Housing Turnaround 2026: Why Homeownership Is Finally Affordable Again!

YouTube episode of Mortgage Minute (Jan 10, 2026) with Art Alvarez (Mortgage Works). He reviews current mortgage and Treasury/bond conditions (stable 10-year yield, recent jobs releases), spotlights a CDFI-backed "community mortgage" low-/no‑doc product for underserved borrowers, and argues that 2026 offers improved homebuying affordability due to falling mortgage rates, cooling home prices, and better inventory. He gives concrete examples (payment comparisons, seller-credit strategies, and a case study using the community mortgage) and invites viewers to consult for tailored scenarios.
Questions this video answers
680
$2,000,000
30-year fixed and a 7-year ARM (30-year amortization, fixed for 7 years)
Purchase and rate-and-term up to 80% LTV (cash-out up to 75%); note: borrowers with 680 credit score have LTV limits 5 percentage points lower (e.g., purchase 75% LTV, cash-out 70% LTV).
41,000 new private-sector jobs (ADP, recent month).
Chapters
Well, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this week's Mortgage Minute. My name is Art Alvarez with Mortgage Works, where we have the answers and are on the house. Coming to you from Palm Springs in the greater Coachella Valley area. And in fact, mentioning Palm Springs, we're right at the tail end of the Palm Springs Film Festival. So that I think that ends this weekend. Have to say I haven't seen any celebrities roaming around, but then I've probably been too busy, got my head buried in loan files as we're we're actually handling quite a bit of transactions right now. Welcome back. I'm happy to be back. I know we were kind of dark the last couple of weeks since our Thursday show fell right on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. So happy to be back. Haven't seen you all since last year, so to speak. Exciting time coming up this weekend too when it gets into the sports area. We got the college football final round of playoffs before we get a national champion. I think that'll be on Monday. We got four teams left, so that's pretty exciting. And of course, the NFL is start to about to start their playoff schedule as we approach the super bowl in early February. And me mentioning and by mentioning February, I'm excited. Not everyone is. It's well into football season as well as basketball. But I can't believe it. We're five weeks away from pitchers and catchers reporting for baseball spring training. So that's exciting at least for me. And anyone, any, any of those of you out there who are baseball fans. So anyway, let's go ahead and get right into what's been going on with the mortgage and bond markets. And it's interesting because things are really not much different than before when we last talked. Here's our rate grid. And again, as stable as always. Pretty much everything you see on this rate grid, we're in the fives high fives. That's with a good credit score and decent down payment size, although, by the way, you can get under 6% even with, you know, 3.5percent down on a conforming loan and certainly on an FHA VA with 0 to 3.5% down, you're going to be in the, in the mid fives, even kind of creeping toward the lower five. So, you know, it's interesting because I was actually talking to someone the other day, a realtor who asked me about what kind of rate we would offer on a particular transaction and I threw out a number that was under six. I think it was five and seven eighths. And they Were shocked. They didn't really believe what I was saying. But I said, look, go look at our website. We post it every day. So yeah, rates continue to be in my opinion, pretty favorable, relatively speaking. So let me have Jeff go ahead and pull up the 10 year bond chart. Kind of tells you the story. Now this one's kind of interesting. Remember this goes back five days. So it goes back to last Friday and it's as you can see, they're a little bit choppy and we had a nice reduction going into Wednesday that there's that Wednesday dip that Jeff likes to see. We did creep up today actually this morning it was worse than you see now. You know, this morning it was like 4.185. So we've actually dropped a couple of basis points here to 4.169. So it is settling down just a tad. And the bond yield, if you know, if you've been paying attention to it, and I've been accused of getting a lot of folks sort of addicted to looking at the 10 year bond chart every day since I bring that up all the time as your best benchmark to track where mortgage rates are going. You'll probably be aware then or you know that the, the 10 year bond yield has been pretty much stuck in this, well about a month, well, probably closer to two months ago, we were right around four and we got close to 420 at one point. But we've been in that pretty narrow range of 4, 4 to 420. And of course the byproduct of that is mortgage rates have been relatively, in fact very stable during that period and I would argue have been pretty stable for several months. So in terms of what's going on in the financial markets, that kind of support where we're at in terms of mortgage rates and the bond yields. Well, this week as I put on the slide, it's all jobs, jobs, jobs. All the data points coming out this week are predominantly about jobs. The first one was earlier actually yesterday the ADP number came out new jobs. This is private sector jobs only and it came out at 41,000 new jobs. Keeping in mind that the month before November there was a minus 29,000. So that was a nice rebound. And that in part can have an effect on the bond yield in the sense that remember that unfortunately when it comes to the 10 year bond yield and mortgage rates in general, bad economic news tends to be good news for bond yields and mortgage rates. And so when you, you see labor numbers that are strengthening, that's considered or perceived as a potential inflationary trigger. And so actually as a consequence of the jobs number being better than expected, I think that's what pushed up the yield here the last day or so. And then the other thing that came out this week was the Jolts report. Again, remember that's job openings and labor turnover in November. It's a little bit delayed on this report. We don't have December numbers yet. In November, 7.1 million job openings. It was previously in October, 7.6 million. So that's dropped a little bit. So employers are not necessarily looking to hire a bunch more people. And the amount of job openings have actually shrunk a little bit. That's I think just an indication that the economy overall is doing pretty well. And then the other thing that really came up and it was today, and I think that this number did have some impact on the bond yield. Jobless claims forecast to be 210,000 came in a little bit lower than that, 208. And this number was actually described as being very low with no sign of layoffs. So again, if the bond, if the jobs market is firming up and there's not imminent indication of increase in layoffs, more people filing for unemployment, of course, all of us would agree that should be good news, right? But yet at the same time, for the bond market, who's always looking at inflation and labor, remember that in terms of the bond market, the 10 year bond and mortgage rates, the, the two key data points, two key economic parameters that the financial markets look at are inflation numbers and job numbers. And so as a consequence, when there was talk earlier that we may be getting into a recessionary environment, we're going to have a problem with jobs and unemployment rate going up. That seems to be a narrative that's kind of walking away right now. In fact, the jobs report is tomorrow. That's the federal release of jobs reports, which includes of course, the total U.S. employment, which does include government jobs, not just private sector. It's forecast to be in December, 73,000 new jobs to be released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last month, November, it was 64,000 jobs. And then here's interesting. The forecast for tomorrow's jobs report as to the unemployment rate is that the unemployment rate may fall by a tick to 4.5 when it was 4.6 in November. Now I would argue that if these numbers bear out, if we do have that strong of a new job number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and if we do see a drop in the unemployment rate, even that one little tick that probably will keep the bond yields firmed up. I wouldn't expect that we, that we would see much of a drop from where we are right now. So we'll just have to wait and see. And of course that number will be out. Those numbers will be out very early tomorrow morning and you should be able to right away if you pull up the 10 year bond yield, see what kind of impact that's going to have on that yield and therefore on mortgage rates. So that's where we're at right now with the, with the mortgage and bond markets kind of more of the same really. And again, I think that's good news in the sense that stability as it relates to mortgage rates is a good thing, not a bad thing. Now obviously everyone would like to see us suddenly drop to 3%. That's not in our future anytime soon, like a long way away. Who knows when that could happen if it does. So I wouldn't bet on it. So we're going to go next. I'm going to do a quick spotlight on a new product. Actually it's not a totally new product. It's one that we had access to a couple years ago and then it kind of fell by the wayside a little bit. But it's back and it's a very interesting product and in fact it's one that I might be using in particular on a scenario which I'll talk about in a minute. So with this next slide, what it's called is a community mortgage. Okay, now what is the unique feature about this community mortgage? Well, it has to do with documentation and the ability to qualify. This program offers some very unique features such as, as you can see on the screen here, income documentation, income calculation, employment verified, employment stated. That's what's required on most all conforming loans right now, right? Not on this program. All of those are not required. We will not have employment information on your application. We will not have employment verified. We will not have your income documented. We will not calculate a debt ratio. So as a consequence, this program is sometimes called a no ratio program because of the lack of having to document those things. So let me give you some parameters as to what this program can do or be as to providing some financing solutions for some borrowers. First thing is the maximum loan amount is 2 million. The next thing to know is the minimum credit score is 680. So unfortunately, if you're lower in that credit score range, lower 600 or in the high 500s, this product's not going to work for you because of the nature of the fact that it's a low documentation program, it's going to rely more on a very credit worthy borrower as it relates to credit scores. So 680 is as low as it's going to go. The program is available for both purchase and rate and term refinances. Up to 80% loan to value, by the way. Rate and term refi. What does that mean? It means you're refinancing your existing mortgage simply to reduce the rate. You're not pulling any cash out from that refinance. This program does though offer cash out refinance up to 75% loan to value. And I say up to. On both of these. The 80% for purchase, 75 for cash out. I say up to because there is a difference depending on if you're 680 or 720. If you're 680 you're going to be 5% below those LTV numbers you see there. LTV is loan to value. So if you're 680, purchase at 75 LTV and if you're a cash out with 680, you're going to be at 70% LTV. Now this is also available only on a primary home. So it can't be used on a vacation home, cannot be used on rental property. It's primary residence only. The program offers two types of product. 30 year fixed and a 7 year arm. That's a 30 year loan but fixed for 7 years. And of course what that does is provide you a little bit of a break in the rate over the traditional 30 year fixed term. In terms of property type, pretty much almost everything. Single family residence, puds, that's planned unit development. And for those of you who may not recall what that means, that's typically a single family home that is in a homeowner's association where you have HOA dues. That community may or may not be gated, but it's typically again single family detached homes in a homeowner's association where you are paying monthly dues. That's typically what a PUD is. Condos are available as a property option. Two to four unit properties. Again though, two to four units where you're living in one of the units, not a two to four unit rental property fully and then also modular and rural homes. So that's pretty good to know that you've got those property types available for this program. So with the final bullet point, I want to kind of point out why would this be available? You know, we've talked in the past, I think most of you may know, you know, the Great Recession of 2008 was all about, or at least believed to be all about the fact that too many loans were made to people who couldn't afford the payment, who couldn't, who wouldn't otherwise had qualified if we had fully documented their income as well as their money to close. So why would a program like this be back in the industry when the low doc, you know, stated income, no income, no asset, no ratio type product were all considered risky features that are no longer a significant part of the mortgage industry? Why would this be back? Well, what it has to do with, believe it or not, this program originates from the US Treasury Department and it is offered by certain lenders who have been designated as, as it says there, Community Development Financial Institution. The idea here is that this is a product offered by certain lenders to basically provide mortgage financing for residential homes in many cases, if not most cases, to underserved borrowers and markets. And so if the lender has been able, through the Treasury Department, get this CDFI designation, Community Development Financial Institution. If they can get that designation, they can offer this product and be exempt from the ability to repay or ATR rules. Remember the ATR rules, the ability to repay were implemented in 2010 by the CFPB after the Great Recession of 2008. So that is how this program is able to be in the marketplace and available when the vast majority of all conforming programs, whether it's conventional, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, fha, va, all have to adhere to the ability to repay rules. And that essentially means we would have to do everything in the first bullet point. We would have to document your income, we would have to calculate a debt ratio. We'll have to verify your employment, we have to have your employment information on your application and so forth. We have to do all of that for conforming loans to meet the ATR rules. With this program, we're exempt from that. And so we do have access to this program through a wholesale lender. And here and now this is a program that, you know, there's trade offs. You know, that's not a particularly good rate. The rates are in the mid eights. You know, you go, oh my gosh, why would I do that? Well, this program can be very useful in certain circumstances. Let me give you a quick idea, a quick example. We were approached here basically last week by a real estate agent, real estate agent who has a client looking to buy a new construction home, in this case a condo, expensive condo. By the way, almost a million bucks. And they initially were trying to negotiate a cash purchase with the builder. Well, once you peel the onion, what we found out is that yeah, they were going to be a cash buyer, but only after that buyer sold four properties, her primary residence and three rental properties. Well, of course, once the builder found that out, it's like, well, wait a minute, you're not really a cash buyer, you're a contingent buyer. You've got to sell multiple parcels of real estate to come up with the cash to complete your purchase for cash. So I got called to see what I can do to come up with a solution for this situation. Come to find out the borrower, the buyer is not employed, has no employment income, has no monthly income of any sort. She's actually of retirement age, doesn't have Social Security, doesn't have a pension, has no recurring monthly income at all. Now she happens to have a pretty substantial amount of liquid assets, around 8, 900,000 in the bank. But she doesn't want to keep all four properties and use all of her money that she currently has in financial institutions to try to complete this purchase. So what we're looking at doing is using this program on her primary residence, which is worth about $3.5 million. She owes 500,000 on it. And so what we're looking to do here is use the community mortgage, do a cash out refi for about a million and a half, pay off that $500,000 existing mortgage, she'll then clear that, well, it'd actually be about a million left over so that she can then complete the purchase of this new construction condo with those proceeds. So again she, that doesn't make her a cash buyer, it makes her a buyer who is contingent only on getting financing to complete the purchase like most other buyers at this development. Most new home developments are. So it's not a have to sell a home first in order to close it, simply have to get this cash out refinance loan completed first and then after she gets the proceeds closes on the purchase of the new home, she will then list all four of her properties with her real estate agent, get them, get them sold, and then be able to walk away with her remaining proceeds from those properties. And of course that's a pretty decent amount of money that she'll be able to put in the bank and I'm sure it will be financially in good shape. So that's an example of how this kind of program can be useful. So in particular, if you know anyone who's in this kind of situation. They need a mortgage, they don't have income, they don't have a job. We can help agents out there. If you've got a client that you'd like to sell a home to, this can be kind of useful in certain circumstances. So I encourage you to call me, send me an email, send me a text. I'd be happy to talk to you in more detail about how this particular product, it's very unique, can help you in some situations and help some borrowers, some buyers, be able to get a transaction done even though otherwise they would not be able to meet the ATR rules at all. So that's our product spotlight for this week. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to go into a little bit of a discussion about home buying and the fact that in my opinion anyway. And oh, by the way, Jeff, just put on the screen there, are we a CDFI certified lender? We mortgage works. We are not. We are a mortgage broker. However, again, what's unique about this product is the CDFI lenders who are out there, some of them offer this on a wholesale basis. So our access to this product isn't because we are cdfi. It's because we have a relationship with a wholesale lender who is cdfi and therefore we're allowed to broker this, loan this product to them on these kind of transactions. And I'm actually also using this on another transaction, a refi for a homeowner who has an existing home and for specific reasons isn't able to qualify for conforming financing. And we're going to use this to get her situation resolved so she can pay off some debt and be in good shape. So, yeah, we are not a CDFI lender, but we have access to this program through a CDFI lender who is a wholesale lender. Okay, so now we'll go ahead and talk about home buying becomes affordable again in 2026. That's my opinion. And I'm going to talk to you a little bit about why I think that's the case. So the first thing I want to do is give you a few bullet points as to what I'm going to talk about in terms of why I think this is, this is a good time to buy. I know that's, that's a line you hear all the time. Now is the best time to buy. You always hear that no matter what the environment is. Well, I think really when you look at some of the graphs we're going to show you here in a minute, I think you'll have a better understanding of why I think we're actually are in a much better shape, much better place than we were even just a couple of years ago. As it relates to mortgage rates and buying a home, a few of the key data points to confirm are falling mortgage rates. Next one is cooling home prices and then the third was, third one is improving inventory. Now if you think about it now, that all sounds fine, right? I mean, yeah, rates are falling. Well, are they? A lot of folks out there don't think they have. At least not in a significant way. Home prices. Well, some would argue. Well we're still hearing that home prices are going up. Yes, but they're going up at a lesser rate. The rate of increase has moderated. It's not what it was, you know, right through the pandemic and right after the pandemic home prices are still going up but at a lesser rate. And then improving inventory. You know, it wasn't too long ago where we had inventory for sale of like less than 2 months. Having less than 2 months supply based on the sales rate that has changed quite a bit. Now are we back to the historical normal, you know, of what's generally been considered a six month supply? No, we're not quite there yet, but we have been heading in the right direction. So let me show you a few charts here. I'm going to give you like three different charts that I want to show you to kind of illustrate this point. So here's the first one. Falling mortgage rates. Now on this chart what you can see is this is the average 30 year fixed rate has declined from almost 7% in early basically January 2025. Now if you see that chart, it's got that nice downward slope we like to see. As of December it was down to 6.19. I mean that's 80, 80 basis points as we call it now by the way, these rate rate numbers we're, we're showing you here, these are based on rates that are published by Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. They, they publish the average conforming rate on a weekly basis. And of course keep in mind that's an average. So it takes into account all interest rate levels depending on the particular transactions that it's that comprise this index. But nonetheless 7% in January of 25, 6.19 in December of 25. And of course I'll remind you again, we're not at 6.19. Most of the loans we have in process right now for conforming conventional or fha VA loans are not in the sixes, they're in the mid to high fives. So when you consider that, that's very good improvement. And yet there seems to be a lot of media headlines and, you know, experts who continue to moan and groan and complain that mortgage rates are too high and that we haven't seen enough improvement. I would argue that this chart shows otherwise. And then let me give you this as a further indication of what I'm talking about. You may not remember, although I would think you would. In October of 2023, the average mortgage rate wasn't 7% like it was in January of 25. It was 7.79, almost 8%. Now, again, that was a number published by Freddie Mac back at that time, October of 23. So in reality, if you go back to that period of time a little over two years ago to now, we've actually had about a 2% reduction in mortgage rates. Certainly if you look at the rates we're offering compared to 7.79. And so one of the things I did when I looked at these numbers, I took a $500,000 loan amount and I calculated, what would the payment be at 7.79. Oh, actually I use a 7 and 78 rate. 7.87, 7.875 rate. On a 500,000 loan amount, the principal and interest was over 3,600amonth, about 3,650. Then I calculated what's the P and I payment, the principal and interest payment for the same 500,000 loan amount at a 5 and 7h rate. Well, it was about 2950. That's $700 a month lower than what it was in October of 23. I don't know about you, that's a big, big savings over just a little over two years ago when everybody was wringing their hands that we were heading to 8% or higher. So that didn't pan out. And in fact, we've been on a pretty extended period of time of rates gradually getting lower over this past about two years and four or five months. So I would think, I would hope that would give you some help in realizing that things are really not quite as bad as the media and the headlines and all that tend to make things out to be. Mortgage rates have been falling now. Yeah, we've kind of stabilized in this, you know, high fives, about 6% range. But there's still an expectation we're going to get a little bit better in the next year or two. So as a consequence, that's the first point, understand that mortgage rates have improved and quite a bit improved over what they were a couple of years ago. So then the next thing I want to show you is the chart for home prices. Again you can see in this chart how home prices From January of 25 did go up mid year right around June area. But then look what's happened. They've started to fall off. This is what I mean about you saw that increase going up to, you know, mid year last year but since then they've dropped quite a bit. So we're now to the point where we're at about a, you know, a median average price is about 409,000. Now again that's a, that's a national number. But I would argue most markets are experiencing this kind of trend in terms of home prices cooling. Now are they back to pre pandemic 2019 levels? No, they're not. But yet they are improved. The home values, the home, home price levels are better than what they were just six, seven months ago. That should be looked at as good news for anyone who's contemplating getting into the home purchasing market. So don't underestimate the opportunity that this kind of improvement in home prices combined with those improvement in rates that we saw in the previous slide, the previous graph, those two things put together give you a pretty good opportunity if you're a home buyer. And in that regard, let me show you the inventory. The inventory has improved. As I mentioned, the, you know him inventory there, he's going to pull it up. The inventory of housing supply listing inventory, you know, it was 3.5 months in January and then got to 4.7 months in June. Now it's tapered off a little bit but it's still about 4 to 4.2 months at the end of the year. Again that's what I mean about inventory has improved. There's more inventory to choose from than there used to be. Now it's not to the six month supply that historically is considered normal, but it's a lot better than the less than two months supply that we saw coming out of the pandemic three or four years ago. So the overall message here is ignore the headlines. Ignore the procrastinate prognosticators, you know, in the business channels and so forth, who continue to complain that, you know, housing is unaffordable. We have a crisis, I mean we have a crisis of sorts. But I would argue that the crisis, to the extent there really is one, has more to do with housing and housing im inventory and home prices not as much about mortgage rates. Remember a few months ago we had pointed out that there's an index by a particular research firm that looks at current mortgage rates and measures how affordable they are historically and our current mortgage rates. And this was true even earlier last year when rates were higher than they are now, mortgage rates were considered affordable. Compared to the US national average, which over a 50 year term, average mortgage rates in the US are a little over 7%. Well, we're 1% here at Mortgage Works, we're more than 1% below that. So that's good news, right? You should be able to embrace that and then realize you have an opportunity here. And you know, and I've talked about this many times and I, I'm going to bring it up again when you take the combination of these things, rates have improved, home prices have cooled and inventory has increased. What does that do for all of you who are prospective buyers chomping at the bit to get into a home that you own? It's an environment where you have an opportunity to have some leverage and negotiate affordable terms. And I think right now as the is the best we've seen since rates went up after the pandemic, it's the best we've seen in terms of the environment giving you that opportunity to negotiate some pretty darn good terms. Many of the loans we have in process here at Mortgage Works right now, I would say a majority of them involve some sort of seller concession on the purchase transactions we're doing. I'm working on a pre qualification right now for a home buyer, first time homebuyer and they're looking at buying a home down what we call Down Valley in Indio. It's listed at 475,000. And by the way, this couple, they're very well qualified. They can afford a higher price point than, than that. But they choose, despite their pretty strong income, they want to keep their income, their housing expense at a particular level. You know, they don't want to, as they say, live for just my mortgage payment. So 475 is the home we're looking at. Their agent has already told me she thinks that she can get that home sold to them for 450. She thinks that she can extract 25,000 of concession out of the seller. And of course they asked me to do a pre approval letter based on that scenario. Of course, what I did, as I mentioned on the show before and I've done, I do this almost every time I get a call or a request for a pre approval on a transaction. Somebody's Going to make an offer on. I said well wait a minute, I'll give you the numbers for the 450 price. You want to get 25 off the price, I'll give you those numbers. And I did. I prepared a detailed worksheet to show what the payments would be and so forth. This particular couple, we're going to put three and a half percent down and use an FHA FHA loan, which by the way, again, talking about affordability, even without any kind of concession from the seller in terms of a credit and if they were successful in getting an offer accepted, a 450, I could get them a, you know, FHA loan with 3 1/2% down and a 30 year fixed rate at 5 and 3 8. Well, 5 and 38 I would think would get most people's attention and of course it got theirs. And they were pretty impressed and pretty happy to see that kind of rate. They didn't think that rates were that low. But we can do that here at Mortgage Works. We can get you an FHA loan at that level. But what I also did, I said well look, here are the numbers. If you want to offer for 2500 list price, 450 price, here's your loan amount, 5 and 3 8, market rate, no points. Here are the numbers. I said let me give you another worksheet. 475. Consider offering 475, ask for 25,000, get the same concession as a credit from the seller. And then what I did with that is I showed them two scenarios. One is 475 price, 25,000 seller credit, use all of that credit, all of it, to pay all the points necessary to buy down the rate to what? 4.5%, 30 year fixed FHA. Now they'd have to pay the three and a half percent down, have to pay all their own closing costs. But again, they can get a 30 year fixed rate loan at 4.5% if they can get that same 25,000 concession that their agent thinks she can get out of the seller and use it in a more effective way directly targeted toward their financing to address the biggest concern, right? Affordability, lower payments, lower rate. So that was one option I gave them. Second option, compromise a little, use that 25,000, pay the points to buy down the rate to four and three quarters. Not four and a half, four and three quarters. And guess what? They would have over $11,000 of that 25,000 left over to cover virtually all their closing costs. So they could end up buying this home at the current list price 475, put 3 1/2% down, get a 4 1/3 30 year fixed FHA and have virtually no closing costs. I mean their cash, their total cash needed to buy this home was about $18,000 with that particular scenario. So that's why I argue there is more opportunity from an affordability standpoint than you think there is, that most people think there is, the general public, even a lot of real estate agents. But you have to be strategic. You have to take the time to look at some numbers. You know, I'm happy to consult with an agent and their buyer, find out what they intend to try to get from the seller in terms of concession and let me show you the numbers to use those concession dollars in a much more effective way than just, you know, trying to cut the price. It's going to help you much more. So in the long run it's going to address your biggest, one of your two biggest complaints when you're a prospective buyer trying to buy a home. Home prices are too high, mortgage rates are too high. We can address that and we can do it in a very significant way that's going to help you address that affordability issue and be comfortable long term once you decide to make that decision to buy the home. And by the way, again, I've said this many times, homebuilders do this all the time. And we are associated with a home builder, we're a preferred lender with a home builder and virtually every transaction we're doing for them, and I've got I think four or five in process right now, every one of them involve a seller, credit from the builder, 20 to 30,000. And by the way, these are homes that are pretty up there. We're talking 700 to a million 20 to 30,000 incentives that the builder's offering. And in every case we're using that to buy down the rate either on a temporary buy down or a permanent buy down and paying their closing costs. So on conventional loans, on a million dollar condo where maybe you're going to put 10 or 20% down, I mean, I'm able to use that kind of credit dollars from the builder and offer someone a 30 year fixed rate loan, conforming loan at five and a quarter and then at the same time cover virtually all their closing costs. So there are very good ways to address this affordability issue head on. And I, I just can't stress that enough and I want to make sure you're aware of it so that as we, you know, go in through 20, 26, understand that I think right now the conditions are a lot better than you think they are. Don't just hear these, see these headlines, hear these news stories where they're continuing to complain about homes are unaffordable. Let me show you that that's not quite the case. And I think you'll be pleasantly surprised when I give you those numbers. And then I can help you structure your offer so that you can really get a very comfortable loan package that'll help you get that home purchased. And you'll be pretty happy and satisfied that you did that up. All right? So that's why I say home affordability in 2026 is a really good opportunity. Don't dismiss it if you're unsure, even if you're not ready to actually go out and buy yet, but you're starting to think about it and you want to do it. Do that sometime next year. Call me, send me an email, send me a text. Let's have a conversation. Tell me a little bit about what you're thinking of doing here in the next several months. I can put together some numbers for you and show you what's really possible. And again, I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised. Okay, so with that, that concludes our Mortgage Minute for this week. My name is Art Alvarez with Mortgage Works, where we have the answers and they're on the house. Thank you for watching and listening. Take a look at that college football playoffs this weekend. And of course, we got the NFL starting their playoff schedule. And in the meantime, have a great weekend and we'll see you again on the next edition of the Mortgage Minute. So long. Take care.










