3.2K
Downloads
118
Episodes
Terry Story’s Real Estate Survival Guide podcast includes her weekly round-up on NPR's "The Steve Pomeranz Show," WLRN and affiliates. The show provides expert advice in all aspects of the real estate transaction from listing to negotiations; to sales and purchase and everything in between.
Episodes
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Sept 6th - Tiny Homes: Big Hope Or Big Hype?
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
The Buzz About Tiny Homes
Steve changes gears to talk about “tiny homes” that have been in the news lately as people seek cheaper home buying options in a tight housing market and asks Terry about any hidden costs. Terry says one of the biggest expenses with a tiny home is the roughly $25,000 it could take to properly lay the foundation.
Tiny homes average about 400 square feet or less but are quite efficiently designed on the inside, even though the bathroom might be an outhouse. Steve mentions seeing a few tiny home layouts at the home furnishings store Ikea where everything, including the bathroom was there on display in a few hundred square feet of space, neatly packed and all figured out.
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Tight Inventory Continues To Dog Housing Market
Steve starts his Real Estat Roundup segment by asking Terry how long a typical For Sale house stays on the market before it gets a confirmed buyer. Terry says the national average was 27 days for the month of May 2017, well below the 100+ days it took when the 2007 recession hit. She says Florida’s residential real estate market is a little sluggish, with homes on the market for 45 to 60 days because they are priced a little higher than the rest of the country and, therefore, take a little longer to sell.
The bottom-line is that the inventory of homes for sale continues to remain low, so homes are snapped up fairly quickly after they list, with buyers also eager to lock in low mortgage interest rates. She also holds baby-boomers responsible for the tight inventory because they are less willing to sell, are content with the homes they live in and, if they sell, typically downgrade to smaller homes where they compete with first-time home buyers.
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Aug 23rd - Have You Been A Victim Of Home Buyer’s Remorse?
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Home Buyer’s Remorse
Steve starts Real Estate Roundup by asking Terry if she’s ever been in a situation where someone felt they’d bought the wrong house right after they bought it. Terry says it’s not uncommon to see buyer’s remorse kick-in as a delayed reaction when it sinks in that they’ve committed to spending a lot of money, but what she really tries to gauge is how serious that buyer’s remorse is.
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Student Loan Cash Out Refinance
This week in Real Estate Round-up, Steve and Terry discuss an exciting new development whereby students can pay off higher interest rate student debt by borrowing money against lower-rate home mortgages. Effective immediately, Fannie Mae will make it easier for borrowers with student loans to qualify for a home loan. Homeowners will also be able to pay down student debt by refinancing their mortgage through a “Student Loan Cash-Out Refinance.”
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Aug. 9th - Think Outside The Box To Win In Today’s Tight Housing Market
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Think Outside The Box
Steve comments that financing creativity has always been a hallmark of real estate deals, with seller financing in vogue when interest rates were ridiculously high and freebies such as cars and boats being offered to motivate buyers. He talks about a neighbor who was moving and needed to buy a house but knew she was competing against another buyer. So, she wrote a very nice letter to the seller and had her offer accepted. Terry talks of sellers becoming emotionally attached to the home because they have lived in that house for years, have raised families there, have fond memories in most cases, and are emotionally attached to the home. As a result, they’d like to sell it to someone who appreciates the home and will care for it. Steve urges buyers to understand a seller’s history with the house and see if there are ways in which your offer can get an edge through simple things such as the letter his neighbor wrote—a classy case of thinking out of the box and turning a competitive situation to your advantage in a warm way.
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Airbnb Is Great, But Not In My Backyard
Steve opens this week’s Real Estate Roundup with the pros and cons of Airbnb, the leading online marketplace for vacation and home rentals. Terry opines that Airbnb is wonderfully convenient if you, as a renter, are looking for fantastic short-term stays in great neighborhoods or convenient low-cost vacation rental options that give you the feel of home. But, she continues, people get a little testy when asked, “Would you like an Airbnb in the neighborhood?” Generally, people in residential neighborhoods do not like the idea of neighbors renting their homes for short periods to itinerant guests from all parts of the world, who come and go as they please. As Steve puts it, Airbnb is fine but “not in my backyard.”
Monday Sep 18, 2017
July 26th - Even Steep Discounts Aren’t Reviving The Sale Of Luxury Homes
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Pending home sales dipped in January 2017, a state of affairs which Terry attributes to an imbalance between supply and demand in the housing market. Housing inventory is less than 6 months, which means, in theory, that if no new sellers added their homes to this inventory, all available supply would be sold in less than 6 months. This sub-6 month supply, incidentally, is the criteria for using the term “seller’s market,” and that is certainly the case in locations across the country today. Terry notes that roughly only 20% of homes that hit the market sell in a timely fashion, and the remainder – which fail to sell because they’re too expensive or unattractive for other reasons – constitute the bulk of the unsold inventory.
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Affordibility Crisis
Steve kicks off the show with some good-humored banter about Terry’s six-seater golf cart that she’s been driving around her neighborhood and giving people rides in, for free. Then, getting serious, Steve turns to an article that says some housing markets are reaching crisis levels for affordability. Terry confirms this with data on America’s affordable housing crisis that shows a 7% annual drop in national inventory for homes priced below $100,000, making home purchases harder for lower income buyers. She also cites a 2% inventory increase in homes in the $100,000 – $200,000 range, a 20% increase in homes in the $500,000 – $1 million range, and a 30% increase in homes above the million-dollar mark. So if you’re looking for a luxury home—anything that lists for over $1 million—now’s a good time to buy because there is a lot of inventory in that price range.
Monday Sep 18, 2017
July 12th - It’s a Seller’s Market for Now, But Things Could “Flip”
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
We Are In A Seller’s Market For Now, But That Could Change
Steve starts the show by asking Terry to shed light on a prediction he saw that said we’re in a seller’s market in housing right now and that the next buyer’s market is two to three years away. Terry attributes that prediction to an economist at the real estate website Zillow and explains it as an inference that rising interest rates over the next few years could restrict the number of buyers and force home prices down. She also sees this as part of the cyclical nature of the housing market, where the trend gradually turns from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market, with a tipping point that begins when home price appreciation slows and favors home buyers, not sellers.
This flip could also occur due to a supply-demand imbalance as more homes get on the market due to overbuilding or from a price reduction trend started by sellers tired of waiting to sell their homes and buyers holding off on purchases in anticipation of lower prices.
Over the past few years, home price growth had outpaced tepid income growth and prompted mortgage lending giant, Fannie Mae, to raise its debt-to-income ceiling from 45% to 50% allowing people with good credit to qualify for mortgages by taking on that little bit of extra debt.
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Fannie Mae Ups Its Debt To Income Ceiling By 5%
This week’s Real Estate Round-Up starts with a discussion about Fannie Mae, the big, government-sponsored financing giant, raising its debt-to-income ceiling from 45% to 50% in July. The debt-to-income ceiling, explains Terry, is the ratio of your total debt (mortgage, auto loans, student loans, credit cards, etc.) divided by your gross income, expressed as a percentage. By raising this ceiling, Fannie Mae gives borrowers a bit more wiggle room on the amount of debt-related payments they can take on. So home buyers, for example, can now have up to 50% of their income tied to various loans, including housing. As a result, says Steve, they’ve got to pay taxes and manage their living expenses (grocery, gas, clothing, insurance, etc.) out of the remaining 50%, which doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for savings and investment.
Terry also says people should not be alarmed by this because, before raising the debt-to-income ceiling, Fannie Mae did some research and found that a significant number of these borrowers have good credit and were not prone to default. So they’re not reckless; they just have higher debt because incomes aren’t rising that fast while the cost of housing, in particular, is going up. So upping the ceiling gives more people access to home buying but, Steve cautions, borrowers must be careful to not overextend themselves and have no money left over for savings and the long-term.
Monday Sep 18, 2017
June 28th - Why Are Millennials Buying Homes Rather Than Renting Them?
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Q1 2017: Household Formation Up, Millennials Entering Market
Millennials are entering the housing market in greater numbers, and this is a positive sign on several levels. In the first quarter of 2017, new household formations occurred at double the rate of new renter households. “New household formation” refers to first-time home buyers. Terry remarks that the home ownership rate nationwide was at 70% before the “great recession,” which bottomed out around 2011, and has been slowly recovering to the 64% rate it’s at today. Millennials are key to the continued revival of the housing market, and these household formation numbers are an encouraging sign that this demographic is embracing homeownership and successfully buying their first homes.
Monday Sep 18, 2017
June 21st - How Will Eliminating The Property Tax Deduction Affect You?
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
On today’s “Real Estate Round-Up” talk with Terry Story, topics include possible changes to mortgage tax deduction laws, saving up for a down payment on the new home you want to buy, and the limitations of online home value estimator tools. There has been rampant speculation in the real estate industry and elsewhere over comments from the Trump administration about nearly doubling the standard deduction for mortgage and interest payments (from $12,600 to $24,000) while simultaneously eliminating deductions for state and local taxes including property taxes. It’s the latter issue, canceling the ability to deduct costly state and local taxes from your federal income taxes, that is generating a lot of heat and angst. The rationale for the deduction has been that the government can’t “double tax” you on the value of your property but, evidently, that may be rolled back.