252 FINAL
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to the What's Your 1 More Podcast. I'm your host, Quinton Harris. Your dial in for episode 252. In this episode, we've got headlines, headlines, headlines, Powell.
Versus Trump. Part two. Is he gonna resign? Is he not gonna resign? And what's really going on with the real estate market? Is it hot? Is it not that?
And more on this episode at What's Your 1 more
Okay. Welcome back to this episode of What's Your 1 More?. So I had a listener, viewer, if you wanna call it that, reach out to me.
you know, I've been called a lot of things in my life. none more favorable than you know. Father, husband, friend. This was the one I'm gonna rank up there, called me the pod father. I loved that man. I appreciate that. T.O., that was great, man. Thanks for sending that shout out to me. you know, I was joking with our producer.
I was like, maybe we should get a shirt that says Pod Father on here. one of my, guests of the show, Logan Moham, he goes by the chart, daddy. Now I can go by Pod Father, Charlie. So now I can put that out there. And we actually claimed that stake on that jokingly though, but I thought that was kind of cool.
Thank you, Tommy. That was funny when you sent that to me, but, sometimes you're doing these [00:01:00] episodes, right? We're in year three of this podcast and we're in episode 252. It kind of becomes a little, you know, a little grinding and grueling, and sometimes you, you try to convince yourself why you don't need to do an episode or move on, or, and things become a little monotonous.
But, a little pick me ups like that, go a long way. So thanks again, T.O.. So let's hop into this episode. You know, kind of crazy headlines out there right now. And what I mean by that is, you know, if you are turning into CNBC, NB, CABC, good Morning America, the Today Show, et cetera, there's a lot of headlines that are negative about real estate right now and maybe rightfully so, right?
you got a stubborn market. That's what I like to refer to it as. Right now it's just stubborn, right? We're not getting anywhere. We're not losing or gaining any ground. It's like one step forward and one step back to neutral, and we do it all over again and rinse and repeat. And every time we gain a little bit of momentum it gets wiped away by a negative headline or reading or you know, some BLS job report or BS report is.
We like to call that around here. But, you know, as my previous guest, Dan Habib said on there, we have all this momentum and then it just takes one report to take it away from us. And it's a stubborn market [00:02:00] and, it's very frustrating. And some of the frustrating things that we see are information such as listings are at an all time high since COVID, you know, and kind of making it look like it's a sell, excuse me, a buyer's market and that properties aren't moving and that there's no demand and that mortgage applications are off when in fact.
All of that's just completely wrong because the person interpreting it doesn't really know what they're reading, what they're looking at. Or better yet, the person reporting the story has been given a false pretense of what to say, and they just go out there and spew this news to the general public and well, because they're a figurehead on the news or on the Today Show or Good Morning America, people take it for face value.
And I just kinda wanted to dive into a little bit of this 'cause I think it's important, you know, if you're a listener of this show, you know how I feel about the real estate market. You also know how I feel about the doom and gloomers out there. More importantly, you know that when it comes to a headline, you gotta dig into it and dive a little deeper and really kind of understand it to make your own opinion so you're not reading what the masses want to tell you, or more importantly, what the agenda is of the person saying that.
[00:03:00] So I wanna just kind of take a step back and kind of explain my thought process here. And I think once I do that, I'm gonna try to make it as basic as I can. And I think that you'll probably derive the same opinion here because it makes sense. It actually makes a lot more sense than what the headlines are saying.
So in today's market, we do have more homes on the market. Then we've had in quite some time post COVID era. But think about that. it's not a significant amount. We were at all time lows coming out of COVID. So you see those kind of numbers and people go, oh yeah, we've got more listings than we've had in some time.
That's true because we're coming off of a COVID low, but. Also think about this, if you're a seller and you're listing your home, now we know we've got more equity in homes now than we've ever had on record. We've actually showed the statistics, we've talked about that. You know, right now the average American that has a mortgage, like if you have a mortgage on your home, the average equity position is 30%, meaning that your loan to value is 70%.
Or less on those homes on average [00:04:00] in America right now. Now, granted, I know there's some people that have bought in the last 12 months, 18 months, that's not the case, but the majority of Americans, that is the average right now. Also, we know of all homes that are owned, whether you have a mortgage or not, you're talking about all homes in general.
40% of those, 40% of 'em are free and clear. That means 40% of all homes in America are free and clear right now. So when you talk about equity positions, just using that number alone. They have a hundred percent equity. So there's a tremendous amount of opportunity to either refinance or sell and cash out your property, you know?
And when people think to do that, there's a couple of things that come to mind. Like we've talked to Lock in effect. Yeah. You could argue it's starting to loosen up. You could even argue it's irrelevant in this market. But what you can't argue is that still the majority of Americans that have those mortgages are 4% or less, right.
So the data suggests that people that have a home have a lower rate than they could obtain right now. However, if they wanted to use that equity to [00:05:00] upgrade their home, whether they do a refinance or they decide to sell their property and move on, there's a thing that has to happen before they do that because most sellers that live in a home.
If they go to sell that home, they still have to seek shelter somewhere else, meaning they need to have a roof over their head. If they're gonna move and exit home a to go to the next place, it doesn't mean they have to buy a place. They can go rent it. They can go rent an apartment, but they have to have a roof over their head.
Most people that are homeowners, almost all homeowners that have equity that are gonna sell, are going to buy another home. So what I'm trying to say is, if you're a seller, the minute you decide to list your home, you're engaging in the home buying process to buy another home. So if listings are up, your mortgage applications are going to be up, meaning the demand is going to be up too.
And we call this a transactional curve, right? Because as the transactions start to happen, if I'm gonna list my property today and sell it, and the buyer's going to buy my property, you have a person that was on the market buying a [00:06:00] home. You have a seller that's gonna go buy another home from someone who then in turn is gonna sell that home and buy another home.
That's what we call a transactional curve. Sometimes you've heard me call that musical chairs here in the, podcast because that's kind of this whole circle of life that starts to happen. So to me, this is a not, I don't like the word warning sign. This is a foreshadowing of what's about to happen when you see listings up like this, mortgage applications up, such as what they are.
I'm gonna get into the data in just a minute. This is a nice, what we like to call demand curve, and some call it shadow demand, pent up demand. It's there. You have willing and able people that want to buy homes right now and they wanna sell their home. And what's gonna happen is the buyers, the first time home buyers, the people that are looking to move up.
Those individuals are going to be looking at some of these homes that are coming on the market that satisfy that appetite. Because if you have a first time home buyer that bought three, four years ago, they have plenty of equity and now they wanna be a move up buyer. So when they go to sell that home, that might be the appetite for the current first time home buyer out [00:07:00] there.
Thus, that cycle starts to happen. So if you look at some of the data right now and purchase applications are measured weekly by the Mortgage Bankers Association. This is interesting. I mean, they're up 22% year over year right now, and we have 25 consecutive weeks. Let that sit in for a minute. 25 consecutive weeks of year over year growth, meaning the week that happened, that week was greater than the week it was a year ago, meaning that this year you're starting to see that pent up demand grow, but you have 12 consecutive weeks of double digit growth in this.
Purchase mortgage application. This is interesting because it's showing me that this demand, this pent up demand that I continue to refer to is starting to swell. And you have people that are saying, okay, I have equity in my home. I'm looking to sell. Where's the buyer that wants to buy this? And because they have so much equity, they may even start to work with buyers such as paying closing costs, paying for the agent on the other side of the table.
you know, as we know as buyer brokerage agreements being paid for. They may even lower the price [00:08:00] just a little bit to satisfy that appetite to start to see transactions move. If we get rates cooperative. Now, this is something we've been talking about way too long on this show, but if rates start to cooperate, how does that play into effect?
It should accelerate that market even more. I mean, rates going down are an accelerator of any market, but when you see the data sets on purchase mortgage applications, I'm gonna put this graph in our YouTube channel here. What's your 1 more with the number 1. If you're not subscribed to that, please go and subscribe at what's your, 1 more with the number 1.
I'm gonna put this mortgage application index in here.
You're going to see the significant difference between 2025 and 2024 in the actual mortgage application data sets. It's significant, meaning you are seeing the swell happen right here in front of us. And from a listing standpoint, when I take a look at the listings, what's interesting to me about that is that.
I encourage more listings when I do presentations around the country to agents. I go, are listings a good thing or are listings a bad thing? If they're going up and it's [00:09:00] almost unanimously we need more listings because you can't sell what's not there. So listings coming to the market while the news wants to portray that as a negative thing.
There's nothing negative about that. Like that should be a win. Like we should be cheering for that because what you're seeing is you're seeing activity happen right in front of you. That's a leading indicator of an active market when listings come on. But you look online, please don't do this, but if you look online, the doomers jump in automatically, as I like to call the doomers or the doom porn Hop in automatically and talk about why the market's going to shambles, and we're going back to 2008, nine.
That's their favorite thing to say, by the way. They've been wrong. I haven't seen this group of individuals be so wrong for so long. They literally should get an award for this 'cause it's absolutely the worst thing I've ever seen. However, they have hundreds of thousands of viewers watching this nonsense.
and people want to buy into the hype because for many individuals they feel this is the only way they're gonna get into the housing market. It's just not true. It's just not true. You know, it's interesting, I was at my, my in-laws house last night having dinner and [00:10:00] we're sitting there and, you know, they had the TV on in the background and the power goes out and it was like, okay, great.
Power's out. And I'm sitting there with my kids and they had some friends over and my in-laws, so a total of eight of us at this house. And we're sitting around the dinner table. No, you know, nothing, no table, no lights, no electricity, and you up having this conversation about real estate. Because my father-in-law and I, we love to talk about real estate.
We love to talk about, especially enlightening people, about why you should be a homeowner and own other properties. And what we found out was two of these. Individuals at the table. They go to college right now, and we're talking to 'em and asking 'em, we're like, Hey, in any of your classes, like in real estate or financing, do they bring any of this stuff up?
And we were baffled about just the lack of education, even at the collegiate level, about owning real estate. It wasn't negative, it just wasn't there. And I remember taking real estate class in college and it was, the focus was solely on commercial real estate for the most part. And, I haven't been back to college in some time, but, I would venture to say, I don't know, there's as many real estate focused residential classes and subject matters in the [00:11:00] collegiate world.
But it was interesting enough that when we got done with this, one of the guys goes, well, man, I don't even know if I need to go to college anymore with all I just learned. And he wasn't being a smart ass. He was actually being pretty funny about it. and the running joke was, no, you gotta finish school.
But the reality was. They were listening to every word we had to say and what they were absorbing right there. And understanding leverage and understanding how to buy a home, no money down, et cetera, and buy multiple properties. It was interesting just in that, that little bit of moment, how much impact we had in that subject matter with those individuals.
And I guess that's, I share that because it's one of the things we're trying to do on the show. Like we're trying to have that impact. You know, we're trying to be able to show you how to buy homes. Understand the market, don't believe the hype.
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I go back to that accelerator, you know, that, rate accelerator, if we have some sort of cooperation in that, and we've seen signs here recently that, you know, with the shadow Fed looming in the background, there's probably going to be two cuts by the end of the year.
And those two cuts may accelerate this market. It may provide some sort of stability for the bond market. And if all of these things happen, even if they don't happen, we know what's coming in 26. The, even the current fed, the stubborn Fed has already said what they're gonna do in 26. But if this [00:13:00] shadow fed, and I did a whole episode on that, if this shadow fed working in the background that Trump wants to, you know, kind of make happen.
It's gonna be interesting to see what these sellers are able to sell these homes for and turn into these buyers, and all of a sudden we have that transactional curve that I'm referring to that could accelerate the real estate market. So it's interesting. Speaking of Trump, speaking of Powell, you know, obviously they have this dual that goes on, it's one of the oddest dynamics I've seen since I've been following real estate and following the Federal Reserve.
But I look at this and you've got, you've got Trump, right? Interesting. I kinda laugh about this 'cause he goes, Hey listen, we've got the biggest idiot at the Federal Reserve that, you know, it's just, I think he went as far as calling the guy stupid. Ironically, he's the one that appointed Jerome Powell.
I find that hilarious. but this is one of those where it's like, hey, sometimes you thought you got the guy to do the position. They're not doing a good job, so therefore he's an idiot. But if you look at Trump's, if you look at Trump's position here, it's kind of funny. It was like. This guy's an idiot.
He needs to resign. Okay? You won't resign. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to [00:14:00] install a shadow fed. I'm gonna go to the public and I'm gonna tell people we have a great economy and I'm gonna tell people that our rates should be at 1%. Why aren't you lowering everyone else's lowering? We can put it back up when we want to lower the darn rates.
Public pressure to the Federal Reserve, doesn't matter. Jerome Powell doesn't matter to the Federal Reserve. They don't answer to the public. So then Jerome Powell doesn't resign. So what does he do next? He says, oh, I'm gonna go get a shadow Fed to work in the background. Well, that means where he's gone and kind of quietly appointed a couple people that he thinks should run the Federal Reserve.
And the next term, when Jerome Powell's term is up in May of 26th, so he's maybe tapped a couple of individuals and we discuss that on the show, who they are, and says, Hey, listen. Come 2026, you're probably gonna be my guy. And what's interesting is you can tell who those people are because they're outwardly speaking right now against Jerome Powell and they're undermining his podium speeches and they're undermining what the current Federal Reserve is doing.
Even though they're fed members, they're outwardly saying, we voted against what they're doing. We wanted rate cuts. We should have been cutting rates. We're about two cuts behind. Everything is a complete opposite of what Jerome Powell's stance is. And the current Federal [00:15:00] Reserve's, federal open market committee stance is even though they're on it, they're outwardly speaking against it.
And then that doesn't create enough pressure for Jerome Powell to be like, you know what, screw this. I'm done. I don't need someone working digging sand out from underneath me. Still maintaining. And so what does Trump do next? He gets someone to bring up a DOJ question on, you know, did Jerome Powell testify incorrectly?
Did he give false information in his, testimony on the finance committee there? has he been lying as the Federal Reserve, chairman to the committee? And so he's been brought up on that and he's got pressure code that still hasn't resigned. So in the most latest news, what does Trump do next?
He says, you know what, you're not gonna resign. I'm gonna come to your house. So what is he doing is today we're making this podcast. He literally is going to the Federal Reserve today, right? He's unprecedentedly going to the Federal Reserve. Why not to confront Jerome Powell not to talk to the Federal Reserve, but to view the two and a half billion dollars worth of renovations the Federal Reserve did to their own building?
Just to rub it in their nose. Hey, listen, must be nice to spend the general public's money and you won't cut the rates and give them a break. Meanwhile, you got Taj [00:16:00] Mahal of a place to be at over here. Let's see if I can add some more public pressure to what I think you're doing as a wrong job over here.
It's humorous at best. it's pretty funny to watch. I don't think any of that's gonna make power resign, but it's definitely humorous. And if anything in very, you know. Trump manner, if you may, exposing and showing the sides that he wants and only he wants the public to see on this. It's quite hilarious.
And you know, I'm sure this is just the style, excuse me, just the start of many things to come on this, but I mean, don't we have better things to do? Then to go view the Federal Reserve right now and check out the two and a half billion dollars worth ofrenovations. I mean, granted, it's not gonna make the man resign.
There's nothing you're gonna do. It's not like he inherently got the money on there. But clearly this goes back to what, you know, I thought would happen. I probably, I think in November, you know, I came out and said, how's this war between Powell and Trump gonna work? And we got a cool head fake there at the beginning of the year where it was like, kumbaya, everybody's drinking the Kool-Aid.
We're good. We're good together. That lasted one meeting. That lasted one fed meeting when Powell did not do what Trump wanted. [00:17:00] And thus we have what we've been discussing for the last two minutes here is we have the Trump Powell War, and it's pretty interesting and,I think Trump is going to prevail one way or the other.
He is not gonna get the man to resign. I would be shocked if that happened. But he's gonna get the man out of there and he's going to create, a public standpoint that, Hey, listen, we should have been lowering rates. And quite frankly, with PAL staying in office, this is kind of a break for the Trump administration if you think about it because.
He can do what he's doing right now and use Powell as an excuse as to why certain metrics of the economy are not where they need to be. I mean, if you think about this is actually a game winner for the Trump administration because if Powell stays in office through his term, which I believe he will do between now and all of May, every time something negative goes wrong with the economy, inflation.
Housing interest rates. I mean, you name it, jobs. Well, that's Powell's fault. I've been telling him for the last X amount of months he needs to lower rates. If he would've listened to me, the economy would've been stronger. But because of that, we had to waste an entire year of [00:18:00] someone undermining that administration.
Ergo Powell. That's why we're where we're at. And then he's gonna have to install someone and he's gonna be saying, Hey, we played Catchup the entire time because this idiot, as he's called him, held us back for a full year, which cost us the next two to three years. Mark my words on that. this is literally the perfect fit for the Trump administration to have a whipping boy right there.
And it's Powell, and that's what he's doing. Powell is going to be the fall guy for all the things that have gone wrong in the economy. And I think the worst thing that could happen is Powell goes, deuces, I'm out. Let's resign. Let's see what you got. Call his bluff. And then they have to put in a fed chair.
I think it'd be great because whoever he appoints is going to lower those rates is gonna help a lot of things I just described. But there's other things that are gonna go wrong when you do that. that's how that cycle works, right? How are you gonna exit that?
Are you gonna say, well, they lowered 'em too quickly. They lowered 'em too much. There's gonna be people that get blamed for this.it's, kind of like if you look at when. When rappers get in these battles that are like fake battles to sell records, that's kind of what I feel like is happening right here.
This is a fake battle to create, [00:19:00] opportunities to blame what's not happening in the economy the way we want it right now. but good news is the term is up in May of 26. Even. Better news is that we should be getting two rate cuts over the last two meetings of the year. Thus, we'll help bonds, thus will help mortgage interest rates and thus that application cycle I talked about that's pent up.
It's almost like you remember when you had those hot wheels and you would take the car and you. Pull it back, 1, 2, 3, and you hear the wheels go V need to let it go and it'd shoot across the floor. That's kinda what's happening right now with the purchase market. It's being revved back and the minute those rates that accelerator go, it's gonna shoot across the floor and provide opportunities for those homeowners to connect to those home prices for first time home buyers who then sell their home, become move up buyers, and then move up buyers, then sell that home and go on and buy maybe their dream home or a larger home.
It's sitting there waiting. The data suggested. it's a great painted picture if you want to kind of call it that, and it's a great opportunity. So I can't wait for it to happen. And I hope you guys are kind of seeing and understanding the same thing. So guys, if you like what you're hearing, please share this podcast.
Check us out on Apple, check us out on Spotify. Again, go to our YouTube channel at what's your one more, and then check out some of the graphs [00:20:00] that our producer Charlie's working up and putting in there. Until the next episode, we'll see you at, what's your one more.
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