Manifesting dream clients & dodging forever debt

Fall Market Snapshot

Now onto the boring (or fun?) stuff, depending on what you’re here for.

As of late October, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were at new highs (yay), 30-year mortgage rates slid to their lowest in over a year (double yay), and inflation crept up to 3% (boo). The Fed cut rates (again) by a quarter point but basically told us “don’t get too comfy” about another in December. The wealthy are staying calm, counting their portfolio gains, while everyone else is still spiraling about money, jobs, and why groceries cost what they do. You know, the usual.

On the housing side: the median home price in October went up compared to last year, while condos took a little dip. Please send thoughts and prayers to condo sellers (and their agents — hi, me). It’s rough out there. Price cuts have eased since summer (still higher than last year), the absorption rate (aka how fast homes are selling) is the best it’s been in six months, and the luxury market is fully thriving. Things might finally be looking up?

Now we’re entering the cozy season slowdown (the most wonderful time of year to rot). Mid-November through mid-January is usually when the market hibernates (as do I). Great homes still sell fast and sometimes over asking, but this is also when buyers paying attention can sneak in and snag a deal. If a house has been sitting since summer, consider this your sign: make your move before everyone else wakes up and remembers that they, too, want a house. Probably yours.

40 is the new 20, and 60 is the new 30.

The housing market right now is basically two stories at once. On one side, you’ve got buyers with big equity and even bigger wallets, dropping massive down payments (or just straight up paying cash), and settling in for the long haul. On the other, first-time buyers are at record lows (only 21% of purchases) and they’re older than ever, with a median age of 40. (Forty! The starter home dream is officially middle-aged.)

Between stubbornly high prices, 6-7% (heheh.. I still don’t get it) mortgage rates, and a total lack of affordable homes, younger buyers are sitting out longer than ever. Later buyers might have stronger finances and better credit, but they’re diving into a pricier, more competitive market with less time to build equity.

Meanwhile, repeat buyers and sellers are aging up too. The average repeat buyer is 62, and the median seller is now 64, both the highest ever. Cash deals make up 26% of all sales, and the typical down payment is 19% (10% down for first-timers, 23% for repeat buyers).

Fewer buyers have kids (just 24%), more are calling their house a “forever home” (28%), and people are waiting 11 years before selling. Basically, the market is older, richer, and more about staying put than starting fresh.

50-year mortgage bc why stop at a lifetime of debt?

The trump administration has been proudly proposing a new “innovative” idea: the 50-year mortgage. As in, a loan you could start in your 30s and still be paying off when your grandkids are in college. Cool cool cool. Because who wouldn’t want that? (hi, me again)

The pitch is to “make homeownership more affordable.” The math says: lol, no. (Unless you’re an investor solely focused on cash flow, in which case, please carry on.)

Ok back to the math. A $500k loan at 6.5% over 50 years runs about $2,819/month — only $340 less than the same loan over 30 years. Sounds decent enough, right? But after 10 years of payments, a 30-year borrower pays off about $76,000 of principal. A 50-year borrower pays off $18,600. That’s a whole decade of paying bills just to move from “deep debt” to “slightly less deep debt.”

Innovative! Groundbreaking! Life-changing! But actually…none of the above.

After 30 years, you’d still owe $378,000. Three decades in, and you’ve basically been paying glorified rent to the bank. Except with way more paperwork, less flexibility, and no real ownership, since most of your payments disappeared into the black hole of interest.

But wait, it gets worse.

By the end, you’ll have paid $1.7 million total for your $500k home. That’s over $1.1 million in interest alone — about $553,000 more than a 30 year loan for the honor and privilege of paying it off two decades longer. (That’s more than the original loan itself 😬)

And here’s the irony: even if this “helps” buyers in the short term, it’ll likely make housing less attainable long-term. Cheap money always does. When you give people more borrowing power, prices rise to match. (remember 2008? or 2021??) Stretching loans doesn’t solve affordability, it just inflates it.

If making housing more affordable is actually the goal, maybe start with the boring stuff that boosts supply: lower building fees, fewer zoning hoops, fewer random mandates, and taming inflation.

But fifty years of debt and no equity to show for it? Hard pass for me. Can someone tell them that “forever homes” aren’t meant to be that literal?