High home prices persist in Nevada, and nobody thinks they’re coming down.
Jonathan Gedde, founder and CEO of Simpli Mortgage and Jerry Abbott, a real estate agent with Summit Properties, joined State of Nevada host Joe Schoenmann to talk about the topsy-turvy world of Nevada real estate.
Home prices are still increasing, with the median this month at around $466,000. To afford that, household incomes need to be $111,000 or more. At the same time, Gedde said mortgage rates are at about 7.5 percent. That also represents an increase.
Even so, Abbott said that hasn’t stopped “droves” of Californians from coming here and buying homes.
“Las Vegas is California 2.0,” said Abbott. “They are without a doubt the biggest driver as to why home prices in Las Vegas have skyrocketed. When you have so many wealthy people who can pay cash, it really destroys the ability for the average person to buy a home.”
Real Estate Settlement
But could prices come down due to a federal lawsuit settlement with the National Association of Realtors. The settlement is expected to decrease commissions for agents representing buyers and sellers.
Abbott says he doesn’t think fees will decline, they’ll just become more transparent.
“The buyers are never going to pay the buyer’s agents fee, that’s never going to happen,” he said. “So guess what happens with the seller? The seller goes ‘I’m not attracting the buyers because the buyers are not coming to my house.’ So they’ll acquiesce and pay the commission as they usually do. It’s all about transparency now.”
Listeners also wrote in about specific topics.
Trigger Leads
Marco from Las Vegas wrote that he’s in the process of buying a home. At the same time, he’s getting calls from mortgage companies asking him if he wants to buy a home with them. He wondered if it was a scam and why it is happening.
“Marco is experiencing trigger leads,” said Gedde. “Once someone applies for an initial loan, credit bureaus have the information that you’re shopping for a mortgage and then they sell that information to any mortgage company that wants to buy it from them.”
Gedde added that there is no law against this, but there is a way to avoid it by entering information at OptOutPreScreen.com.
Veteran Loan Access
Gedde is currently in Washington D.C. on a lobbying trip speaking with legislators on ways to make mortgage lending more accessible for people, specifically for veterans.
The issue here is that veterans qualify for lower payments. But for property taxes, they can only get those waived after a home is purchased.
“We’re trying to get that moved up,” Gedde said, “so that we can do it while we’re processing the purchase loan application.”
Cash Vs. Broker Sale
Jennifer from Downtown Las Vegas said she keeps on getting calls and emails from people saying they want to buy her home for cash. The price is way lower than what she sees on Zillow or Redfin. She asked: Is it better for the seller to get less but to get cash right away than to go through a real estate broker or bank?
“The process takes a lot longer through a bank,” said Gedde. If a seller wants to offer you less but they’ll close in 10 days, there are people (who) find it an attractive alternative to the normal process. But you can end up leaving a lot of money on the table.”
Guests: Jerry Abbott, Realtor, Summit Properties, Youtuber, Las Vegas Living; Jonathan Gedde, Founder and CEO, SimpliFi Mortgage
