Hope Leitner, Realtor®, CRS

Sellers, who last year, were not willing to make any concessions, are much more likely to do so this year due to the softening of the market because of inflation and higher mortgage rates affecting affordability for buyers. Concessions can take place in different forms.   A seller could offer to pay the buyer's closing costs or pay points for the buyer to get an FHA or VA loan.   Another option would be to pay for a 2/1 buydown that would lower the buyer's payments in the first two years of the mortgage. Buydowns can be temporary or permanent and are achieved by pre-paying the interest at the time of closing.   Typically, the seller will do this as an inducement to the buyer.   While individual lenders set the price for permanent buydowns, a common rule-of-thumb would be two points, or two percent of the mortgage amount, to buydown the rate 0.5% for the life of the mortgage. A more common type of buydown is a 2/1 where the payment is calculated at 2% lo...

  Have Home Values Hit Bottom? Whether you’re already a homeowner or you’re looking to become one, the recent headlines about  home prices  may leave you with more questions than answers.  News stories  are talking about home prices falling, and that’s raising concerns about a repeat of what happened to prices in the  crash in 2008 . One of the questions that’s on many minds, based on those headlines, is:  how much will home prices decline?  But what you may not realize is expert  forecasters  aren’t calling for a free fall in prices. In fact, if you look at the latest data, there’s a case to be made that the biggest portion of month-over-month price depreciation nationally may already be behind us – and even those numbers weren’t significant declines on the national level. Instead of how far will they drop, the question becomes:  have home values hit bottom? Let’s take a look at the latest data from several reputable industry sourc...