What is going on with Real Estate and Interest rates? This is a question that many are asking right now, including myself. I started in the mortgage business while I was in college in the early 1980s, so I have seen a lot about the industry. My father was in the mortgage business before me so you could say I grew up in the business. I received my bachelor’s degree in economics and started full-time in the mortgage industry in 1986. Things have changed over the years in the business, but the core of the business has remained the same. When I started in the business there were no computers and everything that is now printed by a computer was hand typed and there were no fax machines or cell phones at that time either. From a technological standpoint, there have been many changes but the way we qualify a potential home buyer for a home loan has not changed. The Stock Market’s DOW Industrial average was around 2500 in the early 1980’s so things have changed there as we are over 38,000 today. I have observed many changes, some for the good and some not so good but overall up to this point in my life I can say the business cycles have been pretty consistent.
What I am seeing now is something I have never seen, nor did I think I would see in my lifetime. Like I said above the business cycles have been pretty consistent over the decades until now. With all the economic data I see and more importantly, what I am observing is happening right now is scary. I have always trusted the economic numbers that have been spoon-fed to us from the government until now. Yes, I have lost confidence in the system I helped create throughout the years. When the executive branch of our government stands in the public eye and lies directly to us I have to believe that everything that doesn’t fit their agenda is a lie and that is very sad for America. When I hear the powers at be say that Bidenomics is working and America is thriving I have to call B.S. We all know that things cost more than ever at the store, at the gas pump, and with housing so why is it that the powers at be say otherwise? I try my hardest not to get into politics on this blog but is has gotten to the point that I have to bring it into the conversation as this is why the Real Estate markets are sluggish and interest rates remain high.
My observations in the Real estate markets are that people want to buy but with prices so high and interest rates that are too high, they can’t buy. Inflation has made the cost of everything go up and the value of the dollar goes down. So, when prices of Real Estate should have gone down with higher interest rates and lower demand, we have seen Real Estate values stay the same and, in some markets, continue to go up. The reason for this is that inflation has caused the dollar to go down so much that housing prices have stayed the same which means that they have gone down as inflation has eaten away the buying power of consumers. To put in in other words as inflation makes the price of things increase it also devalues them in that fewer people can afford to buy them. What higher interest rates should have done without inflation is to cause fewer people to be able to afford housing thus slowing the demand and making sellers of real estate have to lower prices in order to sell. As we have observed with the higher interest rates over the last 2+ years Real Estate prices have not reduced as they should have or were intended to do. They have stayed steady or have gone up and this is due to the inflation or the devaluing of the dollar which is the same thing.
What is going on here, you ask? It is pretty simple from my standpoint, but I am not sure our education system is actually teaching these concepts for the younger generation to fully understand. To be clear, how the dollar devalues is simple economics. The government is spending more money than ever, thus putting more dollars into the world economy. When you have an oversupply of anything the value of that item will go down and that is what we are seeing with our US Dollar. The national debt has risen over the last 3 years from $30 trillion to north of $34 trillion consumer debt (Revolving debt credit cards) has risen to historic highs of over $1 trillion in the US alone. This means that every Citizen of the US bears the liability of government spending. When we send Billions and Billions of US dollars overseas this becomes a double whammy in that there more dollars are in circulation but no benefit to the American Citizen. Ironically a lot of the money the US is sending overseas is to protect the borders of other countries while our borders are wide open. This poses many problems for our economy, the most obvious problem is that as more dollars are pumped into circulation the value will continue to decline, thus inflation. You may have heard that” core inflation” has come down which we all know to be a lie, however, core inflation is the price of those goods that exclude energy (gas and fuel) and food prices which is what most middle-class Americans use the most. When your cost of living goes up so high that you can only afford food and housing you have lost wealth and wealth potential.
How do we get out of this cycle of lies and deception from those we used to trust to give us the truth and who are constantly lying to us? I would say vote them out and start over, however, deception, lies, and corruption have taken over the media, social media, and the voting booth. You see when the average citizen loses confidence in the voting system, we have lost our constitutional Republic. When you hear that the United States is a democracy it is not, it is a Constitutional Republic, that is the kind of rhetoric we are hearing that is either a lie or something they want you to believe. I am tired of people blindly believing everything they are told; we need some real changes quickly or our way of life we grew up with will be gone forever. We as a nation are as close to a tipping point as ever before in our history and my fear is that with spending for foreign wars, out-of-control illegal immigration, and corrupt leadership we are very close to something we all should fear. What we need to do is to come together to see what is happening right before our eyes and collectively do something about it. If we don’t stand united, we will fall divided.
To conclude, the Real Estate and Mortgage Markets are being drastically affected by the ridiculous monetary policies put forth by the current administration. With out-of-control spending outside of our own country, cutting oil production in our country, and starting foreign wars we stand to be in this type of crazy economy for a long time without some significant changes. My next big concern will be a crash of the stock market due to American companies not being able to profit like they have been able to in the past. We must also watch the emergence of the BRICS monetary system that Russia and China are spearheading this could cause further inflation by the devaluing of the dollar on the world stage and if the BRICS system replaces the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency, then we have more problems than I can write here. This has not been covered in the media and is one of the biggest threats to the US Dollar in our lifetime. This could also be one of the underlying reasons it seems we are marching into World War 3 to prop up the dollar. To think how many people will die in a war so the US Dollar is protected when other moves could have been to avert this situation. This is a very pivotal time in our history, and it seems that our media is more concerned about who’s feelings are getting hurt rather than the hard-hitting stuff we all know is going on and we should be concerned about. So, if you are reading this I hope you understand the magnitude of what I have written and I pray it doesn’t get censored in our so-called free society.
PS
I fear we may have gone too far with out-of-control corruption to the point where the economy as a whole is suffering from incompetent leadership. If we don’t get immigration under control we will have too many people trying to get the same jobs and the same housing that American-born people need. As it is those same immigrants are getting government checks or taxpayer money to compete with natural Americans for housing, food, goods, and services not to mention that these people have not been investigated properly at the border so there may be bad people that could hurt Americans or damage property or worse we don’t know. This is causing a higher demand for housing and the longer it goes on the more it will hurt the American people. Crime is also rising in the cities where these migrants have gone and is getting worse every day.