I'm perplexed because you're watching some of these houses sell for prices that just don't make sense. We have old, old houses that need lots of work selling for a lot of money and you're watching the average mortgage payment just climb. You're listening to Carrie Lutz's financial survival network where you get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else. To thrive in today's trying times, you need the financial survival network now more than ever. Go to financialsurvivalnetwork.com and get your free newsletter and gift financial survival network now more than ever. And welcome. You are listening to the financial survival network on your host, Carrie Lutz. Well, here we are. In the last days of October, we've gotten our long-awaited rate cut, 50 basis points, more probably on the way. What effective any is that having on the real estate market, particularly in my old state New York and our good friend, Andrew Regusa, a real estate expert in the metro area is with us now. Great to have you back, Andrew. So what is going on with real estate in my old state there? Well, Gary, I'm glad to be back. Thank you for bringing me here. As we were discussing earlier before we started recording, I'm perplexed because you're watching some of these houses sell for prices that just don't make sense. We have old, old houses that need lots of work selling for a lot of money and you're watching the average mortgage payment just climb. And now I'm seeing people pay about $5,000 to $550 a month just on their mortgage to purchase something because the average purchase price is probably about $600 to $650. And you got property taxes that are going to be anywhere from $12,000 to $15,000 on average, which is pretty high. Wow. So you're looking at a very high cost of living. I don't know how people are doing it, and to be honest. Me neither, man. Me neither. You hear about the election, all they're talking about with the election, and cost of buying groceries, cost of buying homes, and how do we bring it down? And I'm a little skeptical. I don't think anybody has it in their power to just roll back prices or even stabilize them because I remember the last bout of inflation we had from the 60s to the 70s. And man, you know, this was like, it went on and on for a couple of decades. Yeah, it's true. And you know what, inflation is cumulative. It doesn't just disappear. It has never disappeared. It's always gone one direction. You may be able to slow down the rate at which it accumulates, but it does not go back. It does not go in reverse. The only way to fix this problem at this point is to change the money system. And I'm talking about going back to sound money, having a gold and silverback currency similar to what the bricks are doing. And it's the only way the United States is going to be able to survive, frankly, because you have too big of an alliance of all these other countries around the world, which have no incentive anymore to use the United States federal reserve note, not $1, federal reserve note. So now the only thing the only move we have is to move back to sound money. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but you know, they don't want to do it until they absolutely have to, because then they lose their power, right? Yeah, it's true. It's true. Well, I really like the idea that Trump has been flirting with getting rid of income tax altogether. He's been talking about it a lot at his rallies and says that he wants to move to a tariff based economy or a tariff based, yeah, should bring in revenue for the government. And that sounds like a dream, a dream come true. So we'll think is yeah, well, I'll believe it when I see it. What about those new that 87,000 new IRS agents, they're all going to be out of a job. You know, he's going to be like the guy from Argentina there. You know, Harvey or Malay cut cut cut cut cut cut, right? Hey, we're not going to hear any any sympathy from me. I'm all for it. Goodbye 87,000 of IRS agents, goodbye, IRS, all those government jobs that are created do nothing but create tax burden. Anyway, they don't actually, you know, those jobs are not gross jobs. They cost money to have government jobs. So anyway, remember the most fearsome words in the English language. I am from the government. I'm here to help you, right? I was at that. It's a nightmare. Yeah. So, but in your market, like you say, the shacks are going for big bucks. People are lying cheating and lying cheating and stealing. But you know, you know what the upshot is, even when mortgage rates are at six, seven percent here, Andrew, the real inflation rate probably is double digits. So you're still coming out ahead. If you've got any kind of income, and you could lock in the rates and then take God willing in a while, the rates go down and you refinance, right? Yeah. I mean, look, I think no matter how you slice this pie, it's better to have something that you can own and then not just just simply for the security of the fact that, you know, your property taxes may fluctuate. You can't do anything about that. But at least you won't, if you lock in a mortgage rate at whatever rate it is, it's fixed. You can budget yourself. And that just goes for, you know, good financial practice for yourself, your family. And then yes, there's always the possibility of refying later to lower it. So I still, I understand why people try to make it work. It just seems to be harder to do on a single income. It's usually a double income that are tackling this now. Yep. Yep. And, you know, I just don't buy that inflation's been teamed, and it's down to just three percent, right? So we should all be dancing and celebrating in the streets, right? Oh, yeah. It's absolutely nonsense. You know, how I can tell personally is when I go grocery shopping. And I watched in the last year, like, I'm a big red meat guy. I love red meat. I buy steaks. I buy rib eyes all the time. I buy short ribs and everything. I love it. I can't get enough of it. But I've watched those prices just creep up and creep up. It used to be a sale price was $9.99 a pound. And now the sale price all of a sudden is $14.99 a pound. I'm like, that's the sale price, right? So then the regular price has gone up to almost $18.99 a pound. Yeah. And like you call anyone would ask you after a functioning ring who eats food, you tell that the inflation is still there. And clap. If you go to a holier than thou foods for your meat, like I do, because I'm single. So it's just me. It's even more expensive. It's through the roof. Yeah, it's true. All right. So is there any movement on supply though or more houses coming on the market now? Andrew, where it's still tight. So it's still very tight. But you know what's interesting is people are becoming a little less picky about what they're buying. And you know, if you're a seller, you put your house on the market, you don't even have to do any work to it anymore. And you can literally just put it on and see what see what you get. That doesn't mean that people are going to necessarily overpay. But the chances of it getting sold at the proper price, like I had a right, you know, fair price is very high, because someone will take it, someone will do the work. You know, it used to be something buyers would say was, you know, I love the house, but I have to do a new kitchen, I have to do a new bathroom, I have to do a new roof. And that was that was the standard rhetoric every realtor heard every time someone wanted to make an offer. Nowadays, it's just what are you offering them? Because someone else is saying the exact same thing, and they're all willing to do the work. So it's like, okay, here's the number, take it or leave it, right? So if you're a seller, you're in a good position right now. So it's still a seller's market, huh? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, amazing. And it's been that way for so long now. Well, you know, between us, I don't think it would be beneficial for anyone if the market switched over to a buyer's market, because even if you're a buyer, and you're buying in a buyer's market, you're not building equity. A buyer's market means that the price value goes down. And then you're purchasing something that's not going up in value, then that's not good either. I think it's overall better to be in a seller's market, but we are way overdue for a price correction, where the prices have to come down to something that's just a little bit more affordable. Otherwise, people are eventually just going to have to move and live somewhere else, because mortgage rate, if they go up in a little higher, and we start touching $6,000 a month to just live in some areas of Long Island. It's crazy. People are going to say, why am I going to live this kind of lifestyle, especially if they can work remotely? Yeah. So remote work, you've seen people move out to further suburbs now in New York, now that even if you can't work 100% remotely, if you can work 50, 60, 70% remotely, go in two days a week, three days a week to the office, makes that commute a lot less backbreaking, doesn't it? It does. And you know what the biggest change was recently is that a lot of the employers started demanding that their employees come back. And what was interesting within 21 and in 22, we've had a lot of migration out of big cities towards the suburbs. And then in 23 and most of the 24, there's people going right back into the city, because their jobs are demanding that they go back in. So I think a lot of people made some hasty decisions when they moved the first time, thinking that this would be a permanent thing. And you know, that's part of what's, you know, keeping the market moving and making sales possible is just people are just still moving around. Yeah, people are still moving. But but I know like my kids who were in their prime earning years, even for them, they are like, you know, two, three days a week, they go to the office the rest of the time they work from home. So I've noticed that a lot of people are doing that hybrid thing, right? Yeah, well, listen, if you get that opportunity, and it comes down to a personal decision, if you like that, if you go with that, me, I would love that opportunity, where I can live a little further away. I don't have to go in every day, but I could have a much bigger place. I could have an easier, more affordable budget. And the trade off for that is a little extra driving time a few days a week, you know, that doesn't sound like a bad plan. But it comes down to what each person individually is willing to do. Yeah, well, you know, if you have got kids, younger kids, you want to be there for their events and stuff, you know, it really can be a plus. But like you say, each is own. So any other trends that you're seeing there, like are knockdowns of becoming more prevalent to what you take there. Well, I can tell you that the houses that are fully renovated and beautiful condition will sell so fast your head will spend, we'll get it done in one weekend. You just put it on the market and one weekend of open houses, it's gone. And the offers will be really high. But when even the houses that need work, they may take a little time, but they will get sold. And I was just explaining to carry like before we got off this call, I saw a house this weekend for 400,000. That was just over 800 square feet total. And I said, I can't believe this house is 400,000. And it was a knockdown. It needed to be completely knocked down. It was nothing was savable. Maybe just a concrete foundation could be reused. And that just goes to show you what people are spending to live out here and the land and the value of the land, right? You know, that's pretty amazing. You know what, Carrie, I also think that some people who are financially savvy know that there is a little bit of kind of like a flock to hard-ass that where they're saying, you know, they're not feeling very secure about their cash, their dollar. Some people don't have the stomachs or stock market that sees record highs every week. It's like, you know, they are saying to themselves, you know, I'm going to put money in some sort of hard asset, whether it's going to be a home or even gold and silver, which is, which is climbing like crazy gold hitting record all-time highs, stillers creeping up. And I think that shouldn't be coming to trend where a lot of people are just buying for the sake of just having their money invested into something that's real. So in the event that something bad does happen economically, they do own something that, you know, is a safer investment, a lot more security. It comes like an insurance program on their money. It's talking like a libertarian here. I've been buying gold and silver since 1999 and never looked back and had to sell some stuff on occasion. Pay a tax bill, weddings and all that good stuff. But, you know, it's like gold's over 2,700. The ounce going to 2,800 silver hit 35. Of course, it had a pullback to be expected, but it's going higher. Everyone is expecting it to. But you still got to have a roof over your head, right? Absolutely. And that's just why I'm saying these hard assets, these physical assets, that's a better term, physical assets are becoming very, very wealthy. I'm sorry, very, very popular because of the security that they bring. And I think that's also driving the market. And people know that they got to own something real. Yeah. And so you got to have a roof over your head, even if you only own a portion of it, the more inflation you have, actually, the more of it you own and the less the bank owns, right? Right. Roof over your head, land, and things that are of utility. For example, silver has the one, the best utility of all the metals, at least in my opinion, it's using everything, electronic, solar, batteries. You see that Samsung came out with a massive battery that can hold the charge. I think they said like five days or something like that. And it usually just doubled the amount of silver. Did you see that? Yeah. Do you know how much silver one cruise missile uses? 13 million or something like that, right? 500 ounces. Oh, I thought it was a lot more than that. Okay. It's a lot of silver, you know, why that times 10,000 of them, and you got like five million ounces there, you know? Right. And that's not just that. It's everything, right? Everything, solar, you know, cell phones, cars, computers, everything. We're in a digital age. It's not like technology is going to stop. And silver is going to run out. They're going to have to, you know, it right now doesn't make sense to even dig for it because it's the price is solo. Exactly. It's all a byproduct market. All right, Andrew, hey, we got to run. Just tell us, how do we find you? How do we connect with you on the web? So you can find me on Instagram. My name is just Andrew Riggusa. It's A-N-D-R-E-W-R-A-G-U-S-A. And then also the best way to reach me is just call me 516-858-9434. Excellent. All right, Andrew, always a pleasure. We'll talk to you again real soon. Be well. Thanks, Gary. Thanks for listening to Carrie Lutz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to financialsurvivalnetwork.com. Financial Survival Network, now more than ever.
