Holden Lewis
Appearances
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
Okay, well, sellers, they're gonna continue to have the negotiating advantage because they own homes during a shortage of homes. If sellers wanna succeed, they really do need to price their homes reasonably, fix them up so they look good and they're in moving condition, and make sure that their agent hires a professional photographer to market the home effectively online.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
One agent said to me, I don't wanna see pictures of your messy closet. I don't wanna see the toilet seat up.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
Make your bed. Vacuum the floor and do not use an iPhone. I mean, look, One of my favorite movies in recent years, Tangerine, was filmed on iPhones. But iPhones really are just not really good instruments for real estate photography. Come on, hire a professional who has a really good camera setup.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
Exactly.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
You're welcome. Thank you.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
It's great to be here.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
Well, the 10,000-foot view is that home affordability, it really did take a hit in 2024. Home prices were higher than in 2023. Mortgage rates went up until May, then they went down from June to September, and then they went back up again You know, when you look at that, it's like there was a real hurdle in home affordability from April through July, which are the prime home buying season.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
Home prices were higher and so were rates. That was kind of the main thing that happened. And then home prices fell in the fall and then rates started rising again. All of that took a big whack at affordability.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
The Fed sets the rate for an overnight loan among banks. Look, a one night loan, it doesn't really have much of a relationship with a 30 year mortgage, which lasts 11,000 nights. Mortgage rates respond to broader, longer term economic signals, especially concerning inflation. They tend to go up and down. I'm talking about mortgage rates.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
They tend to go up and down with the 10-year Treasury yield. And those yields have been going up because markets believe that we might have a resurgence of inflation, especially if tariffs are increased during the Trump administration.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
It's Sam as always. Homebuyers focus on three things, home prices, mortgage rates, and home availability. And that last one, that's what's holding the market back. Well, I mean, all three of them are holding the market back, but really, home availability is really an issue. There's not enough homes for sale to meet the demand.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
When most people look for a home nowadays, they basically wish that there were more homes to choose from. On the other hand, more houses are on the market now than at this time of year in 2023 and 2024. That helps people have more choice. But the reason there's more homes is that homes are lingering longer on the market.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
And that is because prices and interest rates are making it hard for people to afford homes. I mean, I think buyers are becoming accustomed to a new normal in which mortgage rates are going to stay above 6% and home prices are going to keep rising, but not by much. That's pretty much what people are facing in 2025.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
The factor that you're talking about is called rate lock-in, and it is still a big deal in the housing market. And here's why. When you think of homeowners with mortgages, about half of them have loans with a rate of 3.5% or lower. And those homeowners are saying, I'm not going to sell my home and give up this ultra-low mortgage rate to buy a house with like twice the interest rate.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
You know, that's a major reason that not enough homes are on the market.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
Rate lock-in is an issue faced by a lot of homeowners who would like to move, either because their family is growing or the nest is empty, they're divorcing, they want to relocate for a job, but they really, really hesitate because they just don't want to buy another house that maybe is about the same size, but has much higher monthly payments because of the higher mortgage rate.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
That's exactly right. People just look at that and say, no way, I think I'll just fly to see my grandchildren.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
So we've named the main factors, low inventory, high prices, high mortgage rates. The best way to get out of this situation and kind of unfreeze the market would be for mortgage rates to drop. We can look back at 2024 and we can see the buyers jumped into the market whenever rates fell to like six and a quarter percent or lower. That's what happened in September and home sales jumped.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
It's different on what I'll call the supply side. How low must rates go to entice homeowners to list their homes for sale? Let's say you have a 3.5% mortgage rate. Where do mortgage rates have to go to get you to sell your house? I mean, we just don't know. My guess is you're going to start seeing more people sell their houses if mortgage rates fall to 5.5% or lower.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
Unfortunately, I just don't think rates are going to fall that far this year and probably not next year either. It's going to be a while for mortgage rates to get down below 6%. And then there's one other factor, which is there's not enough dwellings. We need more houses and apartments. We need those things to be constructed.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
But local governments, they put these land use restrictions into place that hinder home construction. And that's one of the main reasons we have a housing shortage.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
One of the things that people talk about, especially Trump's political allies, is they say that undocumented immigrants worsen the housing shortage because they're occupying dwellings that otherwise would be available to native-born people or immigrants who have documentation. The evidence of that is mixed, and I really mean truly mixed.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
It's not something to just dismiss as hysteria, but there just might not be enough immigrants to really affect home prices. On the other front, Trump talked about opening up federal lands for housing development. If that happens, we won't see new housing in 2025. It takes longer than that to build a bunch of houses. But maybe in later years, there actually would be an effect that we can measure.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
I have this term that maybe I'm the only one who uses it. I call it Zillow stalking. I spent a lot of time looking at houses in Western North Carolina in the mountains, but I'm not ready yet to actually look at houses. Let's say you have been Zillow stalking and now you really are ready to start touring houses, getting ready to make offers and that kind of thing.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
Your first step should be to go to a mortgage lender and get a pre-approval. And that means the lender will collect information about your income, expenses, assets, and your credit score. They'll let you know how much you can realistically qualify to borrow at today's rates.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
And then when you know how much you can borrow and you know how much you've saved up for a down payment, you know what price range to look at. Having a pre-approval in your pocket really does let sellers know that you're serious and they will take your offer more seriously than from someone who doesn't have a pre-approval.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
On top of that, I got to say, have a relationship with a homeowner's insurance agent. Have their phone number in your favorites. Homeowners insurance premiums, they've been rising really fast in a lot of the country. Talking about the Gulf Coast, the East Coast, the Great Plains from like Nebraska to North Texas where there's a lot of hail and tornadoes.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
Places that are vulnerable to wildfire on the West Coast. Colorado, Arizona, these places, sometimes it's hard to get insurance at all. If you do get a policy, it costs more than you would ever expect.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
You know, some people have actually had their offers accepted, they're going through underwriting, and then they discover that they can't afford the monthly payments on that house because of homeowners insurance. That's something you really want to find out early. And then the bottom line really is, if you find a suitable place that you can afford at today's rates, just go ahead and make an offer.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
I mean, you might be tempted to wait for rates to drop, but rates are unpredictable. And at NerdWild, we urge people to not try to time the mortgage market.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
That is so fun to do. Yeah.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
The main thing is to have the right outlook. If you're selling a home, you might be tempted to sell it as is because you live in a seller's market and you just figure buyers will just have to take it or leave it. That's really probably not the way to go. Today's buyers are patient. They don't like the low inventory, but they're not eager to buy something that's outdated or poorly maintained.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
If you want to sell that house, give your landscape and the front of your house curb appeal. Also document recent repairs and improvements.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
Here's the deal. The things that really give you the best bang for the buck are those cosmetic things. The landscaping. If you have to pay like $3,000 to put down new turf, you're probably going to get more than $3,000 back. And it's really rare to invest money in a house and actually get more than the money that you put into it.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
But the lawn, the landscaping, the front door, like freshly painting the front door, those are big bang for the buck items.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
Oh boy. Mortgage rates back in like 81 or 82, they topped out at something like 18% for the 30-year fixed rate mortgage. I bought my first house in 1997 and I paid eight and a quarter percent. And I thought, hey, that's a pretty good deal. But when you look at people who are buying, especially buying their first home nowadays, their history that they're looking back is much more recent.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
We had an 11-year period, 11 years, February 2011 to April 2022, when the 30-year fixed mortgage stayed below 5% for 550-something consecutive weeks. A lot of people who are buying houses nowadays grew up during that period, and rates below 5% were normal to them. So now we've entered this new normal in which rates are probably going to stay above 6%.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
That's the consensus that's emerging among forecasters. I think that we're seeing signs that today's buyers are just, they're accepting it. They're like, okay, here's what it is. Now, how much can I afford to pay for the house?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
The big change that we're talking about is a rule that went into effect last August. And it says that home buyers are responsible for setting their own agents' commissions. Now, that might make total sense. It's kind of commonsensical, right, that you would figure out how much to pay your agent. But the rule previously was that sellers decided how much the buyer's real estate agent would be paid.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
This change was made, and it seems to have paid off. Preliminary study by RIS Media indicates that total commissions have gone down from about 5.6% to 5% nationwide. People are paying less in commissions, which is good. Real estate agents tell me that they think the policy puts first-time buyers at a disadvantage because first-timers tend to have less savings and wealth.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
2025 Real Estate Trends: What Homebuyers and Sellers Need to Know
You know, when you're a buyer, you can ask the seller to pay some or all of your agent's commission. Sellers usually do. But sometimes the buyers end up being told they have to pay out of pocket. And if they can't afford it, they can't buy the house. I don't think that that's a terribly common thing. I think sellers want to sell. And so most sellers are going to be willing to pay that agent.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
Sam, what's it like to switch from one investing platform to another? I mean, do you have tips for switchers who want to accomplish the change easily, quickly, without worrying that they'll end up doing something with disastrous tax implications?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
Well, first of all, if you plan to buy a house this year, good luck and I wish you well. Prices and rates are kind of high. As far as the best mortgage lender of 2025, our algorithm chose US Bank as the best mortgage lender overall. They earned five-star ratings for three of our four objective criteria. Those three are mortgage rate transparency, variety of loan types, and customer experience.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
Let's break those down a little bit. So rate transparency means that you can go online and easily find out the interest rates the bank is charging. U.S. Bank is excellent at showing rates for its many loan products. And then that brings us to another five-star strength of U.S. Bank's variety of loan types. It offers fixed-rate mortgages, adjustable-rate mortgages, including for jumbo loans.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
It has FHA and VA mortgages. It offers construction to permanent loans for people who want to build a custom home. renovation loans, mortgages to buy manufactured homes, even co-ops, which are kind of rare. And it even has specialty programs for doctors at the beginnings of their careers. U.S. Bank ranks well for customer experience.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
The way NerdWallet measures that, this means the bank offers convenience features such as online application and multiple customer service options. It also means that there's a helpful mobile app and candid closing timeline communications. So in other words, if you're 21 days out from closing, they actually tell you you're 21 days out and not keeping it a mystery.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
When we grade mortgage lenders, we use objective standards. Our opinions don't enter into it. So here's an example. Can you go online and look at today's mortgage rates? Some lenders don't show rates at all. Some show generic rates that assume that you have a high credit score and you live in a certain zip code.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
And some will let you customize rates according to your credit score, location, loan-to-value ratio, and all that kind of stuff without digging into fine print. Each step along that continuum increases rate transparency, and thus it raises the score. And so we have the same scoring philosophy for like how many loan types the lender offers, how many communications options it offers, and so on.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
U.S. Bank offers homebuyer assistance programs with a limited scope. They let you make a down payment as little as 3%, and the bank pays the mortgage insurance. That's a certain program that they have for people who live in certain areas, like certain zip codes. And that also offers several thousand dollars in down payment and closing cost assistance.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
So like I said, those programs are available in limited areas. So a lot of listeners, they might not be able to get that. And other lenders offer home buyer assistance programs too.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
First-time buyers, a lot of time they're looking for loan programs that allow for, A, small down payments, and B, that are forgiving for imperfect credit scores. And, you know, mostly we're talking credit scores under 760. The FHA and the VA fill that bill. You can get an FHA-insured loan with a 3.5% down payment, and the VA requires zero down payment.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
Both tend to cost less than private mortgage insurance, and US Bank offers FHA and VA loans. NerdWallet also gives a rating for the best lender for first-time homebuyers. In that category, Rocket Mortgage won our blue ribbon. A big reason is that FHA and VA loans constitute a lot of Rocket's business.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
You can apply via a mobile app, and Rocket closing times are quicker than average, and that's why Rocket Mortgage scored well for first-time buyers. Their origination fees are on the higher end, though. I gotta say, sometimes you get what you pay for. A more full-service lender might be charging higher fees, but you might find that more satisfying.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
The Best Financial Products of 2025 and Investing in Collectibles
Sarah, I'm not a newbie to traveling, but I'm a newbie to travel rewards cards. So I have a really naive question. When you use the Chase Sapphire Preferred to rent a car, does it automatically provide insurance coverage?