Louis Barajas advises cautious delay on home purchases due to broad economic "chaos and uncertainty." He says buying now can be justified only if the buyer's job is extremely secure, they have sufficient down payment, and can afford current mortgage rates (~6.5–7%); otherwise he recommends holding off on major purchases until conditions clarify.
Louis, my wife and I are thinking about buying our first home. But based on what's going on with the economy and everything so uncertain for us, should we wait? Well, you know, I will share with you that it may not be a bad idea to wait a little bit because there is a lot of what I call chaos and uncertainty. And we're starting to kind of figure things out now and the markets have kind of rebounded and. But again, there's going to be a lot of craziness over the next several months based on we don't know what is coming out of the White House and what economic changes or interest rate changes or inflation or tariffs. We don't know what's happening from one day to the next. So I will share with you. If you think that Your job is 1,000% secure, if you've got enough down payment, if you can afford a 6 and a half to 7% interest rate on a mortgage right now and you really need to move into a place, then I would say go ahead and do it. But otherwise, if you're still uncertain about things, which I still am a little bit right now, is I just want to make sure that you hold off on making some major, major purchase decisions. Nothing bigger than buying your own home right now, right.
