Speaker 1: 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.
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Speaker 3: And welcome you are listening to the Financial Survival Network.
I'm your host, Terry Lutz. Well, here we are in
the last days of October. We've gotten our long awaited
rate cut fifty basis points more probably on the way.
What effect, if any, is that having on the real
estate market, particularly in my old state, New York. And
our good friend Andrew Ragusa, 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?
Speaker 1: Well, Garry, I'm glad to be back. Thank you for
bringing me here, and you know, 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 like what you know, about five thousand
to five fifty a month just on their mortgage to
purchase something, because you know, the average purchase price is
probably about six hundred to six fifty, and you got
property taxes that are going to be anywhere from twelve
to fifteen thousand on average, which is pretty high.
Speaker 3: Wow, So you're.
Speaker 1: Looking at a very high cost of living. I don't
know how people are doing it.
Speaker 3: And to be honest, me neither man me neither. It's
you know, you hear about the election. All they're talking
about with the election, and you know, 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 sixties to the seventies, and man,
you know this was like it.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 1: At which is it accumulates, but it does not go back,
It does not go unreversed. The only way to fix
this problem at this point is to change the money system,
talking about going back to sound money, having a gold
and silver back 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 dollar federal reserve note.
So now the only thing, the only move we have
is to move back to that money.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, well, but you know they don't want to
do it, so they absolutely have to because then they
lose their power.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's true, it's true. Well, I really like
the idea that Trump has been flirting with getting rid
of income Tact altogether. He's been talking about it a
lot at his rallies and says that he wants to
move to a tariff based you know, economy or tariff based, Yeah,
to bring in revenue for the government. And that sounds
like a dream, a dream come true. Though, We'll think, Yeah, well,
I'll believe it what I see it. What about those
new eighty seven thousand 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
how the r malay cut cut, cut, cut cut.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Hey, you're not going to hear any any empathy from me.
I'm all for it. Goodbye eighty seven thousand of ir
S agents, goodbye high rs. All those government jobs that
are created do nothing but create tax burden anyway, they
don't actually, you know, those jobs are not you know,
gross jobs. They cost money to have government jobs anyway.
Speaker 3: Wait, remember the most fearsome words in the English language.
I am from the government. I'm here to help you, right,
Regan was at that the nightmare. Yeah, so but in
your market, like you say, these shacks are going for
big bucks. People are lie, 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 can lock in the rates and then
pay god willing in a while the rates go down
and you refinance, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, I think no matter how you
slice this, FI it's better to have something that you
can own then, not just it's 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 thick. You can budget
yourself and that just goes through you know, good financial
practice for yourself your family. And then yes, there's the
possibility of refining 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.
Speaker 3: Now. Yeah, yep, and you know, just buy that inflation's
been tamed and it's down to just three percent, right,
so we should all be be dancing and celebrating in
the streets. Right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's absolute nonsense. You know. You know how
I can tell personally 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 stale price
was nine to ninety nine a pound, and now the
sale price, all of a sudden, it's fourteen ninety nine
a pound. I'm like, that's the sale price, right, So
then the regular price has gone up to almost eighteen
ninety nine pound. Yeah, and like you can't anyone would
actually have for a functioning green who eats food, you
tell that the inflation is still there and climbing.
Speaker 3: 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 or it's still tight.
Speaker 1: So it's it's still very tight. But you know what
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 you get. Now,
it doesn't mean that people are going to necessarily overpay,
but the chances of it getting sold at the product
of proper price, like I got a ripe, you know,
fair price is very high because someone will take it,
someone will do the work.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: 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 new roof. And that was that was
the standard rhetoric every realtor heard every time if someone
wanted to make an offer. Nowadays, it's just what are
you offering them? Because someone else is saying 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.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm. So it's still a seller's market. Huh yeah, absolutely, yeah, amazing,
And it's been that way for so long now.
Speaker 1: 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 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 purchasing something that's not going up in value.
Then you know that's that's not good either. Yeah, 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 list somewhere else because
you know, mortgage rate they go up in a little
higher and we start touching six thousand dollars a month
to just live in some areas of Long Island. That
it's crazy. People are going to say, why am I
going to live this kind of lifestyle, especially if they
can work remotely?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so remote work, You've see people move out to
further suburbs now in New York. Now that even if
you can't work one hundred percent remotely, if you can
work you know, fifty sixty seventy percent remotely, go in
two days a week, three days a week to the office.
Makes that commute a lot less backbreaking, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: 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 is
in twenty one and in twenty two, we've had a
lot of migration out of big cities towards the suburbs.
And then in twenty three and most of the twenty
four there's people going right back, 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.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people are still moving. But I know, like my
kids who are 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.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, listen, if you get that opportunity, and it
comes down to a personal decision, if you like that,
if you're good 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 affortable 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
if it comes down to what each person individually is
willing to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, if you have got kids, younger kids,
you want to be there for their events and stuff,
you know it, it really can be a plus. But
like you say, each his own. So any other trends
that you're seeing there, like are knockdowns becoming more prevalent
to what's your take there?
Speaker 1: Well, I can tell you that the houses that are
fully renovated and beautiful condition will sell so fast your
head will spend will get it done in one weekend.
You just put it on the market and one weekend
of open houses, it's gone. And yeah, 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 on his call, I saw our house this weekend
for four hundreds hours and that was just over eight
hundred square feet total, And I said, I can't believe
this house is four hundred thousand 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.
That just goes to show you what people are spending
to live out here in all Island.
Speaker 3: And the land, the value of the land, right, you know,
that's ye pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: But you know what, Garry, I also think that some
people who are financially savvy know that there is a
little bit of a kind of like a flock to
hard asset where they're saying, you know, they're not feeling
very secure about their cash, their dollar. Some people that
don't have the stomach for a stock market that sees
record highs every week. It's like, you know, they're saying
to themselves, you know, and 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
climbing like crazy, gold hitting record all time highs. Silver
is creeping up, and I think this should becoming the
trend where a lot of people buying for the sake
of just having their money investing into something that's real.
So then the event that something bad does happen economically,
they do own something that you know, is a safer investment,
a lot more security come like an insurance program on
their money.
Speaker 3: It's talking like a libertarian here. I'm through. I've been
buying gold and silver since nineteen ninety nine and never
looked back. You know, 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 at over twenty seven
hundred the ounce going to twenty eight hundred, silver hit
thirty five. Of course it had a pullback to be expected,
but it's going higher. Everyone is expecting it too. Oh yeah,
but you've still got to have a roof over your head, right, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And that's just why I'm saying these hard assets, these
tysnical assets, that's a better term, physical assets are becoming
very very wealthy and 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.
Speaker 3: 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 ouns.
Speaker 1: Right, right, roof over your head. Land and things that
are of utility. For example, silver had 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 if they said like five days or something
like that, and it usually double the amount of silver.
Did you see that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Do you know how much how much silver one
cruise mistile uses it?
Speaker 1: Thirteen thirteen million or something.
Speaker 3: Like that, or five hundred ounces.
Speaker 1: Oh, I thought it was a lot more than that. Okay, fun, but.
Speaker 3: Silver, you know, yeah, up that times ten thousand of
them and you got like five million ounces there, you know,
so right, and that's not just that, it's everything.
Speaker 1: Right, everything solar, you know, cell phones, cars, computers, everything,
and we're 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.
Speaker 3: Dig for it because it's the price is so low, 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.
Speaker 1: So you can find me on Instagram. My name is
just Andrew Ragusa. It's A and D R E W
R A g U S A. And then also the
best way to reach me is just call me five
one six eight, five eight nine four three four excellent.
Speaker 3: All right, Andrew, always a pleasure. We'll talk to you
in real soon. Be well.
Speaker 2: Thanks Gerry, thanks for listening to carry lets this Financial
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