This is why mortgage rates are rising, and where they’ll head from here.

What is it that drives mortgage rates? My team and I had the privilege of working with Barry Habib, a great coach and mentor, to help us understand what has happened over the last couple of years. Today, I’m going to share some of what we learned with you.
 
Typically, what we see in real estate is that mortgage rates tend to track with inflation. As inflation rises or falls, so do the rates. This trend is very prominent in the graph at 0:38 in the video above, right up until the beginning of 2020. The pandemic marked a break with this trend, where inflation fell while fear rose.
 
Notionally, interest rates should have fallen to match the drop in inflation, but that would have caused rates to drop to zero. Instead of allowing this, the government stepped in and introduced something called “quantitative easing.” This basically means that the government became a secondar ...

Why the fall and winter market is a fantastic opportunity to list your home.

The leaves are changing and starting to fall out of the trees. There's a little bit of chill in the air every morning. During this season, I get asked this question all the time: What do I need to do to sell my house this holiday season? Let's dig into that a little bit. 
 
If you want to know whether it’s a good time to sell your house during the fall and winter season, my answer is: absolutely! For one, you’ll have less competition now compared to if you list for a spring market. You’ll also have very motivated buyers—the kind who will search for a home all the way through the winter months. How motivated do you think they have to be if they are out in the cold, the rain, or even the snow looking for houses? They're not in the springtime kicking the tires and wanting to see what houses look like; they are motivated buyers looking for their dream homes.

To make yo ...

It’s almost time for our December to Remember holiday activity!

We do an amazing thing every November and December, and we call it our December to Remember activity. The reason we call it that is because we know this is the time where there are families that will be stuck in the hospital over the holiday season. They won’t be able to go home to open Christmas presents under their tree, or to celebrate Hanukkah with their family. That is why for our Christmas activity, we do all their Christmas shopping and bring them to the hospital. 
There are two great charities that we support: the Ronald McDonald House of Baltimore and the Johns Hopkins Children's Center, where a lot of kids are not able to go home. We get a list of everything they want for Christmas, and then we go to the store to shop. We actually buy from Target because they have seen us do this for over six years and are now even helping us because they want to be a part of this activity, and make it a ...

Explaining how the supply of inventory affects your home’s value

How does the monthly supply of inventory affect the value of your home? Let's go over that today so we understand it. 

Things have changed in the market over the last two years. If you look back earlier this year in January to April, we had less supply than we did the year or two years prior in each of those months. But come May, that was the first month where we had more supply than we did at the same time last year. You're now seeing that trend continue in June and July. Both had more inventory than in 2021 and 2020.

So you're starting to see inventory tick up, and you think simple economics would tell you that more supply means the prices will begin going down, but here's the thing: Because of the market crash from 2005-2007, we stopped building while America continued growing its families. We had more households than we did actual new construction. We have this supply and demand that has thrown e ...

Our market has seen a shift, but it’s still a good time to buy and sell.

“How is the market?” is probably the most common question that agents get asked, and that’s what we’ll talk about today. The only way to answer that question is with statistics. 
 
The median sales price in the Baltimore Metro Market has gone up in the last 30 days. Why is that? The median price is based on people that are buying in August. They got the August interest rate, and now they're settling. We're also seeing a lot of other changes in the market. Showings are down almost 30%, closed sales are down almost 26%, and buyer demand is down 15%, with 6% of that dropping last month alone.

"Don't believe everything you hear in the news."
 
Every time the Fed raises interest rates, it pulls buyers out of the market. However, houses are still selling well and in under two weeks. We’re still helping buyers into homes at low interest rates and helping sell ...