hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Selling Greenville your favorite real estate podcast here in Greenville South Carolina I'm your host as always Stan McCune realtor right here in Greenville and you can find all of my contact information in the shout outs need to reach out to me for any of your real estate needs and please if you like this content please subscribe to it physically like it by hitting the like button if you can on whatever app you're using or if you're on YouTube leave a comment like you know you can hit that thumbs up button but really just make sure you subscribe right I ask you guys every single time please make sure you do that and that's the way you can guarantee that you won't miss future episodes so please hit that little subscribe button and then we should be good to go okay and then use me as your realtor that's all I ask of you guys.

I told you guys last week that I was gonna be talking about my trip to Washington DC so every year the Realtors at from the National Association of Realtors from all over the country we converge on Washington, DC usually in may this year it was in June and basically it's a way for us to go in into our nation's capital and kind of throw our weight around a little bit right make sure that the government knows that we exist cause we don't have unions
we don't have representation outside of the National Association of Realtors and every year things get done when we go to DC so last year one of the biggest things that we had to tell our legislators all over the country was how VA loans were restrictive in terms of how VA buyers could compensate their buyer agents and that was a big deal because the National Association of Realtors had just lost a lawsuit that had to do with buyer agent compensation well immediately literally the week after we went to DC the Veterans Association changed the rules to allow for VA buyers to compensate their buyer agents in a way that allowed to do that before just to ensure that VA buyers were not at a disadvantage in comparison to other buyers that was because we went there we talked to our legislators we told them this is an issue they immediately coordinated with the VA and immediately did things in order to make sure that that did not become an issue right because we want to make sure our vets have every possible opportunity that's out there to purchase a home that's just one example there are tons and tons of other examples that I could give but this is why we go and last year was my first time going there had been a little bit of a hiatus after the pandemic but it's really really in full swing now and in 2025 so we had a great group good group from Greenville lots of receptions we had reception for Greenville we had reception for the region we had a reception for the state and then you know there are all sorts of other receptions and different things to attend depending on how involved you are in either the state association or the National Association of Realtors etc. or whatever committee you might be a part of for me I'm only a part of a few committees so it's not like an insanely busy time for me but at the same time there was plenty of stuff to do I wanna share all that with you guys and at the end I'm gonna show you guys some slides that I think you'll really find informative that Lawrence Yun the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors went over at the conference so make sure you listen all the way to the end or you watch all the way to the end that'll be a good time to tune in on YouTube if you can okay so I'm just gonna tell you guys just a few things off the top of my head right one of the first things that was funny honestly was that Elon Musk was immediately the butt of jokes while we were down there the whole feud between Elon and Trump actually went down while we were in DC so that was a lot of fun I jokingly posted which couple of people didn't really understand maybe more than just a couple I don't know but I jokingly posted that I was looking for Elon at the White House with a picture of myself at the White House I wasn't looking for Elon it was just it was just a funny thing I guess if you're really really into Elon or are really really political and all of that perhaps that wasn't a joke that made sense to you whatever I thought it was funny but Elon was the butt of jokes there amongst Republicans amongst Democrats there was just a lot of talk going on about that so that's just an aside one thing we heard OK and people there had been some realtors that had been to DC a few weeks before this trip as a separate kind of greasing the wheels kind of thing and they heard this as well politicians are talking about lower mortgage rates and I don't know where they are coming up with this because anyone that's following what's going on in mortgage rates knows that rates are not getting lower okay they've been in the high sixes low sevens now for quite some time they did go lower momentarily very briefly back around the elections and they just bounced back up it it's a little bit insulting to me when a person who represents me and who knows that I am a realtor tells me something like that tells me that rates are lower when I work in this world and I know for a fact rates are not lower you know that would be like me telling that politician something about the way government works and it's way off now they probably hear that a lot they probably get that a lot but they're not getting that from me I'm not telling them that so a little bit of a little bit of a lack of self awareness and obviously a lack of the market in fact one of them even said I'm not gonna name drop who it was but one of them even said that they had just bought a house with a five year arm and this was after they said something to the effect that rates had gone down well if rates had gone down you would have had to buy your house with a five year arm do you think about that so talking out both sides of your mouth classic politician talking now had had things been reversed had Vice President former Vice President Harris one and now we're talking to Republican legislators they probably would have been focused on the higher rates right so they politicians know how to kind of spin things in a certain direction that's why they're politicians right so politicians were talking about lower rates on the flip side The National Association of Realtors was talking about higher rates and higher for longer that is the tone it was a little bit of a somber tone when talking about mortgage rates when talking about existing home sales things like that definitely a somber tone and that's to be expected right because we were hoping everyone thought well I shouldn't say everyone but most experts thought that mortgage rates would be lower that the housing market would be in better shape than it is right now it just hasn't played out the way people predicted and that's because it's been a very unpredictable year volatility which there's been a lot of volatility tariffs on tariffs offs tariffs high tariffs low what's happening wars no wars nukes all these things these are these are bad for mortgage rates believe it or not because it influences bond markets which then influence mortgage rates among other things so long story short hearing different things from the experts at the National Association of Realtors than we're hearing from our politicians so that's not good so hopefully this past week helped to or not this past week but the week that we were there helped to educate these politicians these legislators on the reality of the situation now there's not much they can do because even if and I'm recording this the Fed Federal Reserve just announced they are not lowering rates but it really doesn't matter because right now what's driving rates is the bond market as I already said and Treasury bills and even if the Fed were to lower rates I don't know that that would really influence the markets that much so here we are there's not a whole lot that our legislators and in the state of South Carolina or elsewhere can do about rates but I would wish that they wouldn't gaslight us and tell us the people that are living in this world and breathing and drinking and eating mortgage rates every single day tell us that they're lower when they really are now if you're wondering you're probably not wondering maybe some of you are I don't know two things that were I didn't hear discussed was that was a little bit surprising was a privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac I didn't hear much about that that is one of the most under the radar things that the Trump administration really wants to get done that could really have a huge effect on the housing market that could make mortgage rates go up even more potentially now this is where our Legislature could be involved right and making sure if Fannie and Freddie do go back to a completely private market the US government gets completely out of that they do something to ensure that mortgage rates don't go up by half a point to a point which is what I've heard some experts say they think would happen if they went back to being fully privatized so that was not discussed I wish it I wish it was but I didn't make again it could have been discussed behind closed doors I didn't hear it in the meetings that I was in the other one this came out right after we were done was a lot of headlines about Trump wanting to eliminate FEMA the flood disaster and an emergency disaster management agency and I can tell you right now the National Association of Realtors would be very much against that right and I have mixed feelings on eliminating FEMA on the one hand I'm not a big fan of situations where we have to have the government insuring people's homes and all of that what ends up happening is you know you get Florida which is has a tremendous percentage of their population on the coast you get Texas California a tremendous percentage of all of their populations living on the coast or living in these areas that are likely to flood they are taking a lot more of that money than South Carolinians are for instance so I have I have mixed feelings on that okay but I can assure you the National Association of Realtors doesn't have mixed feelings on it they would be against eliminating FEMA because that just puts a lot of people that have homes in flood zones into a a really difficult situation what would they do right would they just be uninsured would there be a private option that would be a lot more expensive for flood insurance I don't know but again those headlines came out after we left we did not discuss those things so TBD on that away from the political side of things and more about the real estate side of things cause we had a lot of we had it was a conference too it wasn't just meeting with politicians we had an actual conference here in DC and we talked about what I mentioned to you guys a few months ago this new delayed marketing exempt listing option now if you missed before you forgot from my episode I did a few months ago the National Association of Realtors just dropped on all the local associations a few months ago that they are allowing a third way essentially to list a home right currently there's two ways to list a home you can list on the Multiple Listing Service and it goes out to all the websites like Zillow and what not now technically you can put it in the multiple listing service and say I don't want it to go out to those websites you can technically do that there isn't an option for that at least in Greenville there is but I'll come back to that here in a second the other option is office exclusive or brokerage exclusive if it's brokerage exclusive then it doesn't go into the multiple listing service it just stays within the brokerage OK so this is you know let's say that you've got a five million dollar house you don't want it to go on the multiple listing service you just want it you want to try to market it to just the exclusive agents maybe you know for instance my company we have a lot of agents that specialize in luxury housing you might say well let's try to market it to them for a week first try to get an agent that's actually experienced in this sort of housing before we put it on the internet and people can see you know that's the other option the third option that the NAR unveiled recently and then said local associations have to figure out how to implement it is delayed marketing exempt what delayed marketing exempt means is it goes into multiple listing service but doesn't get syndicated out to websites like Zillow, realtor.com, homes.com etcetera for a certain period of time the period of time to be determined by the local associations where I'm going with all of this is I knew that this would be a a talking point at this conference sure enough it was and a lot of associations are very upset about this I don't know well I do know why they're upset I think it's silly that they're upset they're just emotional I think the reason why they're upset is they feel like the National Association of Realtors keeps dumping stuff on our plates without any warning and at the end of the day this provision this delayed marketing exempt listing provision was most likely put into place in order to pacify a few brokerages but it upset they upset a whole lot of association directors I personally think the more options are good more options are better than fewer right if you're if you're selling a house but a lot of people weren't happy about that so it's gonna be very interesting to see how that shakes out here in the upstate and nationwide it's gonna be another one of these things where depending on where you live it's going to be a very radical different option that you have in terms of listing your home and I talk about this all the time that real estate is hyper local it changes dramatically if you're in Tucson if you're in Boise if you're in Austin if you're in San Francisco if you're in Greenville if you're in wherever very very different depending on where you are this is just gonna be one more of those things another anecdotal thing here I feel like the vibes were kind of weird at this conference and that's not super shocking but it wasn't a a lot of like bad vibes it was just like weird vibes like people saying you know my business is doing okay but it's just different than it's ever been before like there's just things happening that just aren't normal in comparison to what my business has been like for the past 20 years and so that was helpful for me to hear because I feel that myself my business is that way there's just weird things not bad things just weird things and you're hearing that all over the country another one and this will be the last one before I get into the slides here is at this conference one of the things that that did directly change was they the National Association of Realtors decided to change the hate speech aspect of the code of ethics the way I understand it that you know it used to be that the hate speech rules for the code of ethics applied all the time for realtor right I could engage in hate speech that would that would basically infringe on the realtor code of ethics no matter where I was I could be in my bedroom having a conversation with my best friend on the phone and he could hear me say something that sounds like hate speech and then report me to an association that to say that you know I violated the code of ethics this actually happened not that long ago so something shockingly similar to this a few years ago and I think it was in South Carolina that someone in a private Bible study it came up sexual ethics which just about every religion has rules for sexual ethics that's not unusual but someone in that private Bible study did not think that that was appropriate for a realtor to discuss and reported that Realtor now the Realtor ended up not getting in trouble but had to go to meetings had to go to had had to testify before a an organization a whole lot of stuff and at and at the end of the day the reason why they did not get in trouble wasn't because the it was determined that the code of ethics didn't apply in that private Bible study actually it was determined that they didn't get in trouble only because they said there are different interpretations and this is one interpretation but there are other potentially valid interpretations well that's a really when you're talking about a person's religion that's people should have the ability to say this is what I believe without having to hedge it with but also there's these other beliefs and they all might be valid and nobody knows like that's ridiculous so I think if I understand this correctly that would no longer apply that what would apply is if then my belief on sexual ethics told me that people with a different sexual ethic than me can't be my client or can't buy a house from one of my listings or something like that now it's infringing on my job that's a real thing okay but a person's religious beliefs person's private conversations about what they think politically on some of these different things that should not constitute hate speech and ultimately what you end up doing and you know to go back to the example I just gave that example pitted two protected classes right religious religions and people religious people are a protected class and so are people based on their sexual identity orientation etc. that's a protected class as well where you're pitting them against each other because some religions teach that some of these sexual identities orientations etcetera are wrong OK and so to say that that this religious group can't say that is actually infringing on their rights and their protected status so it was it was all kind of a house of cards anyway I feel like the NAR did did the right decision made the right decision listening to their membership about that and that's just my personal opinion I'm not speaking for anyone else on that to be clear so I just wanna make sure we're on the same page there alright let's get into the lives from Doctor Yoon from the meeting or from the conference this is the real estate and economic outlook I'm not looking at all the slides we're gonna go through I think nine slides here so first off and so I I basically I paired down the ones that I thought you guys would be interested in or the ones that I'm interested in at least first off the spread between the 30 year mortgage and the 10 year Treasury yield okay this is I'm gonna explain this very briefly in case you have no idea what's happening here if you go right now and you look at the 10 year Treasury yield it's gonna give you a number I don't know what that number is while you're while you're listening to this go check it out go look at it now go to Mortgage News Daily and look on Mortgage News Daily what the average 30 year fixed rate mortgage is on there I'm just gonna throw out a couple of numbers let's say that the 10 year Treasury is at 4% and the 30 year fixed rate mortgage is at 7% that would be essentially a 3% or more technically a 300 basis points spread between the two of them okay that's what this chart here is showing and for those that are listening that aren't watching basically we are in the 250 basis point spread so essentially if the 10 year Treasury is at four and a half percent mortgage rates are going to be at 7% and that's pretty much what we're seeing let me let me look right now right now as I'm recording this the 10 year Treasury is at 4.391 the 30 year fixed rate mortgage is at Mortgage News Daily so that is basically exactly a 250 basis point spread you can basically take subtract one from the other you come up with about two and a half historically speaking that is high going all the way back to the year 2000 that is historically very high we're near some of the peak levels that we've had for the spread and that has that's a direct result of market volatility a very very simplistic way of thinking about it what would it normally be it would normally be about you know one point five to 2 150 to 200 basis points so mortgage rates are
are higher now not just because of what the feds done not just because of the bond market but also the spread is causing mortgage rates to be higher if that spread even went down just a little bit we'd see a lot of mortgage relief but I think for that to happen we need the economy we need there to be less volatility and more confidence in the direction of our economy which currently there's not a lot of that there are a lot of great slides that showed basically the map of the US and different things happening in the US and I saved pretty much all of those for this episode and so here's one that shows jobs gained since pre covid record high payroll employment so this is the percent change from March 2020 to April 2025 job gains okay South Carolina is one of the highest on here with a 10.1% job gains increase from March 2020 to April 2025 there's only let's see here 1 2 3 4 5 6 only six other states did better than South Carolina in this regard North Carolina was at 10.3 kind of kind of surprising that North Carolina was up there also Florida in the southeast was up there and so the southeast did had very good representation on job gains and then if you look at job gains over one year from April 2024 to April 2025 South Carolina also doing really well South Carolina on this one as I'm eyeballing it real quick to make sure that what I had looked at before is still accurate number two for the past year No. 2 only to Idaho 2.4% job gains over the past year that's great that's by far the best in the southeast No. 2 in the country alright moving right along here recent monthly existing home sales show no recovery so here is the this is this slide shows the seasonally adjusted annualized rate of existing home sales and this is a really important chart to understand what's happening right now right because if you look at a lot of the home sale data it looks like it's not that bad but a lot of home sale data includes new construction and so people that are buying new construction are usually not buying existing homes so if you're a seller right if you're listening to this and you're someone who's thinking about selling your home you're not selling new construction you're selling a home that you live in of course if you're a builder you are selling new construction so perhaps you'd be interested from that standpoint but long story short existing home sales right not new construction everything else is bottom of the barrel hovering around four million seasonally adjusted annualized sales which is recession level okay recession level in fact if you take out recessions and really this is this to me is the most important thing in order thing to wrap your head around in order to understand the state of the housing market right now this is why the housing market feels so bad if you're a seller because people are still buying new construction on new construction is not doing as well as it was but they they're still buying new construction what they're not buying nearly as much of historically is existing homes okay and what's astonishing about this current sales being comparable to 1996 is the population is so much higher than it was in 1996 so the demand is there there's so much more demand but unfortunately you know this is an unprecedented situation here I wish I saw some people you know when Israel started attacking Iran I heard people say I just wish we lived in precedent times and I get that I do too I wish we lived in precedent times we don't though it is not ours to decide whether the times we live in are precedent or unprecedented months supply of inventory okay here we're going to actually look at new homes versus existing homes and interestingly the month supply of new homes which is in the red if you're looking on here is actually pretty high so new construction historically speaking is typically around is typically between 4 to six months of inventory which is normal right builders they don't wanna go above 6 months of active inventory because that's typically when it becomes a buyer's market so they you know once they get to that point typically they start dialing back new construction well right now it's bouncing around 9 months of new construction inventory and I just talked to a an agent that worked for a builder today who was talking about a community that he's been told hey we need to sell some homes in this community because they've not sold a single one brand new community with spec homes they've not sold a single one and they're starting to freak out so very interesting and existing homes is much lower but is on the trend up existing homes close to 4 months of inventory that would still be by historical standards considered a seller's market and but it is on the trajectory going back up let's look at median home price new versus existing since while we're on this topic of you know the dynamic of how new construction existing home sales interplay and this is very interesting too we have a convergence OK not surprisingly new home sales and existing home sales tend to be different in many ways but one of those is that new construction tends to be more expensive than resales than existing homes that is no longer the case in fact for the first time ever on this chart it flipped that existing home sales the most recent month that they had this data existing home sales were more expensive than new construction that's another reason why existing home sales are down in comparison to new construction because why on earth would you buy a used home for more than the cost of a new home now I can think of some reasons right a lot of the you know depending on how old the home is when it was built where it was built a an existing home might have better quality construction than a new home but most people aren't super worried about that they're more focused on the finishes and they would just rather have the new construction so this is this is insane again unprecedented we've never seen this this this chart goes all the way back to your 2000 we've never had this reversal and what do you do with that right what do you do there there's nothing there's nothing you could do now home builders are going to have to make some calculated decisions here they're going to have to decide do they keep building or do they put the pause on it in order to prevent prices from continuing to go down as their inventory takes off because they're sitting at nine months of inventory they get to 12 months of inventory that's gonna be like really really bad right 12 it hit 12 months of inventory during the global financial crisis they don't want that to happen and it doesn't look like it's gonna do that that's not the current trajectory at least not for a long time but they have to make some decisions here so this will be an interesting one to track going back to the maps okay here's another map that shows the five year home price gains since pre covid so this is you know basically appreciation right how much appreciation have we had and again South Carolina one of the highest numbers on this map 68.4% increase in price gains or 4 68.4% increase in in home prices since the first quarter of 2020 that is one of the highest on here the highest is interestingly 75% which is in Maine so but most of them that there's that was the only one in in the 70% range most of the highest on here are in the 60% range by the way Louisiana everything I keep seeing about Louisiana is bad Louisiana is the lowest on here Louisiana had some bad numbers on some of the other on some of the other things that we showed really sad I think you know the hurricanes and things like that have really battered that state but a lot of this data keeps looking bad for Louisiana now they did the same thing with this chart or with this map as we did with the other one where they track the one year home price gains from first quarter of 24 First quarter of 25 South Carolina had 6% increase in home prices over the past year that's kind of middle of the road for the past year okay there's a lot of sixes there's a few sevens and so the past year hasn't been as hot for South Carolina not surprising right we've been talking about that Puerto Rico I don't know what's going on over there Puerto Rico is 11.6% what was Puerto Rico on here whoa Puerto Rico was oh actually sorry I misread it for a second I thought it was I thought it was much higher Puerto Rico on the 5 years curve was 53% so yeah crazy last year in Puerto Rico prices went up 11.6% love to know what's going on there I do not know I don't do real estate in Puerto Rico last slide here nationwide forecast so here is the official National Association of Realtors forecast for 2025 and 2026 they expect existing home sales to be up 6% this year and to be up 11% next year so they expect that existing home sales are gonna go on the right trajectory but then really start to take off next year on the flip side they think that'll be reversed for new home sales it'll be 10% increase this year 5% increase next year okay so that'll be interesting to see okay is this are we starting to get to the end of the empire that new home sales have had since 2021 any earth seems to think that's the case we'll see median home price they expect a 3% increase in 25 and a 4% increase next year moderate okay moderate again this is nationwide not South Carolina or Greenville specific they expect mortgage rates I assume this is not an average I assume that this is how the year ends so they expect mortgage rates to end 25 at 6.4% and end 26 at 6.1% that's a disappointing number for 26 but I think it's realistic I think it's very possible that 26 mortgage rates end at 6.1% job gains they expect 1.6 million in 2025 which is not super great but 2.4 million in job gains in 2026 that would be that would be much better that would be a you know generally speaking a healthy economy so there's some data from NAR that that I hope you guys find interesting it was a great conference if you're a realtor listing and you've never been it's called Realtor Legislative Meetings I'm happy to tell you about it so please reach out to me let me know but I highly recommend going you can stay as long as you want right it's about a week not quite a week but a lot of people just pop in for one two three days then head out I stayed a little bit longer cause I took my family with me we did a little bit of sightseeing they my kids have never been to DC so that was fun and you we did not go to the parade as I already said that was that we missed that one which may or may not have been a good thing I don't know but good time very helpful beneficial week and I hope that that data was helpful for you guys so my contact information is in the show notes like I said if you wanna talk to me about that if you wanna talk about what the Realtor Political Action Committee is doing how we're involved in advocacy let me know if you're needing a realtor more importantly cause that's how I get paid that's why I do the show please reach out to me with that contact info in the show notes please like rate review subscribe to the show and we'll talk again next time!