Home listing prices have been falling for weeks, and it’s not just sellers who are getting fed up. Real estate agents have finally decided to call it quits, with many reaching their breaking point and leaving the industry altogether. But a glimmer of hope is on the horizon for the market, as one of the biggest housing bills in years just passed the House of Representatives. Could this get us back on the right track?
Welcome back to this week’s headlines episode. If you thought the deals couldn’t get any better…well, it’s your lucky day (or weeks). Home listing prices have now fallen consecutively for over a dozen weeks. Buyers aren’t buying what sellers are selling, and the deals are getting sweeter. If you’re a seller, we have some crucial tips your average agent won’t tell you to start a bidding war on your property, even during a slow market.
Agents have finally decided to step away from the industry altogether, but a new housing bill could spark some life back into the housing market —this is good news for buyers! Finally, we’re going over the states with the lowest property tax bills —but are any of them worth investing in?
The video analyzes the transition toward a buyer's market, characterized by rising inventory and declining listing prices. It provides strategic advice for sellers and investors on navigating volatile interest rates, emphasizes the critical importance of hiring high-performing real estate agents, and examines the impact of new federal housing legislation and local bureaucratic hurdles.
New listings are growing,
creating more inventory and opportunity for investors.
A massive new housing bill makes its way through Congress and more and more
agents are getting fed up and just quitting this business altogether.
These are the headlines that you should be paying attention to,
to grow your business.
And it's what we're diving into here on on the market today.
I'm Dave Meyer alongside Kathy Fecke, Henry Washington, and James Daynard.
Today,
we're breaking down the latest signals in the housing market and what they mean
for real world investing decisions over the next couple of weeks.
This is on the market. Let's jump in.
What's up everyone. Welcome to on the market.
I'm here with Henry Kathy and James ready to break down today's
week's headlines. Let's just jump right into it today. James,
you've got a story for us about some housing trends you're seeing.
Tell us about it.
Yeah,
I brought in an article from realtor.com and it's really,
it's pretty broad. It's the weekly housing trends.
It kind of covers a broad range of what's going on with the market right now.
We got interest rates jumping around,
inventory starting to increase and you know,
I think these are really good things for investors to always be paying attention
to,
especially as you're doing dispose because you've got to set your expectations
right.
But what this article talks about is the median listing price as of May
was down 2.29%.
So average prices fell 2.9% in this marked the 16th consecutive week of annual
price decline in the 28 week flat down pricing. Wow.
And so we're on this slow, slow skid,
but that also makes sense because we're going into the summer months that is to
be expected. But the year over year,
that's a little bit more than I was thinking it was going to be because last
year it was pretty slow at this time too.
This is when what all the tariffs came out last year and it was like everything
slowed down. Now we have the geopolitical stuff going on overseas.
Exact same feeling.
But I would say this feels a lot worse than it felt even with the tariffs and
the tariffs felt pretty bad. It's like no one wants to make a decision.
And with rates,
I think are bouncing around a lot more than they were then they were still
moving last year, year over year.
But this is getting pretty jumpy with the rates.
So active inventory climb 2.3% year over year as
kind of more homes are coming on in lesser selling.
But the weird thing is right now, you know, we're,
we're really active in the market.
I got listings in all different price points and there's definitely some sweet
spots. And what I'm seeing though,
is the stuff on the lower end of any market,
doesn't matter if it's an expensive market or a more affordable market,
that stuff flies off the shelf. It's gone.
But what I'm also seeing is a lot of canceled listings.
Like right now showing velocity is really low.
There's not that many people looking in a variety of price points.
I can tell you that much anywhere from our listings range from 400,000 all the
way up to 5 million.
Nothing's getting a lot of showings in any of these price points,
all different areas.
But the more affordable stuff is clicking off in the first three to five days.
The more expensive stuff, that's where you're really, really sitting.
And so what's happening is that the sellers are getting so freaked because they
don't get any showings and they're canceling their listings.
I'm seeing listings cancel at 14 days, 20 days. And they're like, you know what?
It's slow markets, not time to sell.
And so I feel like there's a lot of FOMO sellers testing and pulling,
which actually is not a bad thing when you're going to dispo because it kind of
takes inventory away from people's and it actually makes people have a little
bit of sense of urgency. But you know,
inventory is starting to increase over and over.
And we're definitely starting to see it. Pendings are down,
absorption rates are down. And then the interesting thing is though,
year over year is homes only spent one day longer to sell on average days on
market. I don't know how that logically adds up.
Maybe it's just people are negotiating quicker.
Like I feel like back in the day, right?
Like you would probably wait 45,
60 days before you're going to significantly lower your price.
But now to your point, James, it's like after two weeks,
if you're not getting a lot of traction, people are starting to freak out.
So they might just take a low offer sooner. I don't know.
That's the only way it makes sense to me.
I mean, you have got to price your property correctly.
This is the time to be an excellent listing agent.
You didn't have to be a great listing agent over the past decade.
You just put out a signpost, you know, be higher than the last comp.
You'd get multiple offers. It wasn't that hard,
but now you have to be an expert because buyers understand this.
They see the headlines. They're not stupid.
They know that this is a buyer's market.
There's a lot of inventory and they can negotiate. So you don't want that.
You don't want a bunch of people trying to negotiate.
So just price it right.
And that pricing it right does not mean you're going to price it at the price.
It was two years ago. And that's where so many people's heads are at.
Or even, even six, three months ago, three months ago,
when rates were lower, you might've had a little more flexibility on pricing,
but not right now. People are scared. You've got interest rates high.
They've got to be able to add that in to the cost of what the lender's going to
look at, which is the costs, right? Can this person afford it?
And so you better be able to price it right so that it adjusts for the higher
mortgage rates. That's the bottom line.
There's numerous reasons why some homes sell faster than others. Right.
And like Kathy just said, you got to have a good broker.
They can really break down your pockets and neighborhoods and,
and be able to identify what your house is versus another property.
Because if they can't explain that to the buyer,
it's going to be a serious problem on getting them to pay what it's worth.
Because buyers a lot of times don't know the quite difference between maybe a zip
code or even what this street's worth versus this street or what this pocket's
worth. And you really have to explain it. But like right now,
things are still selling, but you have to separate yourself. And so, you know,
I think part of it too,
like what we're doing right now is we're trying to build in a little bit of extra
budget upfront to throw in a splash items to make it that, Hey,
this house has this and everything else doesn't have this, you know,
whether it's an outdoor kitchen or it could be,
we just installed this really cool wet bar for the show.
And we did like this like almost like rustic bar with pleated glass and
walnut cab.
It's like you got to make it to where you have a lasting impression when they're
leaving because buyers that are looking right now are serious,
but they're also have every excuse in the world not to buy that house, right?
They're looking for the reason not to buy.
And you have to solve that by either price quality or how do you separate that
off? And so we're spending a lot more time as we go into the summer months,
you know, even if we're going over budget, we're throwing an extra five,
$10,000,
which is like five to 10% of our budget at these houses to pop it up and just
try to move them faster because the debt is really killing all the deals.
It's just understanding a buyer's market versus a seller's market.
And people get so confused about the difference between those two.
But when it's a seller's market, you have the power.
You could just put your property on the market as is people weren't even doing
inspections when it was a frenzied market. It's not like that today.
It is a buyer's market. The buyer has the power.
The seller has to submit, right?
You have to really appeal to today's buyer.
And own your strategy.
If you're going to price your home heavy because it's a unique property or it's
on a great location and it's different than everything else,
you might not sell in the first week, but don't be that irrational,
emotional seller. There's like cut the price after two weeks.
If your home didn't sell in two weeks,
you either overpriced if you're cutting it or bit buyers look at that.
They see the emotional drop and they're like, Oh, time to go get,
there's blood in the water.
Yeah.
And so like if you don't sell in the first two weeks and you push the price,
don't own it because you're just giving away money.
If you start cutting price that quickly.
So if I'm hearing you guys correctly,
you're saying you need to hire an agent that is good at their job and knows what
they're doing. And then as the investor,
you need to be good at your job and know what you're doing.
These expectations are unreasonable.
Don't hire your sister or your best friend because they just got licensed.
My aunt just got their license. I have to use her.
Well actually let's talk about that a minute because that is the article I was
going to break. I want to talk about, so let's get to that. But before we do,
we're talking a lot about selling.
The other thing people should recognize is like days on market going up,
the increased inventory,
the increased new listings means there are going to be more deals like that's,
you know, we're talking a lot about the difficulty of selling, which is true,
but these things work hand in hand. As Kathy said, they're yin and yang.
And when it's difficult to sell, it's easy to buy.
So I think that is an important thing to remember.
You obviously want to buy deep and figure out, do the right things.
But the idea that inventory is going up is encouraging to me.
It's still super low.
It's below pre pandemic levels in most places,
getting back to a normal amount of opportunities to look through as an investor
to me is exciting. I'm, I'm, I'm happy about that. I will say though,
like given everything you just said, James,
like I don't expect this to get better soon. I don't know about you,
but like I'm not holding my breath at work.
Like we're going to see a big uptick in activity when,
when the war started, I said, you know,
I think pendings and total sales might go down this year, which is crazy.
Cause we're at a super low level already,
but like it's really hard for me to imagine demand picking up in the short term
because rates are super volatile. Inflation came out yesterday.
It's accelerating, right? So Fed's not going to come to anyone's savior.
The bond markets are kind of revolting.
There's new articles out about the savings rate in the United States is
plummeting. Credit card delinquencies are going up.
It's like all these things are happening.
It's hard to imagine demand going up except maybe from investors.
Like that's,
I think the one place where we might see activity is like investors typically
buy in any kind of market. And our will, if,
if sellers are willing to negotiate,
that's where I think the opportunities are going to lie. But I wouldn't expect,
uh, I don't know about you guys.
I'm not holding my breath for a wholesale recovery anytime soon.
No, not at least till Labor Day guys. Market sucks until Labor Day.
Why Labor Day? Just seasonality.
We always get a Joel and that's the thing. Like as you're going to sell,
know your markets, where, where are the pops, right?
Like I'm even holding on to a couple of houses to list them right now and see
if they work out this deal overseas to maybe drop some of the energy costs down.
Right? Maybe we get some relief there. Timing is really important.
Labor Day always gets a jolt. You go dead time, labor to get to pop.
And then right after Thanksgiving, we get another pop.
And then it goes into slow, steady dead till January.
And know those market times. Cause if you're trying to dispose something,
you might want to hang onto it. Might make sense for two weeks,
drop it at the right price. Get the offers.
All right. Well, great, great topic here.
This is something we got to watch because everything's just changing.
Like inventory was down a month ago. Now it's up.
Like we're just seeing everything change so rapidly.
So we'll obviously keep you all posted on, on the market,
but expect a slow summer.
I think that's the main headline here for sales and for buyers,
there's going to be motivated sellers. So keep an eye out, be patient,
go shopping. Exactly.
But I was going to go last with my story today,
because you brought that up, Henry, I'm going to just go to my story here,
which is an article on the front page of the wall street journal today saying
that real estate agents are quitting the industry right now
because of Henry doesn't need an article
for this because it's hard.
Well, honestly, I was kind of surprised.
They were like, agents are quitting during a slow market,
which by the way, always happens, right? Like this is,
this is just kind of what happens.
But they said that NAR national association of realtors has seen a decrease in
their overall membership from 1.6 to 1.4 million in the last four
years. And I was like, man, I would have thought more agents had quit by now.
Like in the last four years,
this is the hardest four years since 2010. Right.
You know, like in 15 years,
and most of these people aren't doing deals anyway. Like we know this anyway.
It's what is it's like the 80, 20 year old, 80% of, you know,
20% of agents do about 80% of the deals and NAR is expensive, right?
Like you have to pay dues.
So I'm just curious what you guys are seeing in terms of the quality of
agents or James Cathy. I know you are agents, Henry,
you work with them all the time. Like who is succeeding?
What kind of agents are doing well in this kind of market?
Look, man, it's hard out here in these investment streets forever.
So, but first and foremost, it doesn't matter what the market is doing.
You should be shopping and looking for a quality agent,
no matter what the market is doing,
because a quality agent is going to be worth more than the commission.
You're going to pay them for the deals that you're going to do with them,
but it's absolutely the 80, 20 rule.
20% of the agents are doing 80% of the deals.
So you need to figure out who that, that 20%. Yes.
And so my take on this is talk to title companies about
who the repeat agents are, who are the agents who are, who are doing volume,
doing volume of deals,
who they see on a consistent basis and see if you can connect with them.
They'd be happy to pass their names on because agents work on a referral basis.
And so your title companies are going to see the same faces over and over again.
That's, that's the person you want to start with talking to because you're right.
If you're doing deals in this business as an agent,
you are doing something right. Either you're great at farming for leads,
but it's not just getting the lead.
You've got to keep the business once you get it,
you've got to serve your customer. And most agents,
I saw a stat recently that the majority of,
of good agents business is repeat customers and repeat
clients. In other words,
they're not going to be doing volume unless they have people who are coming
back to them over and over again.
And if they have people coming back over and over again,
that means they're good at their job. So once you find who these people are,
then it's our job to be able to ask the right questions.
You need to know enough about the real estate market to ask your
questions about the market, not just what's the average days on market,
but understanding list price to sale price ratio.
What's that trending at right now? What did it look like last year?
How much inventory do we have on the market?
What constitutes a buyer's market and a seller's market based on the amount of
inventory we have on the market.
These aren't questions that should throw a good agent for a loop.
Most agents should be able to either answer them off the top of their head or be
able to get back to you pretty quickly with that information.
And then also asking your agent about strategies that are working to
sell properties in this market.
What ideas do they have about listing a property aggressively at a lower price
point?
One of the things that we do is we strategically undercut the competition,
right? So we're pulling the comps.
We're seeing what they're listed at and we list lower and we try to make our
property look better. What does that do for us?
It guarantees us showings and in any market,
a good agent should be able to tell you how many showings it takes for you to
get an offer on average.
So if you can increase the amount of showings you get in a short period of time,
you should by default increase offers in that amount of time.
In our market, it's about nine showings to every one offer.
So if I can get 10 showings in the first couple of days,
I pretty much guarantee air quotes,
guarantee myself getting an offer statistically, right?
These are things your agent should be able to tell you.
If you can't have these kinds of conversations or they sound like they don't know
what you're talking about, then you need to move on to the next one.
Totally agree, Henry.
And it's a great time for people to reconsider and make sure that they are
working with a great agent who's going to help them through this.
I also just want to say to, to all the agents,
I know we have a lot of agents who listen to this show first and foremost.
I'm sorry. It sucks out there.
The market is really brutal for real estate agents. It stinks. It does.
It mean volume is down so much. Like it's hard.
There is a smaller pie for people to compete over, but you got to compete.
Like I, as a real estate investor who works in multiple markets,
the difference between some agents I work with and others is completely night
and day.
And I will just say the biggest difference between the ones I want to work with
and choose to work with on a repeated basis and the others is just simple
proactivity.
Like I will reach out to agents and I'll have to keep asking them like what
happened this month? Like, are you seeing anything all, you know,
they'll put me on a drip feed that anyone can do,
but I'll send them to and be like, can you give me a writeup on those?
Whereas other people are selling me deals. They say, Dave, I analyze this deal.
Here's an analysis of it. Here's why I like it.
Here's the strategy you should use to go buy it. In other words,
they're just making it easy for me. Yeah.
That way I don't have to look through the 40 listings that came up on Zillow
this week.
They've picked the two or three that they think are the most useful for me.
That should just be standard in my opinion,
if you're working with a real estate agent, but a lot of people don't like,
I would say less than 20% of the agents I contact do something like that.
These are the opportunities you have to go out and sell yourself. And as a,
as an investor, you should expect that. And if you don't get that,
don't work with that person.
It's like being a small business owner, every single real estate agent,
you're a small business owner. You need to know how to market yourself.
You need to know how to go above and beyond to serve your clients and stand out.
Just like Dave said.
You guys brokers in today's market,
here's the questions you want to ask before you hire them.
If they ask you what you want to sell the house for,
go the other way.
Brokers are supposed to be hired as professionals that give you honest
communication and feedback. Yeah. Like that's an easy one.
That sounds great. And then you end up overpricing your home.
You need honest communication.
And sometimes a broker's not going to tell you what you want to hear,
but they're telling you what you need to do to sell the house.
And that's based on experience, knowledge and what they're doing. Right.
The next question I love to ask brokers is what are you doing to sell the house?
Because if they come up and they give me their pack and they go,
look at my marketing thing. It goes into Zillow. It goes into realtor.
It's like, who cares? It all does it. I could do that. Yeah.
In a market that's flat. Your broker needs to be proactive.
Just like Dave was saying with working the leads,
like if you want to get a deal done, be proactive, take care of your clients,
but also you have to pick up the phone. Sales are done on communication.
Selling properties is done by talking to people,
getting a read and bringing things in.
If your broker's not calling people and they're waiting for them to reach out,
you have to have a proactive broker, get rid of them, move on to the next one.
If people can't tell me tangibles of what you're going to do to sell,
then you're just waiting for someone to throw an offer on and ask me how low
I'll go. I don't need that. If someone's not shooting you straight,
this is not the market to be fluffy in.
It's a real market that has real issues. If you don't price correctly,
make sure the broker doesn't cause that because they're too afraid of you.
It is important because you have to think about it from a volume perspective,
less buyers, buyers have more options,
which means every single showing you get is crucial.
It is crucial to you actually being profitable or making money or selling your
property.
So if you don't take this seriously and you end up with a bad agent,
you don't just waste your time.
You waste the good leads that you get when you first list.
Like it is so much more important now than it has ever been.
Yeah. I want to say one more thing. Get someone local.
Y'all don't, what are you doing? Trying to get an agent that's not from your area.
This, I see this a lot.
Like maybe you look up a good agent in the area,
but they need to be really an expert in your little neighborhood.
Look for recent sales in the neighborhood where you're trying to
sell and see who did it.
Because the other thing to think about is when you're a listing agent,
you have open houses and you're collecting all these names of people are in the
market.
People are trying to buy and you've collected those names of local people.
So get someone local who has listed locally,
who has done sales locally and they already come with a very active list of
buyers.
Let's turn our attention to what's going on in Washington. Henry,
tell us about your story.
Yes, I do have a story about the book. Wait a second. I've got,
I've got something coming in right now. Oh,
I have got destiny's child on the line. Destiny's child.
They are saying that due to the increase in gas prices,
a man hanging from the passenger side of his best friend is no
longer a scrub. He's just a man making smart financial decisions.
Can I Henry, if you're going to quote scrubs, it's TLC, not destiny's child.
Oh, you're right. You're right. I screwed it up.
It wasn't destiny's child put a ring on it or something like that.
That was the other song. Yes.
They did want to put a ring on it, but yes,
but they would not have put a ring on a scrub, but now they might.
I mean, man, our pop culture references suck.
All right. All right.
The article I am bringing is really just a part two from last week.
So we're talking about the bipartisan housing bill that was
introduced.
It has now just cleared the house and it is headed to the president's desk for
a signature.
The house passed an amended version of the 21st century road housing act
396 to 13.
I'm curious who the 13 were and why they voted against it.
I would just like to know that. So on May 20th, 2026, this happened.
So the bill now has to go to the president for signature before becoming law.
This is the most significant housing legislation in a long time.
And now we're pretty close to it becoming law.
So to recap some of the things that are in this bill is the institutional
investor ban,
which isn't truly a big deal anymore because they changed some of the language
around it,
but it restricts institutional investors who own 350 or more single family homes
from buying additional homes.
There's not a lot of large institutional investors doing this right now anyway.
So that's not a huge deal,
but there's also provision for the bill to rent.
And this is probably one of the biggest things we talked about this last week.
So now people who are building,
build to rent communities no longer have to sell those communities within five
or seven years.
They can actually keep those communities as built to rent communities.
Win for Kathy, win for Kathy.
I honestly think that's a win everywhere. I think that just makes sense.
I agree with you. Uh, there's also, uh, FHA lending reforms.
So you can now get an FHA loan for a mobile home.
That was much more difficult or you couldn't do it before.
So this plays into the affordability.
People are assuming mobile homes are more affordable.
People who are priced out of the stick built housing market may be able to
afford a mobile home, but it was hard to get loans for mobile homes.
So this helps people who are in that boat to be able to get FHA loans for mobile
homes,
as well as reducing or lowering the amount of that lenders can lend on a
mortgage.
Typically it was hard to get a loan for a mortgage of under $100,000 and they're
lowering that rate,
making it easier for people to access lending for homes that are a sub $100,000.
And yes, people, there are markets where are,
there are homes that can buy for under $100,000.
I see the comments right now. It is a thing.
So this is a big piece of legislation. It,
it can provide some help in the market.
Is this the pill that's going to solve all the problems? Probably not.
This bill doesn't just directly lower mortgage rates.
It doesn't immediately lower home prices and it doesn't force investors to sell
their current holdings. It's not this magic pill that's going to make,
that's going to add all this supply and just make homes and real estate more
affordable.
But there are some things that help to move the needle for some buyers for
people who have been complaining that the government is doing nothing to help
with the housing market or affordability. This is not nothing. It's something,
it's not the end all be all, but it's something that's going to help some
people.
Oh my gosh. I feel like with the mobile home financing,
that's going to just have mobile home parks just take off. I mean,
I feel like prices are going to go up so much because of that, but we'll see.
I'm encouraged by this. I do not think it's a magic pill.
We've talked about this a little bit,
but I am just happy in general to see the government start looking at supply
side solutions to housing affordability.
Like so much of it where they're just juicing demand short term helps a little
bit,
but then prices just go up and it's unaffordable again in the long run.
More supply is traditionally considered the right solution.
And I think there's some good ideas here.
Like I love the idea of streamlining manufactured homes and track homes.
I think like that's a way construction costs have gone up so much.
That's like a way that you could realistically lower construction costs.
I will say this though. I think it's a step in the right direction.
I'm just making this number up,
but I would get venture a bet that 75 or 80% of supply issues are actually local
and state issues and not national issues.
So I do think that this is helpful in setting a precedent that like we need to
fix this,
but it's going to come down to what state and local governments do more than any
of this to like,
whether this actually gets fixed or where it gets fixed because some places will
do it and it will get better and others won't.
And it won't get better. And that's just,
unfortunately the way that this works in our country.
Yeah. I feel like when I hear this stuff, it's always like, Oh yeah,
that's a good sign. But does it matter? Like, because like, for example,
you want to streamline mobile homes and mobile home permitting and in more one
park, you still got to go test the soil.
You still got to go through whatever environmental regulation that is going on
in that specific jurisdiction and everyone is different.
And until they get on the same page, it's all hopeful wishing. Yeah.
Like, but nothing's happening. Like that's the reality. I mean, it's,
it's like the international building code versus a city's building code.
They can supersede each other in the city gets to say what it is.
I'm dealing with a city right now where we're doing a cosmetic renovation.
I, this is, I literally was getting boiling as we're talking about this.
Cause I'm like, Oh yeah, really?
Maybe the federal government should call Mount Lake Terrace. Like,
it's like, because we're doing a cosmetic renovation,
no structural walls went away and yeah,
the house looked bad. Of course you did that. We bought it, right?
Like it was covered in sticker bushes, all the bad things,
but the inside guts structurally were fine because we spent more
than $50,000 on this property,
which this house is worth a million dollars. That's not hard to do. Yeah.
We have to bury our power lines.
It required our permits to sit there for four months. And not only that,
we decided to make upgrade a house that had drywall already all over it.
These requirements make investors go.
I'm never buying here again because you can't buy it cheap enough to make
this work. You know, we paid 575 grand for this house.
It's worth a million dollars.
That's a good spread until you buy in that city spread is gone until they fix
that. Wow. Housing solutions will never happen.
Yeah. I mean, another example, just here in the Northwest,
like Seattle's actually been pretty good about upzoning, right?
They now allow every 5,000 square foot lot.
You can subdivide into four parcels, sell them off, build them.
That's a good idea in my opinion. But James, correct me if I'm wrong.
There's like all these little things that they forget to do.
Like the cost to subdivide the power, for example,
it's like $20,000. Like what homeowner is going to do that?
Or like just these little things, permitting costs went up, you know,
to make, they raise the permitting costs because multifamily construction's
down. It's like, there's no cohesive effort, right?
It's like these individual things maybe make sense in one segment of
the construction or the renovation process.
But so many things have to come together to actually make this cheaper and more
efficient. And it's just, unfortunately,
like not the way American governments work. It's like,
it's so bureaucratic and sideload that there's no,
it's very difficult to actually make it a cohesive plan to actually make this
easy for people.
Yeah.
And they look at it as a way to open a cookie jar to get money for other things.
Like, Oh, look at these developers, investors, they got permits.
They need this. We're going to add some extra fees on, we have the MHA fee,
which was they're taxing you basically 18 to $25 a square foot just to tax you
for affordable housing. Where's the money go? You know where it should go?
They should take half of it and put it back into the city so they can hire more
people so they can issue more permits faster. It's like they,
all they do is open the cookie jar. They eat all the cookies,
leave you with crumbs and go, Hey, build more. It's like, no,
you eat the crumbs out. I'm getting fired. I want the cookies.
Yeah. I mean, we all want cookies. We got to share the cookies.
That's the thing.
Yeah. You know, I don't want to poo poo it. I don't,
I think there are some interesting things in the, in the provision.
I think it could help a little bit.
The benefits are going to take a while and they're probably not going to be
wholesale and they're not going to be evenly distributed throughout the
country. So I just want people to be like cognizant of that. But Hey,
we got a bipartisan bill through Congress like that.
When was the last time that happened? So housing, the country,
there you go. Something everyone agrees needs to be fixed. Affordable housing.
Let's go. Kathy, what do you got for us?
Mine is a Kiplinger story and it is States with the lowest property tax
bills ranked by affordability.
So I brought this article just because it's so important for investors to look
at all expenses before buying. You know, you might find a lot of times,
I'll see people, I know it sounds like duh,
but so many times I'll see people just look at the, you know,
the 10% rule. Like they say, I'm buying this house for $200,000.
I should be making such and such amount of rent from that purchase price.
And they're only looking at those things.
And that's silly because what you also have are insurance costs.
You have property tax rates. What about growth and appreciation?
There's so many things to look at. Are you even in an area that it's rentable?
You know, so there's so much more to the equation, but again,
one thing people don't think about,
especially when buying perhaps in a place like Texas,
you might get a good deal on a property,
but you better look at those property taxes.
So what would you say is the area that has the lowest property taxes?
Oh, I think I know this actually. Is it Alabama? West Virginia?
Yep. Wow. West Virginia is number one. Oh, sorry.
I was doing it by tax rate. I think Alabama is the lowest tax rate,
but that might just be because West Virginia property values are so low.
Okay. Yeah. The lowest tax bill. So, you know, it's funny because in California,
we actually have pretty low tax rates,
but our tax bill is really high because our property values are so high.
People kind of forget that. Like I'll talk to California investors.
They'll go, I can't invest in say Texas because their property tax rate is 3%
and mine's under 1%. It's like, yeah,
but you're buying a much cheaper property in Texas.
You've got to look at the whole,
you've just got to look at all the numbers to make sure you're getting what you
think you're getting. And again, it's just kind of an overlooked thing.
Seems seems obvious, right?
I think that's a really good point here, Kathy,
because I think a lot of the rules of thumb that people have used for estimating
cashflow or investing, they were already not great a couple of years ago,
but I think they're becoming almost useless.
Like something like a rent to price ratio. It's helpful a little bit,
but rent to price misses everything about this.
It misses everything about insurance and taxes and any other costs of ownership
in those areas.
And those are rapidly becoming or already have become sort of like the
differentiator in what markets are doing well,
what types of investments are doing well. I did a show,
a solo on the market show the other day,
just about where stress in the market is and it's places where insurance has gone
up. It's where it's places where taxes are going up.
Like it's not based on the principle and interest of mortgage.
It's almost entirely related now to these secondary costs of ownership.
And so you can't just wing it anymore.
Like you have to do the full analysis, which by the way,
goes from taking 30 seconds to an analyze a deal to three minutes to analyze it.
So it's not too hard, especially with AI.
Just do the extra math. Like it is really worth it. I admit,
I never used to call an insurance broker when I was analyzing. Now you got it.
Like now you need to, it used to be in Colorado.
Now I need to do it because I just need to know if I can get insurance.
It's not even like the price. It's like, yes or no. Can I get it? So anyway,
sorry to cut you off, Katie,
but I just think this is a super important point about buying right now is that
you gotta look at the big picture.
I will say for Henry, guess what's number three, Henry, Arkansas is number three,
a very low property taxes and costs on daily essentials.
This is a timely article. You know,
I saw as I've been doing research for these shows, I believe a few,
this was probably a few months ago.
I saw an article about there were several homeowners who kind of bought a home
because they were on the cusp of affordability, right?
Like if the interest rate would have been a, you know, half a point higher,
they probably wouldn't have been able to afford it.
And what they found out was that after their taxes went up,
after they bought their home, they couldn't afford to, to,
to own the home anymore.
And people were having to sell in and sometimes taking a loss or find
themselves in tough situations. Investors know this,
but not a lot of normal homeowners know this.
You can contest your property taxes. If they,
if they increase your property taxes, you can call and contest them.
And all you would need to do is say, I think it should be lower.
And here's a couple of comps, right?
Like your agent can help you pull some of those comps.
Sometimes you don't even need to have the data.
Like you can just call down there and say, Hey,
I feel like this is probably higher than it should be.
And a lot of the times they'll take a look and they may lower your taxes.
And it's not that hard to do.
And there are now companies who will do this for you. Now they'll take a fee,
which is a percentage of whatever decrease they get you.
But if you don't feel confident enough to have these conversations yourself,
those services are out there.
So just understand like you don't have to accept the tax increase they give you.
You can call and contest it.
They may say no, and then you will have to accept it.
But most of the time,
I would say well over half of the times they will adjust your tax bill.
That's a great point, Henry. One other,
one other tip here for buyers is I've had to learn this over the last few years.
I did not think about this for a long time.
When you're analyzing a deal,
figure out how frequently taxes are assessed in the market that you are buying
in.
Because sometimes you might look at the taxes and they're low,
but in certain States, taxes aren't assessed.
They're assessed every five years. So think about that.
The last time they were assessed was like in 2001 and prices had probably gone
up 30% and your tax bill might go up 30% in a couple of months after you own
that.
So it is just worth checking this out and just trying to,
you can't know exactly what they're going to assess it at,
but talk to an agency,
like what percentage wise they think things will be going up.
And just check that out because that can be a little bit surprising in air in
States where the, the, the tax rate is low.
It probably won't matter that much.
But if you're in a state like New Jersey or Texas or these Illinois States with
super high tax, you know, two, 3% of assessed value, that's going to matter,
right? Like that's going to matter to your cashflow.
So just one other tip to check out to try and avoid falling into any traps.
All right. Great job, everyone. Thank you. This is a fun show. James, Kathy,
Henry, thank you for being here.
Thank you all so much for listening to this episode of On The Market.
We'll see you next time.