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Each week on The Download, Inman’s Christy Murdock takes a deeper look at the top-read stories of the week to give you what you’ll need to meet Monday head-on.
This week: interest rate hikes and how to explain them to clients.
Between high home prices, high interest rates, rising inflation and a looming recession, buyers have perhaps never been as price sensitive as they are right now. The last thing they want to hear about is something else that will require them to spend even more money. Enter LLPAs — loan-level pricing adjustments.
The ill-timed announcement of this hike in mortgage fees sent social media into a tailspin and generated massive amounts of misinformation. Buyers threatened to tank their own credit scores in the erroneous belief that it would somehow end up saving them money through lower fees.
Fortunately, Taylor Anderson started Mortgage and Alternative Financing Month off right with an explainer to help real estate agents get their heads around the fees and, more importantly, understand how to talk to their clients about them.
At the same time, Inman contributors weighed in with great (and timely) advice on helping buyers save money, along with an economist’s take on consumer psyches — based on the latest Fed data — and, best of all, a two-parter on delivering bad news to clients without blowing up the deal.
What agents need to know as the complex mortgage fee hike kicks in by Taylor Anderson
Fees on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages rose on Monday, a change announced months ago that generated a big response from potential buyers and from the mainstream media. That prompted real estate agents to weigh in, in some cases trying to explain the change and, in other cases, stirring up even more dust.
Taylor Anderson breaks it all down for you so that you can reach out to your buyers with the information they need to understand the fee increase and learn how it will affect them. Be sure and use this one to put together an email to your SOI or a social media carousel with the real facts.
Want to go to your clients with the best possible information and talk to them in the most effective way, given the current market conditions? Don’t worry, we got you.
How to beat your buyer’s biggest obstacle to purchasing a home
With so much financial pressure being put on buyers today, wouldn’t it be nice to offer them some relief in the form of cash on the barrelhead? Bernice Ross interviews DownPaymentResource.com founder and CEO Rob Chrane to get into the nitty gritty of down payment assistance programs. This one is sure to help you help your clients.
Unlock homeownership with down payment assistance programs
You may not automatically have the affordability and down payment assistance talk with your clients, but at this point you should. Just about everyone who’s in the market right now could use some help, writes Southern California agent Ernesto Vargas. He makes the case that the perception of affordability is essential for the future of the industry.
Be prepared for bad news — and learn how to deliver it to clients
Wouldn’t it be great if you never had to tell your clients anything they didn’t want to hear? Unfortunately, writes Eric Bramlett, that’s just not the reality for real estate agents. Sometimes, you have to deliver the bad news to both buyers and sellers, so it’s important to have a plan in place.
And don’t miss part two: 4 common conversations your clients don’t want to have
What the latest Fed survey data tells us about consumer psyches
We know that the housing market rises and falls in great part based on changes in consumer mindsets. Although economists crunch the numbers and look at the nuts and bolts of the industry, they also have to take into account the vicissitudes of the buyer and seller hive-mind. Matthew Gardner, chief economist at Windermere Real Estate, walked us through the Fed’s 2023 Consumer Expectations Housing Survey to give us a sense of which way the wind is blowing — and where it will take us next.
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