remember, this purchase is different than any other one that you make because you already pay for your housing every month and you have nothing to show for it as a renter. Timing the deal has multiple variables involved in that math. It’s not waiting for the price that you pay, waiting for that price to be lower but it’s also the price that you pay while you’re waiting. This is something that you already pay for when you’re paying rent. You’re losing money while you’re waiting for the prices to go down so you can save money. My brain is going to explode.
If you’re waiting for the prices to come back down, here’s the reality calendar that I laid out for you before I’m going to do it one more time. It’s February 2021. You decide you want to wait. The market is likely to have two more years of going up. You blew it. For the sake of argument, let’s say it’s two more years. It might even be more than that. Two years of going up, one year of flattening, two years of going down to get right back at the same prices that we are in February 2021, except at that time, it will be 2026. Five years that you spent paying rent, putting no money into an asset that you own yourself. By waiting for the deal and trying to time the market to get a lower price, you spent $2,000 a month, $24,000 a year for five years, $120,000 that you’ve paid for the landlord’s asset, not yours.
Not to mention, each year, you’ve also missed out on conservatively $6,000 worth of tax benefits, the mortgage interest tax deduction. If you don’t know about that, go back to episode 27. It’s long and complicated but once you got it, you got it forever. The math on that is $30,000, $6,000 times 5. I’m sure that’s $30,000. In five years, you spent $120,000 that you never got any profit from. It’s gone, flushed down the toilet and you also missed out on $30,000 off your taxes. You have to factor in who knows where the mortgage rates are going to be whenever you finally do decide to pull the trigger somewhere in that five years. Listen to the facts, listen to the data. I’m going to tell you something that I heard from a reader.
This was a DM. “David, I want to thank you. You gave me, a 25-year-old hairstylist, the confidence to buy a home during the pandemic. Thank you so much for making the numbers in the process not so scary. I started reading your blog at the end of September 2020,” and she closed in January 2021 on her dream home. “I truly wouldn’t have thought that I could do it if I didn’t find your show. My mortgage, home insurance, taxes and mortgage insurance. That’s PITI plus PMI.” All of that $100 less than her current rent.
We’re almost to the horrific story that I heard the room full of realtors talking about how to attract you, the first time buyers. That’s coming. These are not all of my thoughts on this question. This is not every
piece of the puzzle because I haven’t talked to you. I don’t know what your long-term goals are. However, if you came to me here ready to go and you were trying to time it and you said, “Should I buy now or should I wait?”
Here’s your answer. If you can buy now, you should. If you can’t then you should plan and try to buy sooner rather than later. This is my opinion based on the prediction of people smarter than me combined with some of my historical knowledge of the housing market and also combined with the tears of every first-time buyer I’ve ever worked with who said, “I love you. This house is epic but I should’ve called you months ago. No, years ago. I can’t believe how rich I made my landlord for the past few years.”
I always like to make sure that you know too. Once you tell people that you’re home shopping, everyone’s going to have an opinion. They’re all going to tell you what they think. Remember, they’re not you, listen to the facts, the data and then you have to evaluate all the factors for you and your specific situation. You may be in the spot to save yourself massive amounts of money or you could make yourself massive amounts of money by getting in early and catching that appreciation. I blew it in my twenties. I don’t want you too. Most buyers out there all say to me, in some form or another, that they blew it too. I’m sure that they would want you to have a great deal and not blow it as they did. It’s nobody’s fault. No one’s out here giving the information.
[bctt tweet=”The sooner you get in a house purchase, the sooner you get to catch that price appreciation. ” via=”no”]
It doesn’t matter to me when you buy. I don’t care. I’m the guy that’s doing the show pre-pandemic, telling everybody that we were due for a recession. It’s not like I’m pulling any punches. I don’t sugarcoat anything. I’m not trying to make a sale. I know that trust is earned and I’m sure not everybody reading this live in Southern California. I’m sure most of you are going to get referred to a unicorn and I’m never going to sell you a house. That’s fine. I’m giving you the thoughts and the data because I never had it. I would have been super grateful if I did. The real info, it’s just not out there and you deserve better.
This is the Friday question of the week. I’m digging this. I’ve got a couple more I’m thinking about like, “Should I wait for the coming foreclosures?” That’s a big buzzword. Spoiler alert, no. I’ll go into detail on the episode. The big one, I was going to try to put this with this one but it was way too much was, “Should I wait to save 20%?” That one is a heated debate with tons of different economists. We’ll get into that later on. Wrapping things up and then I’m going to tell you what a bunch of realtors said out loud about you. I can’t believe they did this. If this episode helped you and you haven’t written a review yet on Apple Podcasts or on my Facebook page or my Yelp page, please help others by taking a few minutes, give it five stars.
If you could, write any kind of little review. The more views, the more people get to know this show and the more inspiration, more love, more joy, more hope that we can give to people out there. Jump on it. Let’s tell more people about it. It will mean a lot. If you have a specific question, hit me up on Instagram. It’s easiest the way @DavidSidoni. There’s also a private Facebook page at How to Buy a Home group. You can look for that on Facebook. You can always go to my website, DavidSidoni.com. There’s a place you can directly link up with me. There’s also a direct link to my YouTube page. There’s a ton of videos on there with topics of buying first-time homes. I did a backflip on one of those videos. You can check that out. If you want too, you can find me on Twitter.
Clubhouse
Here’s what realtors are saying when they get together and talk about you. There’s a new app that’s getting a lot of buzz in the business world. It’s called Clubhouse. If you don’t know what Clubhouse is, I
do recommend that you get on it because I am going to hold some live Q&As on Clubhouse. It’s this except you’re all on together and I can see you. We can have a Q&A radio-style format. It’s audio. You can tune in any time. There’s a guest speaker that does a Q&A forum on a number of different topics. It’s crazy. CEOs of all the big social media platforms have held chat rooms there, talking to people.
Elon Musk did one. Realtors are all over this app, sharing their marketing secrets. The bigwig top producers get in there and all the lower agents or the agents that are trying to become top producers or the new agents, they want to hear all the secrets for all the marketing tips. The top producers were giving the new realtors tips on how to get first-time buyers. Do you want to know what the big secret was? Build your brand on Instagram. Go to some influencer’s feed and copy that and then build a brand. You have a presence on social media brand. Don’t worry if you don’t have any experience. They didn’t tell him to go out there and learn how to be a realtor. Look at houses, figure out how the contract works, know the inventory in the neighborhoods and be able to help your clients.
No. Make a fresh Instagram. Get followers, build your brand, fake it until you make it. If you build that brand, people are going to trust you. What does that mean for you, the first time buyer? It means to watch your butt. Don’t be fooled by glossy images and the number of followers that some realtor has. Look for the real deal, the tactics, tools, techniques, facts and data. Do you want a pro? You should pick one, you should find one, get yourself a unicorn, ask me. Unicorn nation is growing like crazy. My map is filling up and I’m stoked. We’re helping people all over the country. Not one of these top producers said, “I’d start by learning how to be a realtor. Look at all those homes. You should know the contract backward and forward, find the best ways to vigilantly represent your clients, ask us what the problems and the pitfalls are, and what you can do to represent your client the best way and get them the best deal.” No. Build a brand. That’s what they told them.
[bctt tweet=”Scams always present themselves in the most comfortable ways to you. ” via=”no”]
Remember, not all scams come in the form that you can sniff out right away. What did they say about the best scams? They look like things that you’re already comfortable with. For those of us in here, reading all this, you are here and you let me do all that boring research and give you the data. I’m going to let you ask the questions. Email me, go to my website, ask me a question. Maybe I’ll make a show about it. I’m going to give you the information and you decide what’s best for you. I can give you specific tips because I’ve been doing this for many years and now, I’m a real estate nerd. I read this stuff all the time.
I’ve spent many years dedicating myself to you because I don’t want you to live your life as I did in my twenties in ignorant bliss, nothing wrong with it. It was great. By doing nothing more than what I already did, imagine the possibilities. I don’t want you to miss out on hundreds of thousands of dollars as I did. I believe that once you’re educated, empowered and you have this knowledge, you’re going to be able to take advantage of these things now that you have the knowledge. I believe in you. You can do this.
Important Links:
- Episode 38 – Housing Forecast 2021 For First Time Home Buyers
- Chris Griffith – Past episode
- Episode 27 – How To Financially Prepare To Buy Your First Home – Part VII
- Apple Podcasts – How to Buy a Home
- Facebook – How to Buy a Home David Sidoni & Associates Real Estate
- Yelp – David Sidoni & Associates Real Estate
- @DavidSidoni – Instagram
- How to Buy a Home – Facebook group
- YouTube – How to Buy a Home podcast – David Sidoni
- Twitter – David Sidoni
- Clubhouse
This podcast was started for YOU, to demystify things for first time home buyers, and help crush the confusion. After helping first timers for over 13 years, I knew there wasn’t t a lot of clear, tangible, useable information out there on the internet, so I started this podcast. Help me spread the word to other people just like you, dying for answers. Tell your friends, family, and perhaps that random neighbor you REALLY want to move out about How to Buy a Home! A really easy way is to hit the share button and text it to your friends. Go for it, help someone out. And if you’re not already a regular listener, subscribe and get constant updates on the market. If you are a regular and learned something, help me help others – give the show a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, or write a review on Spotify. Let’s change the way the real estate industry treats you first time buyers, one buyer at a time, starting with you – and make sure your favorite people don’t get screwed by going into this HUGE step blind and confused. Viva la Unicorn Revolution!
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