Home Buying: The Fight For Your Future Home

Unlock the secrets to navigating the real estate market with a wad of cash as we reveal how Baby Boomers are reshaping the housing landscape. In this episode, we dissect the financial firepower fueling an all-out bidding war and explain why having parents with deep pockets might just be your golden ticket in today's competitive market.

Are you ready to ride the rollercoaster of home financing trends? Together, we explore the seismic societal shifts prompting families to pack up for lower-tax pastures and the rise of multigenerational households. But hold on tight because we also tackle the tricky terrain of wage growth and inflation and how these factors are turning the real estate market into a battleground for buyers. It's a complex equation, but we've got the insights to help you crack the code.

Finally, we take the magnifying glass to the local housing markets, zooming in on the finer details that make each one tick. From skyrocketing regulatory costs to the evolving expectations of luxury, we're breaking down why high housing prices might just be here to stay. It's not just about interest rates or the size of your bank account—it's about understanding the intricacies of where you want to plant your roots. So, whether you're itching to invest or considering a cautious approach, we've got the wisdom you won't want to miss for your next big move.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to Ditch the Suits podcast, where we share insights nobody in the financial services industry wants you to know about. We're here to help you get the most from your money in life. So buckle up and welcome to Ditch the Suits. Welcome back to Ditch the Suits, steve Campbell here with Travis Moss, episode number three. We weren't sure if this was going to be a three or four part series, but I'm here to let you know it's going to be a four parter. Last episode we talked about the two cause and effects leading out to home price affordability. We got three more we want to go through. In the last episode we talked about this relocation, people being able to afford more purchases. Being you being, if you've ever gone to look at a house and it's wondering man, where are all these other buyers getting this money from? How is everything being so accelerated? Where are these deep pockets coming from? I think that's going to lead nicely into maybe what cause and effect number three are, which many people don't think of.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Yeah, this is the cash problem. We talked about it, the people who weren't looking for a, a mortgage, but are just writing the check for the property. And we work with a lot of people who are in this situation and it's like the college conundrum we were talking about. They're stuck. On one hand, they want to get the kids into a house. On another hand, they don't want to overpay for anything and they feel like there's a lot of pressure to overpay for stuff. And they feel like there's a lot of pressure to overpay for stuff. So it's like, do I overpay a little bit and get the kids in the house, or do I? You know, or even myself, some people are buying a house for themselves and they're using cash, but boomers have more cash. That whole generation has more cash available to them, I think, than probably any other generation uh, available to them, I think, than probably any other generation. And I think it's fueling, like, this arms race to help the kids bid for and acquire properties, where even the boomers you know a lot of them are buying second properties. Um, it's, it's. It's creating competition that never existed before and it's creating it because, um, that's the way to compete. So it's, unless we sit it out and hope that enough people sit it out, we're not going to be able to compete at all for some of these houses that we want to buy or that our kids want to buy, so this is part of what's pushing these prices up.

Speaker 2: 2:21

This is the first generation that has pensions, 401ks and non-retirement investments, let's say, in mass. Yep, they had access to these from the 80s on, like easy access from the 80s on, where a lot of people don't get pensions anymore. A lot of folks that are already retired or around retirement still get some form of a pension. On top of that, they had deferred comp or 401k options. On top of that, you know the discount brokerages and you go online and give an E-Trade account, financial advisors and all that kind of stuff. That's a newer phenomenon. Man, you go back into the 70s. It was the Wolf of Wall Street stuff. You know what I mean. It's become much more of a legit like trying to build wealth by putting money away every month and accounts outside of retirement accounts after you've maxed out your retirement accounts, type of thing, and the average person can go online, open an account, put money in today and buy something tomorrow. I mean it's become. It's become very, very different, but that means that this is the first large group of people to ever come through that has this kind of money available.

Speaker 2: 3:31

And then they went through the 70s and the 80s, which you know. High interest rates means high growth. You know lots of interest. You made lots of interest and lots of stock market returns, which is funny. So you look at the 70s and the 80s those were great times to have investments. The 90s great times to have investments.

Speaker 2: 3:47

Right after high interest rates. All of a sudden we're like high interest rates, I'll never make any money on my investments again. That's what happened for those 30 years. You know incredible market runs in those particular years. So we get to this point in retirement now with these folks that are all approaching 60s and 70s and they've got more money than they actually thought that they ever would.

Speaker 2: 4:10

Think about what the market's done in the last handful of years, even with the goose egg a couple of years ago, the really negative market in 2022, I think what did we look at? We looked at numbers over the last five years, including that it's still up like 100% or something like that. People have still made a lot more money than they would have ever dreamed. And that's the other thing. If your parents had $100,000 when they were 60 and they made 10% because the market was good, they made 10 grand. You have a million dollars when you're 70 and it goes up 10%, you got 100,000 more. Yep, well, that goes a long way to helping your kids buy a house. And this is exactly what we're seeing.

Speaker 2: 4:50

And the reason why is because because we figured out, in a tight market, when, when, when there's a lot of buyers, the guy who shows up with cash normally wins. You know, because it means there's no contingencies. I don't have to wait for a bank, don't have to worry about the home inspection, so much you know the bank's not going to be. You know ticky tacky about everything. We can. We can just go in there, we can sign the paperwork in 30 days, we can be done and out. And so more and more people figured out that that was the thing to do.

Speaker 2: 5:18

So what happens, steve, if you normally would take out a mortgage and you figured out that, you know what, the last two people who bought a house bought it with cash or mostly cash or whatever. So you know, if I have a mortgage, I'm disadvantaged. Parents come in and say you know what, don't worry about the mortgage, we're going to give you the money. You're going to buy the house, and then one of two things happens. Either we're going to consider that a gift to you or, well, one of three things can happen. It's either a gift, or you're going to pay us back as if we're the mortgage, or you're going to refinance after you buy the house. You'll go to the bank and you'll borrow whatever you can borrow, and then you'll pay us back. Yep, and that has broadly been the case.

Speaker 2: 6:01

Additionally, on top of that and we've seen this a lot people are coming into inheritances large amounts of money never seen before by the next generation. More people are going to inherit a million dollars than probably ever before. And what do they do with that? They go oh, found money, I can buy a house, I can pay off a mortgage, whatever. Yep, or I can afford more house.

Speaker 2: 6:26

So you've got people who have figured out that, look, I can't afford the down payment on a $600,000 house. So mom and dad are coming and saying I got extra money, here's an extra $120,000, $200,000, whatever for the down payment. That's a legit thing. That's happening across the board. That's actually a very common number that we see across the board. So mom and dad are coming in and helping. On top of that, they're even saying look, if you get up against a cash buyer, we'll give you the cash and then we'll just refinance it after you get into houses the people who bought our house that's what they did. As a seller, you take that deal because there's less time to the closing, less things that can go wrong. It's kind of more guaranteed. So you jump on that. So we're kind of caught in this loop. We're frustrated that people are showing up with cash and bidding the house up. So what are we doing?

Speaker 1: 7:29

We're giving our family members more cash to go and bid the house up and everybody's trying is kind of like mimicking that. Well, and can I add the supercharge on top of that? So cause and effect number two we talked about people leaving high tax states, coming to low tax states. Many of them are moving from one type of climate to another type of climate.

Speaker 1: 7:44

So if you've got younger people that are used to being taxed a lot and paying high property taxes potentially moving to states where you have very low to if none of state tax and their money goes farther, mom and dad also want to help out, because you alluded to it in the last episode.

Speaker 1: 8:00

They want a place to get away to and so they want to help out. They understand that their kid's money, if they purchase this house, is going to be able to provide for them a place for them to stay, a place for them to get away. They want to help out and so many people that we deal with today, like you had said, because of the assets that they've been able to build over time, there are so many people we talk to every single day that have such healthy pensions, that are in retirement and they've accumulated all this money in deferred comp and 401k plans that they don't need to live off of, and so they're starting to think about ways to help their kids. And so it's this unique supercharged conundrum, where you had COVID, that opened the door for so many people to completely mass relocate, and now a bunch of parents saying like, geez, I mean, you can buy how much of a home you know? If we were able to help you out, that it's just. It's changing the entire transactional business that's gone into home affordability.

Speaker 2: 8:51

Well, one of the other intro and I just thought of this as you were saying that one of the other interesting things that's happened, and again I started in finance and mortgages.

Speaker 1: 8:59

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Speaker 2: 9:39

Well, one of the other intro. I just thought of this as you were saying that. One of the other interesting things that's happened and again I started in finance and mortgages around 2003 or 2004. It used to be retirement assets. You could have $5 million in the bank but you didn't have any income, so it was really hard to get a mortgage. Now, when you go and you apply for a mortgage, you have no income from work or social security or even a pension, but you got a million dollars in the retirement account. What they say is you got to start taking a payment out of that retirement account and they'll tell you the amount and they want to see you take it out for three months and therefore you'll qualify for the mortgage because you know you have this asset there that could theoretically produce the payment.

Speaker 2: 10:23

So the other thing that's happened is through the and I think it's the proper evolution of it, but it certainly creates a different dynamic. People before who wouldn't have been able to get a mortgage now can get a mortgage and you know you take that. You take the fact that more people can get a mortgage. More people are helping their family members get a mortgage. More people are helping their family members pay cash. More people are.

Speaker 2: 10:52

There's more households in America than there's ever been before, you know, so there's more competition for it. That's a pretty incredible dynamic happening where this again, I'll just go back to the same people who are saying hey, you know this bidding war is sucks, everybody's bidding it up, but yet they're in line to bid on on every, every property that looks good. And you know we lost it last time, so this time we've got to bid an extra 5% more than we bid last time. And you know it. Just, it's a domino right now where everybody's competing. A lot of competition for a smaller supply, and that's the big, that's the really big problem right now.

Speaker 1: 11:27

Well, and even before you jump into the next cause and effect, I've even seen personally families migrating together over time. A lot of people here in East Tennessee the kids were the first ones to take the jump two, three years ago, leaving California, leaving States where they had high taxes. And now that you know, parents see that their kids are thriving, they love the area. Mom and dad are now moving and so you have groups coming together versus it's not just one family making a decision. There are families that miss seeing their kids. They don't want to FaceTime anymore and they see how good it is, so they're letting their kids kind of go test it out. And now, over time, I can't tell you how many friends my wife and I have that have mom and dad now coming to relocate to where they live too. So such a unique time. But then there's also, you know, two more cause and effects that we want to get into.

Speaker 2: 12:12

Oh, we got three more.

Speaker 1: 12:13

Three more. So the baby boomers one, I think is fascinating, the changes. Why don't you go into a number four for us?

Speaker 2: 12:19

Well, four is quickie because we just did four with. You know, we've covered four recently with all of our different episodes. But if you have wage growth and inflation, you know, we know that there's inflation. So, just, it just costs more to build a house in the first place. Right, Because everything costs more. And there's wage growth. People are making more.

Speaker 2: 12:43

You know, a lot of states have raised their minimum wages People here's the thing that happens when somebody says well, you know they raised the minimum wage in that state, doesn't really? You know they don't do it for our state, listen, our company's in two different states. We don't pay based on the lower state's wages, we pay based on the higher state's wages. So, and a lot of people, a lot of companies like if minimum wage is $15 and the most unskilled workers are at $15, then what do you pay for a skilled worker or a worker with experience? Not $15. You have to pay 20, 20 or plus. And now that everybody can work remotely, you can't go to a lower income state or a lower minimum wage state and just say, okay, because I'm here, I'm going to pay you less because they can go online and they get a job working for somebody making that $20, $25 an hour if they've got that experience or skillset. So it travels and it makes a dramatic impact.

Speaker 2: 13:45

Well, wages are up. If wages are actually up and we can make an argument that they're not up per inflation right, or at least not up much, adjusted for inflation, but they're still up. What it means is that, in relationship to everything we are making, there's more money in circulation. Our pay is higher, so is the cost of everything else, so so will be the cost of the house. Yeah, so is the cost of everything else, so so will be the cost of the house. Yeah, you know it's so, so there, there.

Speaker 2: 14:15

And that doesn't make up for the some of the astronomical jumps. It certainly is not the reason why some houses have jumped by a hundred percent or even more in certain areas, but it's certainly a contributing factor. And see if you could see where we're going with this. It's like death by a thousand cuts. It's not just interest rates, it's not just cash buyers, it's everything. There's more money. If you could afford, steve, if you could afford a $2,140. That's just how it goes, it's math. So you will be more likely to bid up a house because you got that raise, so you can afford bidding it up.

Speaker 1: 15:05

Hey guys, steve Campbell with Digital Suits Want to take one quick moment to make a big ask. If you haven't already, travis and I would love for you to subscribe to this podcast, but if you haven't, also we would love for you to leave a five-star rating and review. Your rating and review will let other podcasters know that this show is worth their time. So let's get right back to the episode, and thanks for listening to Ditch the Suits Podcast. Well and two, the changes to companies.

Speaker 1: 15:30

Right when we did our last series so not this current one that we're in we were talking about corporate profits, profits that take the risk, get to determine how they spend the money when the company grows.

Speaker 1: 15:41

And if, through COVID, you have the ability to now just hire, not from within your local pool of employees, but you can now draw from individuals and candidates all over the country sometimes globally, you might say because we want to reinvest in the most skilled people. They may not live in our hometown, so we are going to pay somebody more that works remotely, that is going to produce 10 times the amount of work because of their skillset. So if that's driving higher prices too, is that individuals are creating value for themselves. They're not just, hey, I'm going to go down to the local manufacturer or corporation and, you know, stand in line for a job. They're on LinkedIn, they're on all these places, you know, promoting themselves. So when you talk about high wage growth, you know it's, it's really too, I think, how companies are choosing to spend money. Um, that's, that's also raising the ability for people to be able to afford more. Yeah, so I got, I think we, we went through that one pretty quick.

Speaker 2: 16:36

We got cause and effect number five.

Speaker 1: 16:37

This is one of my favorites, this one's fascinating.

Speaker 2: 16:39

Yeah, this is like people are like I can't believe how much cars cost today. Well, think about it. You know, if you really go back in time buying a cars, you know, and that you crank windows, you know had crappy radios, you know what I mean Like you didn't have what you have today when you buy a car, yep, so you're not buying the same car, you're buying a completely different car. What? What used to be luxury is now the base model Right, and so now there's new luxury, right. New luxury is the car drives itself, right, and so now there's new luxury, right. New luxury is the car drives itself right. Someday that'll be the base model. It kind of keeps going like that. Machines. The base model is not the same.

Speaker 2: 17:35

When we get frustrated because the cost of the housing is going up so much, we're also not being honest about what we're buying. It'd be like, steve, you go to the grocery store and you go and you buy something and you spend $100 on it, and then the next time you go to the grocery store, you spend 400 and you come out and go. I cannot believe what groceries cost and I go. Well, what you buy the first time you go. Well, I bought some milk and some vegetables for 100 bucks. I'll go, okay, what you buy the second time. I bought milk, I bought vegetables, I bought dog food, I bought a couple of ribeyes for tonight and I bought some lobsters. What do you mean? You can't believe what it costs versus, like, the last time you went to the store. You didn't buy the same stuff. You still bought groceries Completely different bags of groceries, though Completely different.

Speaker 2: 18:22

In 1950, the average size of a house was under a thousand square. This is where I wish that the internet actually was smarter and that artificial intelligence was actually intelligent. You can't find data out there that's consistent. I googled average house size and average, you know, by square footage, by family members, all that kind of stuff. Numbers are all over the board, but this is pretty close to where the averages are.

Speaker 2: 18:48

In 1950, the average size of a house was under 1 000 square feet. In 2000 it was about 2 250 square feet. What do you think is going to cost more, the thousand square foot house or the 2 250 square foot house? Right and you go. Well, you know the cost of housing went up way better, way faster than inflation. You're also buying a much bigger house and you could say but it's per square footage, yeah, but it's not an equal thing. More, you know, bigger house costs more foundation. You know what I mean. Like it's not just a perfect dollar for dollar. You know you need a bigger lot. Lots cost more money. You know there's all kinds of things that are going to go into that. Yep, in 2019, it really I think it started to peak. It's around 2500 square feet.

Speaker 2: 19:42

In addition to the bigger houses, what else you got? You got more bathrooms. Yep, right, like you go, go into a house that was built in the 50s, 60s or 70s, got one bathroom. It's going to be like, you know, somewhere central in the house and everybody's got to share it, and it's going to be a junky-looking bathroom. It's old. It's going to be a small bathroom. There's going to be a shower tub and a toilet and probably no vanity, just a sink.

Speaker 2: 20:09

A lot of houses were like that. Think about the bathrooms that you have in your house now and how many bathrooms you actually even have. In fact, most people go to a house. They don't buy a one-bedroom house anymore. Nope, I mean, that's not something that you go shopping for. Even a two-bathroom house, normally it's two and a half baths, right, you got to have one for the kids, one for the parents and one for the guests. You know that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 20:34

Bigger kitchens I mean kitchens are a big deal. Even if people don't cook, they're a big deal. We've got huge kitchens, got to have this. You know, even people who don't eat with their families anymore Still got to have a huge kitchen. Lots of cabinets, countertops. You know all the good stuff in there. So, and the reason why I bring up bathrooms and kitchens bathrooms and kitchens are expensive. If you're going to have tile in your house, like nice tile, that's probably where you have it in the bathroom, in the kitchen, right.

Speaker 2: 21:06

I remember doing construction as a kid. We did a guest bathroom for a house $30,000, because we put in Italian marble and all these nice features and stuff. Because it's the bathroom. You want the bathroom to look nice. That's where you impress people. You don't put tiles in the bedroom, you put tiles in the bathroom.

Speaker 2: 21:23

It's where the expense of the craftsmanship is Same thing with the kitchen. The cabinets, right. What we spend on cabinets and appliances that's a lot of the cost is in those rooms. Well, if they're bigger, they cost more. Yeah, you know. I mean, we have rounded corners in our house. I guess it's a custom. I've never seen it before. It's a custom contracting thing, right. What costs more than sharp corners? Right, it just has to. There's more labor to it, you know it's so.

Speaker 2: 21:52

It's one of those things where we got a bigger house, yep. You got fancier, nice places, yep. I mean, think about what a luxurious countertop would have been. Even back in the 80s it was like for Micah or something like that. Nobody had. I don't remember anybody having granite countertops in the 80s. Now I grew up. We having granite countertops in the 80s Now I grew up, we didn't have a lot of money, so maybe that was a thing, but I'd never seen it. Right now, like every house has got a granite countertop you know what I mean. Or quartz or something like that. Well, guess what that does? That adds expense to the house, but we do it because people will pay up for it, because it's a luxury item. It's like getting the extra package on the house or granite and quartz in the bathrooms, and you know what I mean, like.

Speaker 2: 22:43

My point is is that the base level house today is not the same as the base level house 30 years ago. It's certainly not the same as the base level house 80 years ago. It's not even near in size and it's not near in quality. It's a completely different thing. Yet we're still comparing the prices as if they're the same. Um, well, it's just more money, you know, like, like. Let me just finish this, because it's you.

Speaker 2: 23:09

You got more expensive appliances right. Yep, appliances are far more expensive. You got more expensive hvac systems, furnaces and air conditioners. We didn't grow up with air conditioner. I didn't know anybody who had an air conditioner. A lot of people have window air conditioner. Now you're buying a house and people won't even move into a house without an air conditioner. Well, what do you think that adds in cost to the house? It adds a lot more money. People had furnaces or wood stoves in the past or fireplaces now, or not furnaces, but wood stoves or fireplaces. Now we've got furnaces right, like. So the houses, the dynamics of the houses, have changed completely More, more. More equals money, money, money. That's what that equals.

Speaker 1: 23:49

Sorry. When you're young and married, you're living on a shoestring budget. You're eating ramen and whatever you can, and as you get older and you make more money. So again, we're talking about what's been leading up to this. Maybe you're in your prime, earning years, you're making more money each year, money's going farther.

Speaker 1: 24:06

Your appetite begins to change and because you are always being shown TV shows about remodels and you're seeing what people are doing, you all of a sudden believe you need a master bedroom with a massive closet, and that wasn't that 20, 30 years ago. So even just what we think we deserve, which, if you've worked really hard and you have the ability to go do it, empower yourself to do it. But I think there's also this consensus like we deserve this, we should have this because everybody else is doing it, or this is the next logical step, and so I think that that's, you know, a really helpful tidbit to talk about just appetites and how things have changed. And I think maybe this last one here is fairly interesting too, and I love the fact that you always back this up with statistics and how things have changed. So why don't you just jump into the role that regulations play?

Speaker 2: 24:57

Yeah, and for everybody. I mean it's, it's. We're not judging anybody. You know what I mean. You can want a nicer house, you can. I want a nicer house, I want nicer. You know accoutrements and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 25:08

Like that's completely okay.

Speaker 2: 25:10

You just got to understand it. You got to understand why is it costing so much? Yep, you know, I mean because then you can make better decisions. Uh, but regulations, and this is this is, you know, back to our last one, where we talked about, um, uh, state taxes and federal taxes. Now, you know, monetary supply increase and taxes increase and stuff. Well, you know regulations. According to the national association of home builders, 21.5 percent of the builder's construction costs this is based on a survey but 21.5% of a builder's construction costs and 13.3% of the final house price is attributed towards regulatory costs during construction. That's as of 2021. So do you think that we have more regulations for housing or less regulations over the last decade?

Speaker 1: 25:55

I'm going to say more.

Speaker 2: 25:56

Yeah, okay. So we keep making more rules and it makes everything get more expensive. And then we get mad that things get more expensive. So in 2011, the average regulation cost so this is, you know, if they say that you got to have, you know, energy efficiency or water efficiency or solar or whatever you know, depending on where you live $65,224 per house. That was in 2011 on the average house. In 2021, it had increased to $93,870. Good night. So you buy a $400,000 house. $93,870 of that is because of government regulations.

Speaker 2: 26:44

Now, they could be good regulations. They could be good rules, right, like we talked about energy efficiency, making sure your septic system or your leach fields are correct, or you're not using lead pipes anymore, or you're following building codes and all that kind of stuff. But that seems like a lot of money, and so people are getting frustrated with how much they're spending on housing. But at least in the last decade, 30,000 of that spending on housing but at least in the last decade, 30,000 of that is because of the rules that you know on average, that are being applied to. You know, make sure that housing is done in a certain way and, again, some of that stuff can be very good.

Speaker 2: 27:29

Some of it might be just stupid bureaucracy, wastefulness, I don't know, but understand where the money's going. So when you're like I can't believe housing prices are going up, it's got to be these greedy. You know whoever you're blaming it on. You know we're also voting for some of these people, and you know we're. You know we also want some of these things. We want energy efficiency and stuff. So cost is a cost.

Speaker 1: 27:57

So then, why don't you hit us as we wrap this up with the big solution?

Speaker 2: 28:00

well, the big solution is that? Uh well, we're going to get to the solutions that the. The silver lining, I guess this is that none of these cause and effects are the sole reason right for housing prices being so high. And there's even more that I can think of that we didn't cover. But I think what we've done is we've illustrated the dynamics behind it that are hitting the housing market all at the same time, and why.

Speaker 2: 28:27

If you're sitting around waiting for things to go back to normal, this is normal. This is the normal. This is how things work. Things are changing because the dynamics are changing. They're constantly in flux.

Speaker 2: 28:44

I would think that if I'm sitting there waiting and hoping that if interest rates go down this year, that all of a sudden, housing prices are going to come back down to any meaningful amount, you might still be waiting a year, two years, five years from now, 10 years from now, just like if you're waiting from three years ago, if you're saying, well, I could have bought a house when the mortgage rates were four, but I wanted to wait for the rates to come back down and for the prices to come back down. That was probably the worst decision that you ever made, because it's probably not going to be near that any time in the rest of your life. I mean, some of these cycles are 30 years. If you look at these inflationary cycles, we're rising and lowering interest rates. They're not normally quick. They normally go in one direction for a very long time before they come back in the other one. So if you understand what's happening and every housing community is going to be different, right, every town, every village, every city, every countryside is going to be. Their housing market is going to be different.

Speaker 2: 29:45

And that's one of the other issues. When you get on TV and they talk about, oh, housing prices are high and you got to wait and you're getting price gouged or whatever, you're getting price gouged or whatever, you can't talk about the entire country and say that the reason why housing prices are up in Omaha, nebraska, are the same that they're up in Vestal, new York, or Johnson City, tennessee. There's the same common players but a slightly different influence from each one, probably, or sometimes a dramatically different influence. Each one probably or sometimes a dramatically different influence. But there's variables and it's like you need to understand your own housing market. But it's more complicated than just geez if they just bring down interest rates, or if those greedy corporations would just stop buying houses, we'd be able to afford these houses. You've got to be a little bit more aware of what's happening there, so, but I don't want to despair at all, because in our next episode, steve, we were going to talk about what people can do about it.

Speaker 1: 30:42

Yeah, and if there was, you know I don't think Travis and I are trying to make light that you're trying to do probably the best thing for you and your family. There's probably very few people that are making decisions in a vacuum for yourself, so the stakes are a little bit higher. You want to do the right thing. You want to purchase a home, whatever it may be. If you find yourself in this position, you and your spouse, you are trying to make sense of the fact of, like geez, why are houses so expensive and should we wait? Should we delay?

Speaker 1: 31:08

I'm going to ask you for this next episode. Maybe get your spouse to watch this with you, because I think what Travis and I are going to try to bring this home in a way that will take it from you two talking at each other and maybe give you some context for if we had the opportunity to speak with you, what we would say about should you wait or not. So I would encourage you head over to NQR Media on YouTube. That's NQR Media this next episode with your spouse, significant other because, again, one 30 minute conversation could help bring context and levity to a situation that's maybe felt like a really long season of waiting, and waiting, and waiting, so don't become desperate Tune into the last episode as we walk through housing affordability.