Today Rob and Adrian talk about the USDA loan. They will be covering how the program works and who it’s for. Tune in and let us know what you think!

Links & Resources Mentioned:

https://roi-fa.com

https://roi-tax.com

https://delavan-realty.com

https://www.directorsmortgage.com/loan-officer/adrian-schermer

www.getrichslowpodcast.com

ROI Disclosures

Episode 28 Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Usdan, area, people, properties, home, loan, Oregon, limit, product, buy, Portland, higher, eligible, city, conventional, down payment, far loans, evolves, rate, town

SPEAKERS

Rob, Intro, Adrian

Intro  00:02

Welcome to the get rich, slow podcast. This is the stuff we and our expert guests wish we knew a decade ago to get the most out of our financial life will provide you with insight into wealth building activities and practices that can expand your net worth exponentially. get insight from top professionals who will reveal how to build wealth the long way, work smarter, not harder and identify your financial blind spots. With over 25 plus years of experience as licensed real estate professionals and a long track record of winning for their clients. Robin Adrian will teach you what it takes to be an everyday real estate millionaire.

Adrian  00:43

Welcome back, future millionaires. This is the get rich slow podcast and I am your co-host, Adrian Shermer, I’m joined by my other co-host, Rob Delevan. Good morning, Rob.

Rob  00:53

Good morning. Glad to be here with you.

Adrian  00:55

Thank you. Thank you. Today is sort of a piggyback on our last episode about FHA loans. This one’s gonna be about USDA. So again, you’re gonna hear my lovely voice prattle on and on about how this program works, where it came from, who it’s for, and the pros and cons.

Rob  01:14

Yes. And I will say I’m, I was glad to see this on our schedule. Because USDA is actually not a product that I have worked with very often. I can probably count maybe two hands, the number of times out of you know, hundreds and hundreds of transactions that we’ve done over the years. Yeah, I’m not quite at 1000 yet, but hundreds that we just maybe half a dozen times, give or take. Sure. And I think this a product like this is a bit specialty. But hey, it’s out there for a reason. And there’s pros and cons to it just like every other financial product on the lending side. But it’s a fun one to dig into. So as usual, I’m the idiot in the room. And I will ask you questions. So, let’s start with what like what is a USDA loan? How would How does it differentiate?

Adrian  02:14

Absolutely. USDA? It’s not just a stamp on your meat at the store. It is the United States Department of Agriculture, and it might sound kooky. Why are they doing home loans? Well, that’s because they are part of an integral part of rural America, not just our farming, but all people who live in rural America and support those farming communities as well. So, it’s it’s a holistic thing. What I would ask our listeners to do if you’re interested in learning about the USDA, it sounds like it would just be for homes in the sticks. But I have literally done this on homes in coldest acts. It is location based, you can look up any address you want on the USDA property look up, you just do a Google search for that. It’s a.gov website, you enter one address, and then you’ll end up on a page that tells you whether or not that particular property is eligible. But then you can zoom out in that map, and you can move all over the place. And you can see the color-coded chart that is the entirety of the United States and which areas fall under that. And using Oregon as an example. You know, we have plenty of built-up areas and Oregon’s big cities. Pretty much just Portland Metro Salem Metro, which is our state’s capitol right away. So that’s a real dense area as well. And then I think there’s a little lump just to the east for whatever reason there. There’s that college town of Salem, that that is ineligible. The entirety of the coast. Last night checked was eligible. Most of IE, you know, on the entirety of Eastern Oregon, Southern Oregon was eligible really, they’d eligible eyes, that’s made-up word but sections of the country fairly rarely by the looks of things. And even within a big city like Portland, in our metro area, there are these pockets as well, right that are still eligible. Right. USDA allows for 100% financing. And this is questioning all the time. You guys got that zero-down loan? Yeah. It’s called the USDA loan. We’ve always had it we’ve had it for or not always. We’ve had it for a long time. This was established by the 1990 farm bill by the Rural Development Association RDA. And they were basically, you know, it’s designed in theory to buy farmland, that is one purpose of it. But the reality is, it’s a loan portfolio of over $220 billion. It’s a huge amount of the properties in this country that fall under this and probably more properties than you think. And I think that people seem to think that there is some sort of caveat there and it’s really, it’s not that punishing. It’s honestly one of the better loan programs out there. It does have mortgage insurance. It’s like a lot of loans. But the mortgage insurance rate isn’t that bad. They take 1% on at the beginning. So, your loan can this typically, the way that it works is that your loan will start at 101. Point, point one because we tack on it modifies that percent of the purchase price. So, you’re starting to feel a little bit upside down, but you’re not putting any money down. And you’re not important. This is so important to me. You’re not taking a higher rate as punishment for not having down payment, right? Like we see with some of those first-time homebuyer specialty programs that everybody asks about, and almost no one uses. There are some good ones out there. Don’t get me wrong, but there also are a ton of them that I really, I wouldn’t recommend to someone that I liked. Sure, cut I don’t think the terms workout within a year, they’re gonna get that money back out. Yeah, you know, right. no free lunch. USDA is as close as it comes to a free lunch, which is ironic, right? There we go. Some veggies, yes, there’s an overlap here.

Rob  05:58

So, the properties, we’ve established them that they’re, you know, usually on the fringes or farther out of the larger urban areas. For example, we have, you know, just up the road, you know, Newberg, Oregon, which is 2530-minute drive, well, 20-minute drive, if no traffic at you know, 11pm at night, but you know, during normal traffic times, it’s a typical commute 3540 minute, into the core of the Portland metro area for work. So that’s the USDA area. And the home prices are roughly the same, maybe a little bit less, then you know, a couple towns closer, you know, another 1015-minute commute closer, but you’re not talking about a huge difference. And it’s available and zero down, in essence, for a very, very minimal down with closing costs. And such,

Adrian  06:55

and the row are fantastic, just like they are with FHA loans. And we talked about this to this idea that if you’re paying a lower initial, you know, core interest rate, and I think it’s, it’s one way to look at it is to then add the mortgage insurance rate, because the mortgage insurance is a percentage, it skews a bit like FHA loans, they stay the same. So, it’s kind of like, you know, that rate that effective rate climbs each year, that’s why a lot of people want to roll out of those. But you know, you want to look at that whole picture, mortgage insurance and interest in my mind, same thing, it’s money that does not contribute to the equity in your home, it doesn’t pay your taxes, and it doesn’t pay your homeowners insurance. Although those arguably could be kind of thrown in the same bucket too, right, we want to drive that balance down. So, let’s use a template here, just to kind of give an example you got a $250,000 home, you got no down payment, your upfront fee is 2500 bucks, that means that you’re going to get a USDA loan for $252,500 to cover the house cost of the home and the guaranteed fee, they’re one of the rare programs that let you roll in that guaranteed fee. FHA does this as well. That’s why you don’t necessarily start with three and a half percent equity when you do buy that house. But you know, as we’ve seen, appreciation rates have you gained in equity pretty rapidly. But then there is also your mortgage insurance, it’s an annual free of point three 5% of the loan amount. So, using that 250 to 500, that’s 883 75. And you pay that over the course of the year. So, the monthly mortgage insurance on that $250,000 home is only 7365.

Rob  08:31

Right? And then you plot that on top of your interest rate. And your interest rates probably still going to be pretty darn competitive with what you’d be getting on a conventional and there was very little money out of your pocket to buy it. So, I would say like this isn’t unlike, say FHA, which will go to you know, lower credit scores, that sort of thing. This maybe has a little bit more room for that than conventional, but at the same at the at the end of the day, you’re really using this product, because you happen to be in an area that will cover it and are that that this program is allowed. Number one, and then number two more importantly, you’re you basically have almost no down payment. I mean, that’s, that’s the real draw. Are there any other scenarios that you see this used regularly versus say, you know, a conventional product?

Adrian  09:29

Yeah, it is more forgiving on the guidelines as well with farmland, of course, because this is, you know, this is a product that was used to, you know, potentially finance. So, we do see it used as well a lot in higher acreage properties, right. The one thing that we run into the most that I see disqualifying people from this is that there is a factor of qualifying based off of your income in comparison to the median income in that area. And so, this is another thing that is also a public piece. have information, you don’t have to rely on a loan officer to look into this, although I encourage you using a good one to be your sounding board and someone who may know about how to especially work loopholes and such in the system. But you typically have to be below 120% of the median income for that area. So that is one of the kinds of catch 20 twos too sometimes we see someone who wants to live in a city, they’re going to buy in a more rural area, but they got that city income. And then they go and try to buy in, in an area where it’s a, you know, a farming community that might not have as high average incomes for whatever reason, or it’s just more rural, you know, so there’s less density there doesn’t drive up the cost of goods, so it doesn’t drive out the wages necessarily. And then we see that kind of catch 22. So, as I’ve had people who would search for properties like that, I remind them you got to use, USDA provides this as well, the area median income lookup tool, and then you can see and make sure, okay, do I fall under that line? Or am I going to get caught up in underwriting? And then we’re going to have to find a different solution. Sure.

Rob  11:05

And another question for you. The, excuse me, the actual lending limits.

Adrian  11:11

Yes, and the lending limits are also county based. So, we got to go and look at the individual properties. Same thing here, when you when you use that government lookup website, for the USDA, you will find the limits for your given area. Generally, they are a little bit lower than conventional limits, a lot of the time I’ve seen but sometimes not, you just got to check the county as a county-based limit system,

Rob  11:36

right? Well, right now, the conventional limits are, you know, close to 550, that’ll be changing at the end of the year. But my understanding is they’re what 50 75k, less something like that, depending on

Adrian  11:50

where you’re at. Because I can’t because it’s metered by this specific area. It’s always kind of hard to tell. I mean, there’s counties in Oregon that I’ve seen are under 300,000. You know, that’s, that’s a huge gap. That’s a desert $250,000 gap basically, from, you know, the limit. And it’s different in different parts of the country to 85 is a really common one we see. But then that limit can be much higher, you know, let’s pick Sonoma County, Sonoma County has a limit of 763. And this is all data that makes sense, when you look at the areas, you know, they’re the average income limitation is going to effectively set the limit to the maximum purchase price, right? Right. Your debt-to-income ratio has to stay below that, that threshold, they are lower on USDA loans than other loans. So maximum ratios are, are going to be lower, and the credit score is going to be a little bit higher as well, about a 29%, front end 41% back end. So right, your payment must be no more typically than 29% of your income. And then if you include your monthly minimums on other stats and obligations 41% of your gross income.

Rob  13:11

So, this is this has, you know, especially for us, you know, in the Portland Metro has become in a really is a niche product. versus say, you know, somebody who’s operating in small town America, you know, typically, you know, 20,000 or less people in that area, are in that town, very

Adrian  13:32

high take right there. Yeah, I’ve got friends who were officers in some of the smaller towns, they 50 plus percent of the loans they do our USDA, they’re doing all the time, right. But again, you know, I’ve seen people utilize it, where they go, Okay, I really want to live in Portland. But I’m gonna step out of that metro area, I’m gonna take that longer commute, like you’re saying, because I want to learn like this area, I’m gonna buy a house, it’s, you know, a lovely house in a more quote, unquote, rural community. And that bar is shifting as the world, you know, evolves here, and some of these towns are blown up, and then I’m gonna get some equity. Ideally, I’m gonna choose something, you know, that’s kind of the neat thing. We’ve seen this before, too, right? We talked about that Bullseye outside of major cities. And, you know, we saw it with San Francisco or New York or, you know, New York’s a great one, right? Like, there’s, there’s places that were notorious for being super rough and are now just, you know, fully

Rob  14:27

transformed.

Adrian  14:28

Yeah. Transformed. Yeah. And, you know, if you want to talk about the pros and cons of, of a culture of a city evolving as the lower income areas become, you know, more valuable, that’s a whole conversation to table. But it does mean that if you bought a property for a steel in an area like that, and then development sort of washes its way out from that Metro of people who want to live close to the city like you did right. Then you can take advantage of that upturn. You can take advantage of grabbing something that’s in a suburb just over that line, and as the city’s presses its higher rate of development out around you, you can double your investment potentially.

Rob  15:07

And it’s and that’s a big piece, you know, just tying in kind of what’s happening with the socio-economic changes having to do with the pandemic over the last couple of years. There has been such an incredible flight to the suburbs, if you will, I’m sure everybody’s read you know, articles on that. But it’s not just the suburbs it’s you know, hey, my jobs in Silicon Valley but I live in Portland and 97% of the time I don’t need to be in Silicon Valley so you know, make that income at that higher area you know, based on the mean in Silicon Valley but you know, you’re just getting by in Silicon Valley by in Portland which is a cheaper market relatively speaking and you can leverage out that way then people are doing the exact same thing you know, Portland to you know, say a smaller bedroom community like McMinnville you know it’s yeah okay it’s 45 minutes away an hour away depending on traffic and such not that far you can still go in you know and get some Portland culture if you so choose on the weekend or you know when what have you but if you can work at home doesn’t matter if you’re an hour commute because you’re you know commuting from your bedroom to your office and you know more land typically more room to spread out. houses can be a little bigger and definitely lower price per square foot. So, and for

Adrian  16:27

Oregon specifically McMinnville? Actually, great example Yamhill County, Washington County, Multnomah and Columbia County Clackamas, as well. Those are the ones in our state that are at the $414,000 limit for the USDA. That’s the limit through February of 2021. Some other counties go as low as 285. That seems to be about the floor right now for most of the country. So that’s again, that’s that catch 22 You got to find out what your county limits are and see, you know, this is a product you want to work out the nuts and bolts to but boy, what a city that’s just blowing up in popularity as wine country evolves, rounded $414,000 is more than enough money to buy some great properties even down in kind of getting close to the center of town, dead center. But you know, there’s some of that feeling out there. Like we’re talking about few blocks off, you may be able to buy a really nice home, that’s going to appreciate at a fairly quick rate because that city is just experiencing some growth. It’s desirable,

Rob  17:32

Shameless, Shameless plug. Oregon, Oregon pines Oh, man, there. Yeah,

Adrian  17:37

I love that city. I’m not gonna lie. I literally even told my mom, my mom retired recently. And she said, you know, I’m looking for cool spot to settle down. And it’s a super walkable town. You know, again, this rural loan does not mean that you’re three miles from your nearest neighbor or anything by that stretch. And I think that’s one of the issues with this loan program is that the concept of what rural means to us? For USDA, we think of farmland we think of, you know, dirt roads. It actually covers a huge swath of the country does yourself a favor and look into it.

Rob  18:09

Yep. I love it. All righties. Well, hopefully we’ve dropped some knowledge on you on this USDA product. It’s, it’s right for some and probably a surprising amount of people. So, let’s, let’s all hope that from this just getting educated myself, that I’ll be able to steer my clients towards that if it’s if it’s an appropriate fit. So, love, appreciate Adrian.

Adrian  18:34

Thanks for letting me get blown here for a while Rob. Love it, listeners. We’ll catch you next week.

Rob  18:39

Okay, thank you all. Bye. Bye.

Intro  18:41

Bye. Thank you for listening to the get rich, slow podcast. If you liked what you learned, please subscribe, rate and review so we can grow wealth for even more families.

THE GET RICH SLOW PODCAST

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

CATERGORY: REAL ESTATE

Adrian Schermer:

Hello future millionaires and welcome back to The Get Rich Slow Podcast. We are your hosts, Adrian Schermer, Robert Delavan and Mr. Brilliant at the basics, Lance Johnson. Good morning gentlemen!

 

Robert Delavan:

Good morning, happy to be here.

 

Lance Johnson:

Good morning there, Adrian. Good to be back. Back in the saddle

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yes, back in the saddle. You can watch The Get Rich Slow Podcast, or I should say you can listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music, as well as a few other platforms that are smaller. We are also on YouTube if you’d like to see the video, and you can follow along with the presentation that we have with some slides showing what we’re attacking. And today, this week, we’re gonna talk about some… seller credits and I want to start this off by talking about a big win I had with Rob’s team. We were doing a purchase. We had a first-time home buyer, which is always awesome. They really wanted to have a seller credit to assist them with closing costs. We’ve talked about this before, you’ve got your down payment, but seller or closing costs can be something that especially first-time home buyers don’t necessarily expect and it’s great if we can have the seller pay for that. We’re going to chew into that a little bit more in the episode. But in this particular case, we had someone with an accepted offer. It had a $10,000 seller credit on it. We actually got a little bit more because of some needed repairs on the property after the inspection, which…

 

Robert Delavan:

Mm-hmm.

 

Adrian Schermer:

…is a whole episode on its own. But the property still also appraised for 10,000 over the contract price.

 

Robert Delavan:

Mmmhmm.

 

Adrian Schermer:

And we’ll dig into this a bit more what that really means, but I’ll tell you, the end result is that this client effectively won $20,000 thanks to excellent negotiation and just the way that seller credit works you know? They bought the house, the seller paid for $10,000 of their closing costs, and it’s still appraised for over.

 

Robert Delavan:

That was a killer deal, and we can use the term “won”. I prefer to say that it was leveraging what the market will allow right now. And this is winner 2023 so… But yeah…

 

Adrian Schermer:

Mm-hmm.

 

Robert Delavan:

…it was a total win. I mean, the clients were ecstatic with getting a new house and having less cash out of their pocket through this process.

 

Lance Johnson:

And just think about it a year ago, you know, interest rates are down coming out of a great market during a pandemic, which, whole separate episode.

 

Robert Delavan:

Mm-hmm.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yep.

 

Robert Delavan:

Mm-hmm.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yep.

 

Robert Delavan:

Right.

 

Lance Johnson:

And people were paying 150,000 over asking price, having to come in with money because it wouldn’t appraise, and you feel like a win because you’re getting a seller concession, which we haven’t seen for a while.

 

Robert Delavan:

Right.

 

Lance Johnson:

What a change from a year ago.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah.

 

Lance Johnson:

you know, just great.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We all heard the stories, right? 10, 20, 30, 50, 100,000 over market value houses selling for.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah.

 

Adrian Schermer:

The demand super, super high, and this is kind of one of these advantages. There’s always a win, right? Like there’s no, I don’t want to say there’s no bad market, but it’s true. It could be bad for one party or the other, but generally, you know, it’s a matter of negotiating advantage, right?

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah, exactly. So this will be a fun episode. Today’s episode we’re going to focus on buyer credit and seller concessions as you guys probably are already kind of figuring out. We do work on a Realtor.com article that we’re pulling from, that just had a advice, sell, what are seller concessions, that sort of thing. So we have a baseline there and that’ll be linked in the episode disclosures and so forth. But we’re looking forward to this, this episode and we’re going to dive in a little more. Throw it to the next slide Adrian. So What we’re really going to cover is what is the seller credit and seller concession, how to use it, cap amounts some stories. Lance is I think gonna pick our brains a little bit and then we’ll round robin it. The biggest thing to know with these seller concessions is they create a win-win for the seller and buyer. Even though the seller’s giving something up. There’s definitely some advantages in this market and we can talk about that, and like I said, we’ll be working through some scenarios.

 

Lance Johnson:

Great, well, let me kick this off, and you guys are both in real estate, right? Adrian in mortgage and Rob in real estate and construction and property management. What is a seller credit for people that don’t know? Kind of dumb it down for people like me and just make it simple, and what is a credit versus a concession? And talk us through that.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Great. So the first one, seller credit, seller concession, sometimes called buyer credit as well, although it’s a bit of a misnomer, all the same thing. The seller is paying for some of the closing costs and it’s an allowed process. You’re not allowed, a seller can’t contribute usually to say a down payment. There’s rare cases where that’s allowed, usually between family members, but they can contribute to the closing costs, which are, especially for folks doing a lower down payment, can be as much as their down payment in some cases. So it’s a great way to cut down that cost and the accessibility to that potential buyer. And

 

Robert Delavan:

So examples,

 

Lance Johnson:

Yeah, so what are some of the costs associated that they can pay down? So, you know, like things that I know about are points and, you know, there’s prepaids, so, you know, if you’re having your real estate taxes paid for, and insurance, there’s actual costs associated based on the rates. So walk me through some of the things they can and can’t do.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah, absolutely. For most lenders, you’re going to have a flat fee that we charge in order to do the loan itself, and that’s how we keep the lights on, we keep everybody paid. Points themselves, you can have a cost for buying a lower than what would be considered market or par rate. That could also be a credit, although at this time in the marketplace, we’re generally seeing more of a cost for given rate being a more popular option. We’ve got state and government recording fees, title costs, including title insurance and the cost to file all of that paperwork. It could be a notary cost if someone’s going to come out to you, and it’s also, as you mentioned, the impounds. We’ve got taxes and insurance. You’re going to pay the seller for the remainder of the year that they had paid for the last time taxes were due. You’re going to pay for your first year of homeowners insurance, and in the case that you have an escrow account that… Part of your payment each month is going to include 1/12th of your taxes and insurance. That escrow account is going to be set up with a two month buffer, because we know taxes and insurance are probably gonna go up year by year, and then enough money seeded so that as you make your first payment, you’re on track. That 1/12th of taxes and insurance is going to be, you know, added to a pile that already exists so that when taxes come due in say, October like it is here in Oregon, there’s going to be enough money in there to make that payment. And as I mentioned that cost I have seen that hit 3% or even more of the transaction in many cases. Your mileage may vary and state to state. You’re certainly gonna see a big difference. I remember when I used to do loans in New York Super high property taxes that amount of money could be a serious chunk of change

 

Lance Johnson:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

And then also walk through, well, and maybe you don’t see these as much, Adrian, but on the, you could also call a credit or concession would be like repairs, and that would be the condition of the house. Just to use a few examples, let’s say certain types of lending require you can’t have any exterior paint that’s peeling.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Mm-hmm.

 

Robert Delavan:

So let’s say there’s some repairs that would be needed and required by the lender. There’s also just the normal inspection items. Let’s say there’s radon, you know, high levels of radon coming up from the crawl space or the basement and that needs to be taken care of, mitigated and you know, that’s a couple thousand dollars typically in our market. Something like that where, or, hey, there’s a rotted deck or the roof is leaking or I mean the list goes on and on and on. Every structure has its issues, even brand new construction. there are always things. So there’s also ability for concessions for repairs in addition to the traditional closing costs that you already laid out.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah, absolutely, and any of those that are paid directly to a vendor, like we’re having the roof repaired by a roofing company, those don’t count within the closing cost bucket. So they won’t hit any of the closing cost limits because there are caps on what percentage of the purchase price these concessions can be, depending on the loan type, and I’ll chew into that in a second. But as you’re mentioning, Rob, you know, sometimes we get this “Hey, the floor is damaged” – “Well, we don’t want to repair the floor before closing, it’s gonna take two months for a floor guy to get out. We want to close now. So that repair is gonna be a thousand dollars. Why don’t we give that in the form of a seller concession?” The Seller is going to pay a thousand dollars with your closing costs that frees up a thousand dollars in your pocket when you go to closing, and then you can use that to your discretion to get that repair done, and I believe actually in our example even We had that $10,000 seller credit initially. I know that we grabbed another couple thousand in that sort of, it’s that inspection, right? You do that inspection, the scratch and dent special. It reminds me of like bringing your dad or your uncle to buy your first car. If they’re good, they’re gonna run over that and go, hey, is that a little scratch on the fender? You gotta knock some money off the price. Same concept here, but applying…

 

Robert Delavan:

Right, right..

 

Adrian Schermer:

…it in a way that saves you money at the right time.

 

Robert Delavan:

Right. Yeah, that’s a, that’s an interesting, which actually nicely segs us to question two, and Lance, let’s see, you could target, you could target Adrian or I on that one, whichever dealer’s choice.

 

Lance Johnson:

Well, yeah, I mean, I did have a follow up question on the, you know, it seems like one instance is it’s around the repairs and they can, you know, the inspection, and then on other instances, it’s, you know, there could be a gray area there. So there’s negotiations, right? Like, so the floor could be 1000 could be 4000 depends on how, how deep you want to get in. So if there was flooring in a bathroom and you have to get to the other sub floors and stuff like that and there’s rotting and mold and stuff, it could really amount up, and so that’s where real estate agents like yourself have to go in and say, okay, you know, here’s a high end, here’s a low end. Obviously the seller wants low end, the buyer wants high end. There’s a negotiation and that’s… Sometimes an arm length transaction is helpful, right? So you can take the emotion out of it and stuff.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah.

 

Lance Johnson:

Well, let me ask that. So how do you use the seller credits, both the seller side and the buyer side of the transaction? Scenario one, offset the cost of repairs of a home inspection, which you guys were alluding to. Sweeten the deal for an on-the-fence buyer. So a buyer likes the house, but not sure if they want to make it. Maybe the numbers are at their top end. Incentivize buyers to stay in the deal when there’s lots of competition in inspection. So it seems like competition really kind of sets if you have 10 buyers and they’re negotiating, you know, we saw where there was no concessions, but now that inventory is greater and now things, you know, interest rates are higher, there’s less buyers, that now you’re starting to see some of this stuff. And that really has a mark on. the credits of the seller side.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah.

 

Lance Johnson:

So why don’t you guys speak on that?

 

Robert Delavan:

And that’s a big piece of this. Adrian, you’re gonna have your take on this from a lending side, and that’s really gonna then kick into kind of the third piece we wanted to look at is like the caps and so forth. But yeah, Lance, you’re exactly right. The first two scenarios here are similar in that we’re not really dealing with you’re dealing with repairs, you’re dealing with sweetening the deal. Number three is where it really starts kicking in, competition and so forth. But it’s market trends. So the first scenario is just, hey, this buyer, they’re looking at a, and remember, we’re in the Portland market, just building out a typical scenario that we’ll see a $400,000 home. And it just, that the deck is going to cost 20 grand to redo. You know, and the roof needs to be repaired. It’s, you know, 10, 15 year old roof and it hasn’t been well maintained. Well, that piece, your typical buyer who’s kind of entry level, first timer, that sort of thing, they just can’t afford to pay closing costs, down payment, all that sort of thing, and do all these repairs on the house. They just can’t do it. So that’s the piece where the seller from the get-go is just gonna disclose, hey, guess what? This roof isn’t great. We’ll make sure you give a roof cert or do repairs or replace, you know, depending on how bad the deck is, that sort of thing. So make it so that there’s not as much dollars out in that time where that buyer is most vulnerable. Which is when they’re buying the house, you know? They’ve saved every last dollar that they can possibly come up with, begged, borrowed and steal to get that down payment. Especially the first timers.

 

Lance Johnson:

Well, it seems like it’s a moving target where they go in and it’s a  $400,000 house. Some cases the price might have gone up a little bit, maybe not so much anymore. It’s stayed flat. But then interest rates go up by the time they close or lock in their loan, and now the payment’s 400 bucks, 300 bucks more than they anticipate when interest rates were rising on a month-to-month basis. So… Yeah, and you know, top end is top end. Nobody wants to feel house poor. So,

 

Robert Delavan:

Exactly, exactly.

 

Lance Johnson:

yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

So that makes a big difference. Another piece, and this was in this article, that we referred to and have in our disclosures here, is basically just being in a position to like sweeten the deal for that buyer that’s picking your house versus the one up the street. “Hey, we’re gonna do a new deck” or, more common. “We’re gonna certify that the HVAC system is in good working order” per manufacturer specs. We’re also going to provide a home warranty so that…

 

Adrian Schermer:

Oh yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

…if in the first year, if the washer dryer or HVAC or any of the systems within the house that would be expensive to replace, for think appliances and so forth, that those sorts of things would be covered for that buyer. So it’s just like, kind of more of an incentivization. “Hey, pick our house versus the next guy. We’ve done more due diligence upfront.” The third scenario, and I really want to give you guys a chance to kind of comment on this, is this is where you’re really like at that point where you’re almost through the inspection period, this buyer knows that it’s getting to the point where it’s really a buyer’s market and they have the opportunity to go to a number of other properties, or at least they’re presenting that they can do that, and they’re like, “ah I don’t know”. When there’s competition in the market for that buyer. and more sellers than there are buyers, let’s incentivize them, not just like sweeten the deal up front, like a, “hey, we’re gonna offer a home warranty”, like scenario number two, but number three, we’re actually saying, “hey, we’ll go ahead and replace that roof”. Because that was the big sticking point, or , you know, something to that effect, which actually gets the deal closed. You never know the situation that the seller is in if you’re representing the buyer, or at least. You try to find out as much as possible and it’s amazing how often you’ll actually get the story. But if that seller really needs to sell and there’s a certain piece like a $15,000 roof, why not rep for the buyer, push for that, and get that done? And you know, the seller says hey, “you know we’re getting our $400,000 price point, but really it’s 385. It’s a $15,000 roof. Let’s get that done.”

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

because we want to close

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

so It’s just that, it’s exploring the dynamics almost of the negotiation at that point.

 

Lance Johnson:

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting from my, I often will get in a meeting with clients where they’ve been up to bat three times in a row, especially when the market was, you know, interest rates are low, and you had to put $100,000 in the Portland market just to get the house.

 

Robert Delavan:

Right, above right?

 

Lance Johnson:

And maybe they didn’t have that cash and they had to come in, and so they were always number two, number three. And so there is and this is probably a segment we should do there is the art of locking down the, the property because you can do all the planning you want but if you come in two, three, four and, you know, we’ve seen it where people are frustrated. They want to get in the house…

 

Robert Delavan:

Yup.

 

Lance Johnson:

…interest rates are rising and yet you know they, they come in, you know at some point in time we should talk a little bit of the art of locking down a deal.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah, Yeah.

 

Lance Johnson:

…and there’s a way to do that and use the inspection to figure that out.

 

Robert Delavan:

Absolutely.

 

Adrian Schermer:

To negotiate that bit. Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah, that’s a really fun one. Just a teaser for that episode. I’m actually writing that down now for another episode here soon. Thanks for that idea, Lance. Is really trying to figure out what the other side wants. And it was amazing how many times when it was crazy competitive, where we’re representing a buyer, we’re not the highest, but we’d still get it. Rather than just throwing 100K over list price at it. How about 70K? but we’re not gonna ask for this or this or this, or we’re gonna give you time or other things that are important to them.

 

Lance Johnson:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

So that’s actually a lot of fun.

 

Lance Johnson:

Well, cool.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Absolutely.

 

Lance Johnson:

The third question, what are the caps on concessions that a seller can contribute to the buyer? So, you know, there’s limits, right? You just can’t go right this check out. So, why don’t, Adrian, maybe you take a look at that there, what kind of caps are there?

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah, yeah, and here’s ones for the, this is one for the show notes or, you know, if you’ve got a pad of paper this is the moment to grab some data for you. So the cap is, and these are based off the purchase price of the home, so the first one, three percent for a conventional loan with a loan to value above 90% in other words that you have a 10% or lower down payment then the seller concession can be no greater than 3% percent of the purchase price Once that loan to value exceeds that 10% down payment, so between, in this case 75.01% to 90%, it goes up to 6%, and then with a 25% or greater down payment, it’s going to go to 9%. These are for conventional purchases as a primary residence.

 

Robert Delavan:

Mm.

 

Adrian Schermer:

If it’s an investment, it’s capped at 2%. For FHA loans it is 6%. So that’s a big one. There’s a much higher seller credit available for those FHA, which is really popular with first time home buyers. So sometimes that can be an advantage there. It’s 6% with USDA as well, and then one of my favorite types of loan, the VA, the veterans loan is capped at 4%, which is awesome. Cause that one can be up to 100% financing, zero down.

 

Robert Delavan:

Mm-hmm.

 

Adrian Schermer:

A veteran therefore can also on top of that get a seller credit for up to 4% of that purchase price and in many cases that is well more than your typical closing costs and we have a bit of play there with closing costs because as a loan officer we’ll often use this term – we talk about “soaking up” closing costs. If you have a 3% seller credit, but your closing costs without points comes to let’s say 2 and a half percent. You might soak that extra up by buying extra rate. I did that when I bought my house. I had a bit too much left on the table. And that’s the thing about the seller credits. If you don’t spend that money, you don’t get that money. If your seller credits $10,000 and your closing costs is only 9, that 1000 is just, the seller is just going to get to keep that money. You don’t get a check at the end and it cannot go towards your down payment. So generally we try to go a little bit over, so we have some spill-over there on the closing costs, that you’re going to pay that spill over just to make sure we’re making the most of it. Rob, I know that we have also used that for paying out mortgage insurance, which is a whole nother episode, but you can pre-pay your mortgage insurance effectively by buying it out so that it’s not part of your monthly payment. There’s a number of different strategies. You mentioned home warranty. There’s some great ways that if there’s leftover on the table, that should be a discussion with your lender to figure out what’s the best strategy for, specifically, you.

 

Robert Delavan:

Right. And there’s some very simple language that we generally use if we know we’re going to be in that range, where there’s probably more closing cost concessions than we would necessarily use. Let’s say, you know, even with a rate buy down and all of the prepaids of, you know, taxes, insurance and and title insurance and so forth that we talked about in the first part of this episode. It’s only $9,000 and we got, and we were able to negotiate 12, and let’s assume all the repairs in the case. That’s $3,000 that would not, if you write that contract a certain way, that’s $3,000 that you could leave on the table on behalf of, the seller just says “oh, okay, closing costs were only 9. I offered 12, but you didn’t have 12.” So you don’t wanna be in a situation two days before closing where you’re scrambling.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Absolutely.

 

Robert Delavan:

But there’s a very simple language you can use that says, in essence, the closing costs of $12,000 right up front in the event of an overage on closing costs that will not be utilized, a seller agrees to still provide that in some other way, and that basically, and there’s some language cleanup there, that’s not exactly how we say it in the documents. But basically it makes it so that that seller can’t say, “oh, hey, thanks, you didn’t use it so I get it”

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

So I There’s always things you can do, for example, like repairs or you know upgrades or what have you. So, and Lance, we’ve had those conversations before, you know, with folks that we’ve worked with across the board referrals with all of us, and the last thing you want, although every once in a while there’s a scenario where somebody’s like “you know what? I don’t really wanna buy it down” and they get it down to like maybe a couple hundred bucks and they’ll leave a couple hundred bucks on the table. But you certainly don’t want to leave a couple thousand bucks on the table.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

 

Robert Delavan:

So that’s the key.

 

Adrian Schermer:

And so for our audience, I want to just paint this scenario, you know, one last time here. Let’s say we have three houses on a block, right? They are identical houses. They are all, as far as the market is concerned, worth about 350, right? We know that there can be a swing there. So these houses might be able to appraise for more, but that’s what they’re trying to sell these houses for. Now, I own one of these houses and I decide that I’m going to put mine up for 360, but I’m gonna advertise it that I’m giving a $10,000 seller credit. For me, as the seller, that is the exact same amount of money when I get to closing. My check is going to be identical at 360 with a $10,000 seller credit, as it would be at 350 sales price. But for a buyer, let’s say this is a, you know the typical two, three bedroom starter home, someone probably is gonna be buying this with 3% down payment. 3% down on 350 is $10,500. If you give me a $10,000 seller credit, and I’m expecting to pay that in closing cost, you just cut the amount of money that I have to come to closing with in half.

 

Robert Delavan:

Right.

 

Adrian Schermer:

And that’s a huge, huge deal to have another 10,000 bucks, right? You’re moving into your first house. I don’t know, you wanna do some paint. You wanna just have a buffer. You wanna maybe pay someone to move your stuff for you instead of harassing your friends again. It’s such a difference maker, and so we saw that becoming more popular when the market shifted. that people were actually offering it right up front. Hey, I’m on board with the seller credit and I’m gonna help you with that. We also saw it applied to two-one buy downs. This is another whole separate episode. I’m not gonna dig into the meat of what that is, but a two-one buy down basically gives you first year and second year at a reduced interest rate. And there’s no free lunch, right? So we know that there’s a cost upfront for that and that’s probably what’s paying that, but there were a lot of sellers also offering a seller credit to help absorb that cost, and what that meant for the buyers was a lower payment for the first few years of homeownership where you are potentially worried about you know hey is something gonna break? Do I have a nest egg that I need to save back up? I’m spending all my money buying this house, what if something happens two months down the road, and I don’t have a warranty?

 

Robert Delavan:

Right.

 

Adrian Schermer:

This is the kind of thing that can ease one of the biggest stressors for buyers and Rob you hit the nail on the head. I mean we talked about negotiation, one most important things is asking those probing questions and finding out what are the pain points for your potential client here, and for a buyer, especially in a marketplace of what is typically a starter home or a first time buyer typical home, then that’s huge.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah.

 

Adrian Schermer:

That seller credit can change, massively change, how easy it is for them to get access to this home.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah, and the fun part about this is really where I’ve worked with, you know, on the financial side. It’s all about cash flow. It’s all about, you know, preserving cash for when you need it, having contingency plans, you know, those sorts of things, and basically having a similar message where you’re putting your client in a position where they have margin.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

And that’s really what these closing costs and concessions for a buyer especially provide, and then for the seller, it’s, hey, if you’re savvy about it, and you’re strategically positioning yourself, your house is going to sell, and the next two in a competitive market for sellers, there’s more sellers than there are buyers so the next two up the street aren’t going to sell, and yours is, assuming the product is the same.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah

 

Robert Delavan:

So that’s where it gets..

 

Adrian Schermer:

and in that example, I gave nothing away. I make the same amount of money. So it can be very brilliantly applied that way.

 

Lance Johnson:

It seems like you actually limit the extra negotiation after the deal because there’s limits on the percentage.

 

Adrian Schermer:

That is also an exce… that’s an awesome point, Lance. Yeah, you’re right. I mean, again, seller perspective, now you can’t wrap in that inspection. We’ve hit that ceiling before. You find something in the inspection, hey, the carpet needs to be fixed. Well, I’m not gonna fix it and hey, you’re at your limit for seller concession anyway, so, sorry, there’s nothing left for me to give.

 

Robert Delavan:

So it gets, there’s a lot of hints and outs on that, and yeah, that’s a great point Lance. It happens quite a bit where it’s just like, well, we can’t really do any more other than this unless you actually go in and replace that, you know, carpet or roof or what have you.

 

Lance Johnson:

Well, this has been a great episode. So give us your final thoughts there, Rob, on this episode.

 

Robert Delavan:

Well, we appreciate you guys listening. A lot of this stuff is high level. I will say that, what do you say Adrian, almost every time? “Your mileage will vary.” Frankly, every single personal situation is different and we have to be very…

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yes,

 

Robert Delavan:

…careful about that, that we’re speaking in generalities.

 

Adrian Schermer:

a lot of nuance here.

 

Robert Delavan:

and concepts. So yeah, it’s gonna be different for everybody, but this is the fun part and there’s a lot of conversations that we end up having specifically with our clients about these concepts. So we do have some exciting future episodes in the works. I think we touched on a couple here. We’re looking forward to having some more guests on the podcast too, so stay tuned for that. And that’s.

 

Lance Johnson:

And I think we’re going to try something a little different where we’re going to try to do a Round Robin type round table with eight or nine different people and get into some meteor issues. So we’re going to try some of that stuff. So we’re excited for this year’s podcast. And we’re really kind of getting into our stride.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah, that’s gonna be really fun, especially if we, like you said, get into the meat of it, right?

 

Lance Johnson:

Yeah.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

So, I’ll finish this up on our websites, Adrian, and let’s sign off here.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah, absolutely. You can catch us on our sites. It’s going to be in the video description. We’re going to have links to our individual sites, as well as The Get Rich Slow Podcast site, where you can also request to be a guest or send us some comments. We love reading through what you folks have to say and what you’re interested in seeing next. That’s also where you’ll find the work cited. We’ve got that realtor.com article that does a pretty good job of explaining some of what a seller credit is and that’s it for us!

 

Robert Delavan:

All right, thank you guys.

 

Lance Johnson:

Thank you guys.

 

 

Are you Sure you
want to leave?

Click Yes to be redirected. We make no representation as to the completeness or accuracy of information provided at this website. Nor is the company liable for any direct or indirect technical or system issues or any consequences arising out of your access to or your use of third-party technologies, websites, information and programs made available through this website. When you access this site, you are leaving our website and assume total responsibility and risk for your use of the website being redirected to. These materials have been independently produced. ROI financial is independent of, and has no affiliation with the website being redirected to.