3/31/2026 Hawaii Real Estate Live W Core Team Hawaii

And we are live. Welcome back to the show, Moving Hawaii on YouTube, the Hawaii Real Estate Podcast on the podcast platforms. And we are Core Team Hawaii, brokered by UXP. Hawaii's number one, at least Oahu's number one YouTube real estate team. Actually, I'll tell you about it. I had a meeting yesterday with someone. Actually, maybe I shouldn't. They didn't give me a chance to tell you. Who wants to come over and sort of join in a line with us? Yeah, you know him. Sorry, I shouldn't have said anything. But, you know, we attract clients, we attract agents as well. And so these people want to kind of align with us. I'm here with Jody from Pacific Rim Mortgage. And that's good because we've been bombing Iran and doing sorts of things and rates have moved over the last weeks and months. And so we'll get into that as well. We have a little bit of our safe surveys, which are kind of us bragging about ourselves. And then, you know, we didn't have a specific topic I want to talk about today. So there's kind of a free flow talk about real estate thing. Sorry, let me send a correction. We have a client that wants to watch this and I sent them the wrong clip. It's on this channel. Okay, done being distracted. Jody, I had a call this morning with my profit and loss statement coach. I'm not as disciplined looking at our stuff. So I at least once a month look at all my books with this guy. That's great. Once a month is ahead of the pack for sure. It's ahead of the pack. It should be like three times or more a week. And I'm in a group chat with DT and him and Aiden. It's like our little investing chat. But anyways, the reason being, he told me, he said, how is the market going there? We have a lender because he's like the ops manager of sorts of a brokerage there in Jacksonville, Florida. And he said, you know, we're heavy military here in Jacksonville. And the lender who is, he pays some marketing stuff for that brokerage. He's a military heavy lender. They do about 240 loans a year. They do some real production. And he asked him something of the sort of like, hey, how many pre-approvals are you normally doing? Like IAs, initial applications and then pre-approvals. And then he had his metric. It's usually X amount per month. He told him that he, in the past, like probably about since we bombed Iran or so, but in the past month or so, he's done zero pre-approvals. That's this lender in Florida. What? That's supposedly, this is what I was told. He did zero pre-approval. That's how much his business has fallen off of a cliff. Just as the anecdote of Jody and Pacific Rim's barometer, have you seen since the whole, the conflict in Iran or war in Iran, have you seen initial applications and things drop a bit? Yeah, a little bit, but the thing is that, yeah. The thing is that there's just so much in the pipe that there's just so much activity always. So while the front end of the funnel, so initial applications and then therefore pre-qualifications have dropped a bit, we're still seeing a lot of activity. I know our team, Core Team Hawaii, I'm very active right now. I have a bunch of stuff going with Kenny, with Mahe, a few with Aiden, but I have significant meaningful either escrows in progress or offers being written or listings coming with everyone. There's a lot going on. But how's it, what about for you? Has it slowed some? I mean, the referrals are still constant. So yesterday I had seven phone calls. That's not a little bit. That's a lot. If a lender could do seven calls a day, every day from referrals from agents, they'd have a big business. Right. Yeah, yeah. Every lender wants that, right? Yeah. So it was full day. I will say that as far as the, I don't want to say the quality of the lead, but in terms of like, are these people going to qualify for what they're looking for? Are they open to that? Are they open to 500K? So that's dropped a little bit. 400K. Yeah. Rates haven't moved enough to be the cause of that. So if rates were down to 5.3 VA and now they're 5.99, that's not enough to that person who was going to buy a town home. Now they can't buy a three bedroom. It's two bedroom for most people that like 0.75 of a movement of rates isn't enough to take them to where they can't buy the thing they want. Is it or is it? It is. It is? Yeah. It definitely is. Okay. Yeah. It's just that if you are already at the top of your price point or your comfort level or qualifications, either of those, because it could be either qualifications or comfort level. And now we're talking about a 0.75% increase that is going to take you out of your comfort level and, or it's going to take you out of your qualification. Yeah. I can see if you're out of your qualification. So if the most, you know, there's a debt to income thing. If you're out there watching, you don't have to get too technical, but I can see it taking out of your qualification. The way I think of it is we talk about things before we get things over to lender to have a very detailed conversation. We like, ah, for every a hundred thousand you're borrowing in today's rates, it's somewhere around 650 a month or 625 a month, depending on how, or maybe, maybe we've been closer to 600. But, and I think, okay, over the course of $25 per a hundred thousand and you're on 500,000, like is $125 enough to really matter to someone? It is. 125 bucks? It is. Hmm. I'm not, I don't mean to be, uh, sort of out of touch with reality and bougie and, you know, act like 125 is not a lot of money, but the way that we guide our buyers, we, we don't have so many buyers on the fringe. We're making this big principle based decision for where you are in your career, your life, your marriage, or your commitment to live in Hawaii to where a hundred dollars a month probably shouldn't make or break whether or not you should buy. Because after all, we know you, you're going to refine the future. Yeah. About equity. Um, but like I could see, and you would probably agree, like with our clients, the a hundred dollars probably less likely, but like with her clients, I typed someone's name on the screen. Don't go to it, Kenji. Like their clients are very on the fringe. Oh yeah. Right. And so I guess it's different every time. Extremely. Yes. Extremely on the fringe. Yes. Barely can buy. Yes. This isn't a dig. This is just, I guess the people that we attract aren't typically first time home buyers, or if they are, they're a little bit more mature first time home buyer. We're not, we're not selling homes with a lot of like 25 year old people. I don't know. Maybe because I'm just old and bald. Right. And we don't attract those people, but we don't have so many buyers on the fringe. Um, what are rates today? Um, let me see. I didn't write it down before coming over today. That's okay. Well, in the meantime, I'm going to go over some of our self-brags. They're actually short. We only have two today. One is from Kwong. Kwong is, Kwong's this guy who incredibly intelligent guy. He's a client of ours. When I went to his house, I saw these jujitsu stickers. I'm like, Oh, you do jujitsu. And then we're kind of looking at each other, measuring each other. I could tell just by looking at it, like probably soccer. You guys are the same. I'm looking at him looking the way he responds to my question. Like, Oh, you train? He's like, yeah, I train. And I'm just looking at him like, bro, this guy's good. I know he's good at jujitsu. I end up rolling with him. He's like world class. He's super good. Uh, but anyways, enough of me, uh, talking like that about Kwong. He says 10 out of 10. They're amazing. They're wonderful. And all of you involved, they're wonderful. That is regarding Aiden and I, as we'll be selling his place soon. And then Chris says about Kenny, our guy, Kenny, I believe is coming back there from the mainland today. He has been great and even dealt with some things even while on holiday on holiday. Where's Chris from, from Europe or something? I have to look into that. I feel like that's a European thing. You either Australian or European or something, if you're calling a vacation holiday. Uh, but yeah, Kenny was gone and I'll get my shout outs to Kenny because when I came back from vacation, Mahe was out like that day. I hit the tarmac. I started working right away. Also props to them for shielding me from the work while I was in Japan. We hit the tarmac. I start working, turn my phone on and Kenny and Mahe are both out when I get back. And, uh, Kenny was still tracking and doing work while he was on vacation. Um, so we just have an amazing team. Uh, did you look up what rates were or are? So VA is hovering right around 5.99. Oh, that's where it was last week when you, when I asked you this question. And then conventional 6.49. I feel like conventional is a little closer. It was 6.35 or 6.375 last week. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And 6.375 is not very expensive. Like, so when we were, when we would put together numbers, we would show not just the 6.49 because it's not even half a point to get you an eighth lower. So we, that's something we would show and we would kind of look at ROI and stuff. I see. I see. So if you're watching, you don't know what all that means. Like there's different, you can pay less closing costs. You can pay more, more closing costs at times, dollar for dollar. When you put, when you're going to buy a rate down, it means more than at other times. And when Jody saying ROI, return on investment. So for every X amount you spend to get your interest rate lower, let's look at how quickly you recoup that given today's scenario. So. There was a slight improvement just because of the potential talks that hot off the press are. The, what we're going to exit Iran or something? Well, the Iran is saying they're ready to talk in real life instead of just the, the one sided. No, we've been in talks and they actually mean, Oh, Trump saying we're talking when we're not. Yeah. Oh, I see. I see. Like the negotiations are going great. And then Iran is like, we have not done any negotiations where there are no negotiations in play, you know, like that. But I guess a validated source is saying Iran is saying that they are ready to end the war with the U S but obviously they want their guarantees. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's no, we get asked all the time in the real estate industry. How's the market? How is it compared to whatever last year or 2021 or whatever? What do you think's going to happen? I want your predictions in a Trump presidency in 2026. You have to be more principle based in your decisions because the level of predictability is just as unpredictable as has ever been. Yeah. I mean, even 2008 mid crisis, it's, it's a very predictable time. It's not a good time, but it's a very predictable time. I guess it's a good time if you have a lot of cash and everything's on clearance, but for most of the industry in the country, that's not a great time, but at least it's a predictable time. There's some security and what's the opposite of anxiety, you know, like some assuredness and knowing that, well, this is how it's going to be for the next 12 or 18 or 24, 36 months. You don't know. All you know, is uncertainty is sure in this Trump presidency. And so, you know, that's not to add in any way, speak about preference, political preferences or anything like that, but it's just the reality. It just is what it is. We were at a three-year low. Let's give context to that actual real life, recent context. We had hit a three-year low. And so the best interest rates basically since the market shifted going into late 22, 23, and we're at a three-year low. And when Jodi and them told me that, I was like, yeah, three-year low, shmear low. Like I don't. And then it was like, no, no, we're still at the three-year low. Like we're sustaining, we're sustaining three-year low. It was, we were really feeling good. We were hitting our stride. I had gotten so many people on deck to refinance. And the market was heating up. Like we, anecdotally, we saw like a single family home in Mililani or two, like go crazy. We saw some other things. We just saw a strengthening market. And then it was like that for what, a couple of weeks? Yeah. A couple of weeks. And then the signal from the Fed was like, we're going to do three more rate cuts, I think, in this year. Right. It's like, oh, wow, we're finally getting the traction. We're finally getting stability. And then we bombed Iran. Yeah. Overnight. And then all of that is, all of that is nothing. And so all of that. And it was up, up, up, up. And now we're at 5.99, at least for the last week on VA. I always talk VA because that's the lower of the two. And so it's like the baseline. And the market does feel, depending on what it is that you're selling, does feel less competitive. Now, since bombing Iran, we listed and are in Ho'opiri. And this is an area with a lot of inventory. If you look at Ewa Beach as a whole, this Ewa Beach plain into Kapolei, there's just a lot of inventory, not just in this community, but in the surrounding zip codes. It's not a place where you're used to seeing, you know, six plus offers and three of them being amazing offers and competition, you know, all the way until the final second. You're not used to seeing that, but we hit that. We hit that amidst the Iran conflict. However, there are other listings that are sitting. And so it just, it's a really, it just depends market. It's so just depends. We have another buyer who, can you go off my screen? Yeah, don't. Yeah. I'm going to, because I want to type a joke here. We have this buyer. Yes. I want to abide by HIPAA or whatever and not. HIPAA. I like how you call it HIPAA. There's probably some other version of that in finance, but we have that buyer who now is looking at properties in a different category. So in the eight to 900,000 range, and there's all this sitting inventory, all the sitting inventory. And a lot of that inventory are people who bought in the peak. It's no longer peaking and they can't sell the home for what they need to. So there's this one we're looking at. Actually, there's multiple. One of them is another team you work with and they want to sell for 899. It's just not worth 899. No one's going to buy it for 899, but 899 is kind of where they need to be to exit the home while paying commissions and paying exit fees, et cetera. Escrow and closing costs. So there are people underwater in Ewa Beach right now. So it really just in that same market, I had, we've just listed a super competitive product. So it really, really just depends. That's always the case in any market and every market, but in Ewa and Kapolei post Iran conflict amid a Trump presidency, it really, really depends. You could go to coreteamhawaii.com, go to the bottom, fill out the contact form, hit us up for your real estate needs. And we might tell you you're listing as the crow flies, maybe a mile away from this other one that went crazy in Ewa Beach. But actually, if unless you list this lower than your personal opinion, so maybe you feel like my home will go for 900 easy. It's possible. We tell you, you know, auntie, sorry, like 875 tops. And even with that, I don't expect very much competition on this home. And I pride ourselves in being super honest about that kind of stuff with you. And so, yeah, it really just depends. I'm going to, do we have any questions and comments? Okay. I'm going to be getting in myself as well, so I'll be able to track them, but can you give me the first one? First one is by flying low 6692. A lender hinted that rates could move towards 7% soon. So if you're in the market to buy right now, you should lock into something favorable. What are your thoughts? So that's really a great question. Is there anything, and the amount of fact-based prediction and speculation to say, we'll be at 7% soon. What does soon mean? Like before the end of the year, this year, I feel like there's at least half unfounded speculation in that. Well, it just depends how long Iran goes. Yeah. So if we were to continue this war, 7% easy this year on VA. Well, I mean, I guess conventional is already almost there at 6.4. Yeah. And we were there. We've been there in the last three years. Was conventional at seven this year? It was like 6.99. Yeah. Yeah. What's the highest it's been since 22 conventional. If you did not even, don't have to look it up, but we feel like, I feel like 7.5. 7.375. Yeah. We might've closed to some 7.5s and definitely if your FICO score for conventional makes a big difference, if it's below 700, yeah, we've definitely closed some 7.375s, but those lower ones, your look, your scores under 700, we actually do. We have been trying to go FHA because that's a government loan and the rate is lower. It more mimics the VA rate. Can you go FHA, but put 20% down? Yeah. But then there's private mortgage insurance. If you put the 20, wait, how is it? So FHA, no matter what amount you put down, they force you to pay PMI. And that's part of the reason the rate's lower, right? Oh, so they're recouping the Delta. Oh, interesting. I didn't know that because no one almost never puts 20% down on an FHA. We just closed on one. Did you, but in my experience, it's never happened once for me, but even for you. And I, you know, it was, the whole thing was there was a previous bankruptcy and they were like needing to move immediately. So we couldn't wait for the bankruptcy time period to fall off so that we could go conventional, but his credit had completely, he had completely reestablished his credit. His score was above 700 to where we could have gone conventional, but we, he didn't meet his wait period for the bankruptcy discharge. So we had to go FHA and he was doing a huge down. So he was, he was of the right mindset where he was like, I don't care. I'm just happy I'm buying and I'm closing on this property, like his dream property. Is the PMI, what a minimum of 24 months or something like that? It's the life of the loan. Wait, what? Yeah, FHA. Oh, so. And USDA. So until you refi, so. Until you refi. Until you refi, oh. So once it falls off, we'll refi him into conventional. And then that like, cause it's, it was a decent sized loan. So that I think it's like at least 300 a month. We'll go away. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'll admit I, because I don't do many FHA loan. Yeah. And I may have known this at some point, but I thought that you, I'm always thinking like, once you're at 20%, PMI can drop off. It doesn't, you can be at 50% loan to value with FHA. And if you never refi out, you're still paying PMI. Yes. I didn't realize that. So the whole get to 20% thing is that they refi them. That's how the PMI drops off as you refi when you get to a 80% LTV. For FHA or conventional? Dropping PMI. If you start FHA and you get to a certain loan to value, it's because you refi out. It has nothing to do with loan to value. You have to refi out of that product. Yeah. And some people, oh yes. A hundred percent. I just didn't realize that. Yeah. You got to refi out of FHA. The reason why we don't do a ton of FHA is one, again, the kind of buyers that we are working with aren't typically doing FHA. Also FHA numbers don't work as well. And so it isn't as possible as often for at least, you know, for our clients in Hawaii. But I didn't realize that because I don't do it a lot. I don't do it almost ever. We might've done in 300 million plus of homes sold. We may have only done FHA once or twice, maybe under five times. Yeah. Yeah. Another question. Oh wait, we didn't even answer his question. Okay. So, well, yes. Rates could get upwards of 7%. That person's assuming Iran's going to continue get worse. Right. It's predicated upon that. If it continues. But he talks about potentially locking in. To me, it sounds like a pre-lock. Oh. Which I don't believe is a product that's on the market right now. Well, if you're saying, it's two ways. If this person's saying, so buy a house at today's rates and get locked in. Yes. I mean, assuming Iran's going to continue and you want to buy, like there's merit to that statement. Assuming it's still right for you to buy. You're not going to be in a bad position in life to buy, but say, well, rates are going to get worse. I'm going to buy anyway. So this is all under the assumption that you should buy. You want to buy and you would either buy now or buy in nine months and Iran's going to continue. Yes. Then buy now. But Jody's going to get into is sort of this bait and switch smoke and mirrors strategy of we can assure you your rate now, if you give us money and then you can have today's rate in three months from now. So I did have a conversation with someone and she was saying that this lender was offering it to her and it was just $500 and she'll get locked in at this rate. And the rate that she was quoting was crazy. Worse than today's rate. It's giving the lender a buffer. But it wasn't. So I was telling her, I'm like, it doesn't sound right because it's already the rate that you're telling me is basically not even a rate that I would offer at zero points. You're telling me it's at zero points and you're going to pay 500 and that you're going to be locked in for a hundred and so she was like, yeah, so we're going to go that route. And I said, and if that is truly what you're getting, I do think you should go that route. However, I don't think that's what you're getting. So there's, I think there's additional conversations that should be had to understand fully what it is. Cause I don't know of a company that's a product or a company that's doing that right now. Yeah. I've gone down this route because in 2022, when the rates were shifting into 2023, you, I think of one person in particular that's like, Oh, I have my lock and shop feature. You can lock today's rate in and then for 90 days you can go and shop because rates are trending upwards. And we looked into the validity of it and what you can go into the code of federal regulations and there's five elements that have to be present to lock a rate and et cetera, whether or not it's even okay to do this and whether or not you're in a, or you're at least in a gray area of the code of federal regulations, which is the law amongst the laws governing lending. And so lock in a rate now, but then shop later. It's either not true or the other strategy, Jodi, is they'll say, well, the VA rate today is 5.99. We'll lock you at 6.5. Right. That is more understandable. Yeah. But even the lock itself is. It's not locked. They're just telling you a rate that's higher than what it is so that it buffers that. Because here's the thing, if you're going to broker the deal to ABC Mortgage and in between now and then there's a nuclear war and rates go to 8%. ABC Mortgage is not like in any way legally bound to give you 6.5 cause you locked it. Like that doesn't exist. They say, no, we're not doing the loan. Right. I think so. I mean, I don't know. But you know, the bigger banks, they can make up their own products and they can do certain things. It's just, you know, Banco could decide today that they want to offer a lock and job. It's just not something that I see anybody doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. We have another Jodi question. Mako Pesca 7499. This is a question for Jodi. Please explain mortgage recasting or re-amortization. We want to buy a new place in a couple of years before we sell our current one. What are some things to watch out for when recasting? We want to wait, what's the second part? We want to buy a new place in a couple of years before we sell our current one. So you think of recasting your current one until in which time you buy the new place. Is that what we're hearing? I'm going to assume that's what they mean. They're going to recast and maybe in three years, they'll get rid of the home. The one thing I know about recasting is when I looked into it with Bank of Hawaii, you had to be bringing in a minimum of a $10,000 principal payment to do it. So you have to bring this chunk. Which is actually a really low, really low. I was expecting it to be much higher when you told me. Looked into it. Yeah. Yeah. So what is recasting? So recasting is when you do, and it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't always require a lump sum, but some banks will require a lump sum payment down. But let's say you've been paying on your loan for 15 years or 10 years. And your principal and interest is calculated off of the beginning balance of your loan. But now you owe $200,000 less. So you could take the new balance and re-amortize that balance out to your remaining term. And therefore adjust to a smaller principal and interest. Let me work through this with you. So let's say my beginning payment was $10,000 a month. And on the first month, $100 went to principal, $9,900 went to interest and other things. And on the second month, it increased from there. And by the time I want to recast, let's say I'm at, out of my $10,000 payment, $3,000 of it goes to principal. If I were to recast, is more than $3,000 going to go to principal? Is that the goal? That's the thing, is now instead of owing, and even though these aren't the real numbers, let's say now instead of owing a million dollars, because a million would never be a $10,000 payment. But now instead of owing a million, I only owe $700,000. So I owe 70% of what I previously owed. Is it that more than $3,000 will go to principal when I do the recast conceivably? Yes, and- That's the reason to do it, right? So more goes to principal. Okay, and? And the payment will be lower. Yeah. The payment will be lower is probably people's biggest motivator, right? Probably the biggest motivator. Yeah. So now I have a payment based off of $700,000 instead of a million. And so that payment in today is $618,000, $2,000 a month less, maybe $1,800 a month less. And that's why we don't recommend, we typically don't recommend condensing into a 15-year term for precisely this reason. Because a lot of times when you go and you want to buy your next property, having the 15-year condensed higher monthly payment impacts the debt-to-income ratio negatively. Some people are dead set, one house, fund my TSP or my 401k, that's the extent of their financial plan, which is great. Good job. For those people, 15-year and maybe it works out, right? I wonder, I've actually, it's been a while since I've looked into the recasting. I wonder if, there's usually a give and take. So I bet you if I recast it, I wonder if lessons are going to principal when I recast. I don't think so, because you pick up at the term that, at the month in the term on the amortization schedule that you're in. So if I'm eight years into a 30-year loan, I'm basically doing like a 22-year term. So I get a lower payment and equal or better principal contribution. Yeah. There is a follow-up too. Okay, why not recast as much as you can then? Does one loan service limit the, I know some of them, there's one, there's a fee to it. It's not as much as a refi, but there is a fee. So you have to factor that in. Sometimes you need a big chunk, like a $10,000 principal payment. And then do they also limit the amount of time you can do it? And you need time, not typically. So you could, in theory, recast every year if you had $10,000 a year? Yes, but people aren't really, I mean, that $10,000 is small savings. I get it. That's not really going to be worth it. So it's like, usually the recast is going to make sense once you have some time under your belt. And the only reason I say time under your belt is because then you've had some substantial time to actually pay down the balance. Because we know in the beginning part, the balance doesn't get paid down very much. So, or if an event occurred, like we sold and we always knew we were going to sell. And now we, or maybe- What do you mean we sold? If you sold, you're not recasting. You don't have the money. No, no, no. Maybe the new property. Recast the new property. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So- If you have multiple properties. And you sold the one that you previously owned and now you have $500,000. And you take that $500,000 and pay down on the new property, that's an obvious reason to recast. Because you have a whole bunch of liquidity that you didn't have when you first bought the property. That's like the ideal and most common time that someone would want to recast. If not, there's just not, you got to wait seven years before you can recast. Or, you know- It barely moves the needle. Yeah. And by then, you're already selling and buying a different property. In most cases, yeah. But statistically speaking. The same person said, thank you. We would like to lower our monthly payments more by putting the money from selling our current home toward the new home. We have generous down payment also, but are thinking about using VA. Oh, yeah. So yeah, you'll buy and then sell. So what they're saying, thinking about using VA, meaning thinking of... I think what I'm reading, after I read it again, is the big chunk we have. We're thinking of putting it on the outgoing home and then using VA for the new one. So you're being 100% financed on the new one. That's what they're saying, right? That's, you know, another thing is what is the interest rate of the old one? Because if the new one is at 7%, but the old one's on 2.25, don't recast that one. Put the big chunk on the new one. I think that once they sell after buying, they want to recast. Once they... Oh, okay. That's what I think. I see. Tell us if that's what you guys were thinking. But if that's the case, then yes, you're right on track and you can... It would make sense to buy and then sell and then take your net proceeds and recast. And then your monthly payment will absolutely go down because your new balance is going to be substantially lower than when you bought the property. What? Soledad Monster, bruh. He got into like some Japan talk. Oh, where did that come from, Ken? That was from earlier. Oh, thank you. Came back from Japan. Oh, so he's talking about his memories seeing cherry blossoms. Worst memory, getting searched by customs officer while my cousin from Homeland Security watched me get searched. Japan is unapologetic about some things. And so Charles, our home inspector, Ken, just saying that his kid they feel got pretty profiled and customs pulled him aside. I was like, who are you? What are you? Like what race are you? Like just everything in Japan. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was his son and that was their interpretation, but he definitely got pulled out the line, you know? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't expect to run into him while going through customs at the airport. Oh, yeah. Tropical ding dong. We cooked, bruh. Just like Lahaina did. These floods are going to put more pressure on already pressured market. Yeah, I don't know. Like there was no loss of life. There was loss of property, but also not loss of property in the same way as Lahaina. You know, the town literally burned to the ground. Now we have homes that need to be heavily remediated. And they're not necessarily unlivable, all of them at scale. And so I don't think this is equivalent to Lahaina, the Wairoa floods, but it's definitely not positive. Not a good thing for the market and certainly not a good thing for that community. Is the conventional rate of approximately... You know what? Before I read this next one from Joe Udisi, I will say also, I don't know that insurance looks at it this way, but from my perspective, the island was tested and as a whole, we didn't fare too bad. My home didn't flood. Most people's homes didn't flood and we had the worst storms in probably 100 years. And so if I'm an insurance broker, or if I'm giving my pitch to the insurance conglomerates of the world, I would say, look, Hawaii is still a solid place. There's other places that could have had this amount of rain and you'd be way worse off. We actually did okay. So I think we were pressure tested and we did okay. But there are a few communities that are hit pretty hard. So we'll see how insurance responds. I do not think it's like Lahaina. Okay. Jodeci or Jodeci, however you say, is the conventional rate of approximately 6.4 being given based on a first-time primary residence non-Jumbo loan, or is that the rate regardless? Good question. So two things in there, Jumbo versus non-Jumbo. So the upper, there's a Jumbo limit, conforming limit. And then first-time home buyers, part B to the question. So guys, let me ask you this, Jodeci. How different is the Jumbo rate than the non-Jumbo rate? And what is that amount? Anything over 1.209 million. 1.209. Is going to be a Jumbo loan. And Jumbo loans require a minimum of 10% down. And Jumbo loans, well, there's two types of Jumbo loans. There's the Jumbo loan where you're putting 30% down, and that's better than the conventional rate. And then there's the Jumbo loan where you're only doing the minimum 10% down, and that's worse than the conventional rate. What if you're just doing 20 in either scenario, 20%? 20% single-family home is about a 6.49. And then 20%, well, if you're doing 20, then it will be similar. It'll be about- A similar rate? Yeah. Okay. Similar rate. But in Jumbo, unless putting a large amount down to this person's point, it's typically going to be at best neutral and close, maybe worse than Jumbo rate. And this is a single-family home rate. So a non-single-family home rate is going to be higher, a condo or a downhouse. Yeah, yeah. Well, the other part to this question, Jodi, is... Well, yes, that's also... I'll be clear. I can answer this one, Jodici. She is talking about a primary residence. Yes. A second home, an investment property, these things that add more risk to the lender and or are not so sort of governmentally supported. Maybe is that fair to say? The rate's higher. The best rate is for you living in it. And then even better than that, you live in it and you're a veteran. Those are the best rates you can get when buying a home, short of working on a deal where you do a seller finance or something creative. But the other thing is first-time home buyer. So I think there's a lot of marketing that goes out. And sometimes it's true, actually. Sometimes a credit union has like a, well, if it's your first time, we actually have this thing where we either give you some credits or we may give you a slightly better rate or something. But largely, the whole first-time home buyer thing, it's more of a marketing play a lot of the time, right? Yeah. But I think as a whole, the industry and the country does feel like, well, what's the first-time rate versus the regular rate? Actually, there is a first-time home buyer income restricted loan that... Tell us about that. That would be lower than the 6.49 if it was a single family home. There's a lot of different names for it, but one of the names of it would be the HomeReady program, which you do have to be a first-time home buyer and you have to make less than the median income limit of the county. And as long as you're under that, and it changes based on household size. And as long as you meet the criteria, then your rate would basically be an eighth lower. An eighth. But then in Hawaii, if you want to buy a single family home, so let's say 900,000 minimum, let's call it a million. Will the median income for a household of four even qualify you to buy that thing? Assuming you have no debt. It's at least close, right? We don't have to get too into it. It's close. So the thing is, is a lot of times people who are buying first-time homes, they're buying townhomes, not single family. And then if they did qualify for this program, because their income is low enough to qualify, they'd probably have to be at the very upper ends of the thresholds of the income limit. So close to not qualifying because they earn too much. They earn just a little enough to qualify to then have the debt to income to actually buy the home. So a lot of people that are well below the single family or well below the median income level, they then can't buy a single family home. Correct. It's a non-point. Yeah, you're in a... Then that's not an apples to apples comparison. It's like a single family home versus a condo townhouse. But yes, then you would be in a higher interest rate scenario because of the product of what you're buying. But there is still going to be a better rate in the HomeReady program that you are qualifying for. But yeah, for the most part, if you're under that income limit, you probably won't be qualifying for a single family home unless you have a large down payment. Yeah, so cases would be like grandma, here's half a million. And now you can do both. It's rare. Yeah, it's not, but it's not unheard of. Tropical Ding Dong had said, that's weird. Wouldn't it be backwards? I don't know what he was referring to at the time. So your equity is basically free to collateralize or just sitting dormant, waiting to sell. When recasting. It's free to collateralize or sitting dormant, waiting to sell. Like if you get a home equity line of credit on it? Yeah, I mean, the inverse of that is like Dave Ramsey versus Robert Kiyosaki. It's like no debt, debt is bad. It can be very smart to approach your mortgage that way and pay it off sooner. Or like the Kiyosaki, like leverage, leverage, leverage. Debt is how the rich stay rich and key lock your house and keep it rolling, keep it rolling. There's merit to both of those approaches. It's a personal thing. If you're saying that equity sitting is dormant, then you're probably a person who wants to key lock and do something with that money, right? I can say I'm actually focused on debt pay down right now. And I believe I'm sophisticated enough to at least enter the conversations of key locking and then lending my money out to a flipper at 12% or putting my money as a limited partner in a multifamily deal or whatever. I get those strategies. I've done those things. But I just want to have a little less debt, a little more if ---- hit the fan. Sorry, excuse my language. And I just needed to put 12-month tenants in my rental and just be okay. And even maybe have some cash flow. Like I have too much debt. I have too much leverage for that right now. So I need to work on paying some of it down. Yeah, Vance said when recasting. Yeah, I suppose, Vance. I probably have to have more of a conversation regarding that comment. He's saying when recasting, your equity is basically free to collateralize. Are you collateralizing it when you recast? Not really. I don't know if that's the right word. No, you're not. Yeah. Because you owe what you owe. Yeah. You're not borrowing more. Yeah. To me, collateralizing would mean getting a key lock. Yeah, you give me this. I have this for collateral. That's not what you're doing with your equity when you recast. It's actually kind of the opposite. Yeah, you still owe the same amount no matter what. Yeah. So the amount of equity is actually not changing when you recast. Just the principal and interest calculation. Yeah. Michael Lada says, I've not heard condo financing is higher than single family. Oh, it is. Yeah. It just is. So if a single family is at a 6.49 at zero points, then the condo will typically be like a quarter higher, 6.75. Because it's a riskier asset. There's a whole bunch of other homeowners in the same project that are impacting the overall marketability of the property. There's a budget and there's a common expense requirement. And all of that impacts the risk associated with an asset. So there's literal, we call them hits. But when we're pricing out a loan, if you think about it, there's, okay, what's their FICO? What's their down payment? What's the product? Is it a single family home or a condo? And based on that, we have to add costs to the interest rate sheet. And then we can find what rate will offset enough so that it will be a zero point scenario. Of course, you could, if you paid 0.75 more in points, you'll end up with the same rate. So it doesn't mean you have to have a higher interest rate. You might just be like, oh, I'll pay, what's 0.7, what's one point? I'm only borrowing 500,000. So sure, I'll pay 5K more and get the same rate. I'm generally not for paying for points. Generally speaking. Now there might be, there's times where Jody and then we're like, hey, I know this is even, they're also, a lot of times not pushing that, but they're like, right now, an eighth of a point makes a big difference. You probably do it. But you're going to refi. And things are up and down and up and down. Now, if we're in 2021 and it's 2.25%, and there's no way you're ever going to beat it. And so now you get down, could you pay points down to like a 1.9 back then? Yeah. So this is a forever thing. And this is a forever home. And it's a big, maybe in that situation, but you're stationed here for X amount of years, or you are going to own the home for a while. We're going to see lower rates. Is it in 26, 27, 20, 30? I don't know. I'm generally not for points, but most of the time, what we say doesn't matter because I am for points for you. If you are avid Dave Ramsey follower. Yeah. If that's your style and what's going to make you feel good, I am so for points for you. And there are a lot of people, which I have found in of late that I'll kind of talk to them about ROI. And I'll be like, oh, it's like, it's going to take more than five years to save in monthly payment, your upfront expense, your capital that you're putting in to get the lower rate. Like it's five years really worth, you know? And people are like, yeah, yeah. And then the chat, the probability of you refiling in the next 60 months is fairly high. And if you have that money, because it's going to cost you to refi, then it better to have it. Right. And put it in a high yield account between now and then or something. But I am noticing more people saying like, well, it's money we have saved for the purpose of this purchase. And so we want to use it in the best way possible. So then when we start talking about that, are we going to put it to borrowing less or are we going to put it to a lower interest rate? That type of comparison, it could make sense to do points. Since I bought my third home that I own, I bought another couple of homes previously that have been sold as investments. But I own three homes now. I have all this debt. I'm a little more for simplicity. Like I'm in a chat with DT, with your brother and other people. And we're talking about like, what if, you know, Gemini causes Google to outperform the market. And I'm always like challenged by the opportunity cost of if I have a free dollar, should it go into Bitcoin? Should it go into this? There's places where I can definitely make more money than paying off my mortgages or lowering my debt service across the three properties. And I'm intelligent enough to see some of that opportunity, but sleeping at night, peace of mind, simplicity, like just not feeling like I need to go make calls just so I can throw football with my kid in the grass outside. Paying off debt is where I'm at right now. So that's similar to the person just buying down some points. It's a similar mindset and I get it. I get it because that's kind of where I'm at right now. So I understand. All right. I would not count on lower rates as a given. Would the war in the oil be quiet? Five to 6% is probably as good as it gets. I disagree, Michael. We were just at, what were we down to? Like 5.1 or something two weeks ago. I agree that you should not plan on it within Trump's presidency, but over, say, 60 months, we're going to hit, we're going to get down to like five again. Now, I don't want anyone to plan on us breaking, say, 4.75 or so. That's about where we floated for almost a decade or like eight years or something, right? 4.75 is probably where we'll be. But if rates today are at six, I'm not for putting points, but at the same time, I'm paying down debt. So it's slightly hypocritical. I mean, the points question can be tested backwards. Go back to 2020 and buying some points back. That would have had a paid off in 2020. Yeah, but 2020 was, that was a different time just in terms of where on the barometer are you? You're not going to find another bottom. I stated that, right? Maybe he typed this before. If you're at 2.25 and you want to buy down to 1.8 or something, then, and you're in your forever home, then I get that. And it's so funny because remembering when we were in that craze of a time, which was like a crazy time. It's a crazy time. Almost nobody did point because rates were so low. You were so satisfied. Yes. So they were just like, why? I mean, yeah. Like, no, like, let's just close it 2%. You know, like why? Who cares about 1.8? Yeah. And so it's just really funny because at that time, almost nobody paid points. They had no chance of refining lower ever. Yeah. But they're like, I'm good here. Yeah. Whereas the people who do have a chance of refining lower and there's some probability that they will, they're like, I need the points. I need the points. I get it. One thing to say about your comment though, Jodi, is those people were also having appraisal causes. So any free money they had was going towards the strength of the offer, not towards the point. Yeah. But I suppose if the appraisal hits and they don't need it for that, they could have then bought points, but they still weren't. They didn't. They weren't even the ones that, yeah, it was hitting. Yeah. Okay. Uh, let's do the tropical ding dong. Seems like buying points definitely can make sense. Just like not buying points can make sense, but you won't know until the future becomes the past. That's a fair statement. Yeah. And that's what we always talk about. So I say there's no wrong answer. It's understanding where you stand or who you want to agree with for a future analysis, right? So do you think rates are going to go down in the next five years before the next five years? If yes, then that prompt would tell you not to do the points because then you're going to refinance before you recuperate the cost. Yeah. Do you think it's going to be more than five years before rates go down? If yes, then spend the money to do the points because now you get to have the lower interest rate, get the monthly savings, use the capital and earn back all of that capital. You're going to recuperate. Um, and it's just so hard for people to take a stand. For most people, I think you would agree. They already have their stance going in. They're either one or the other. And then for the people who are in the middle and want to have conversation about it, we're just kind of there shepherding them to what they already know. They were on one side of the spectrum, but they just were in the middle to where they wanted more conversation. But they were either going to be more Dave Ramsey or they were going to be more, you know, leverage heavy. Yeah. Most people, we have a little effect on their decision. We might have a great effect on their feeling of comfort and processing it, but they were going to make their decision in the end. Yeah. Based on all their years, listening to Graham Stephan or based on being raised by their grandpa, who was a part of the great depression, who said, save your money or whatever. They already have really strongly formed opinions, habits, and financial hygiene. Refi is not free. You need to include that in the points decision. Yeah. Which we talked about earlier, which is why it's worse when you buy points and then you refi soon because you spent the money on the points and then you have the cost of the refi. Also, is it VA or conventional? Because the cost of refi, those things are different. So yeah, these are all things to consider. All right, guys, we're going to get out of here. Thank you guys for watching. We got to get back to these escrows and everything.