RE: Real Estate Podcast

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (00:00)
buy your first house first. Don't buy your last house

Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to another episode of RE Real Estate Podcast. I'm your co-host Ben Horang. Joining me is Clint Galliano all the way in Houma, Louisiana. Good afternoon Clint, how you doing?

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (00:35)
doing wonderful, Ben, in this Houma Louisiana. How you doing in Thibodaux

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (00:40)
I'm doing terrific man. Sunshine and weather's cool. Life is lovely. So today we're going to talk about the million dollar question that every homeowner has.

Should I buy a house now? Home sellers, should I sell my house now? Should I wait till the price has dropped? Should I wait till the price has rise? It's always a question. And the answer is really is you need to do it at your time, not at the market's time.

need to do what's right for you and not try to catch the market at the bottom or the top. It's great if you can buy it near the bottom, it's great if you can sell it near the top, but you need to do it when it's right for you. But before we get into everything else, let's take a quick look at the featured listing of the week.

That sure was a nice house. It is. It is. It's going to make somebody a nice place. All right, Clint, you up.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (01:27)
That's a beautiful home.

All right, so over the next few minutes, we're going to talk about why trying to perfectly time the market is a fiction for most people. It doesn't matter if you're buying or selling, as Ben alluded to. So we're going to look at signals people watch, like interest rates, inventory, and we're going to discuss why they don't tell the whole story, especially here in Louisiana. So.

More importantly, we're going to shift focus from timing the market to timing your life, which is a factual basis for making a great decision. So let's get started. So the lure of market timing. It's like everybody says, well, you buy low and you sell high.

You know, so if you're selling, you want to sell at the top of the market, the peak of the market. If you're buying, you want to buy at the bottom of the market so you can get the best deal possible. And while in theory, that's, you know, that's the ideal situation, but like with everything, you only hit that about pure luck. Because if you're waiting for those situations, how are you going to know? You know, it's kind of like the demonstration.

that I do sometimes when I'm teaching, it's like, how can you pick the top or the bottom of the market? And I'll draw on a whiteboard, and I'll start going up and say, OK, tell me when the top of the market is. And they'll say, now, now, now. you missed it. And then go down, when's the bottom of the market? Now, now, now, now. you missed it. You're never going to catch it. You don't know.

Ultimately, it's better to have a plan that fits your life and to do it based on your situation and not wait and delay and possibly cost yourself money while trying to catch this mythical peak or valley.

for it.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (03:27)
So let's talk about a couple of things we look at, or people look at trying to predict the market. First thing is interest rates. And they're still at historically moderate rates.

They're not as low as we once had, but they certainly not as high as we've had in the past. And they seem to be trending down. I'm not going to guarantee anybody that the rates are going be lower than they are right now in December of 2025 or higher. Indications are that they'll be lower, but I'll believe it when we see it.

The next thing to look at is the inventory. The more inventory there is on the market, the softer it indicates the market is. But if it's turning over, then it's not soft. We talked recently in a different episode about

the absorption rate of how long it would take to sell the listings that we have in some of our areas in a buyer's market, some of our areas in a seller's market. So it depends where you where you're buying and selling, where we are on that continuum of the bottom or the top of the market.

And then the days on the market is something else we look at. The longer the days on the market for the inventory overall, the softer the market should be.

So if the days are creeping up, we're probably not at the bottom of the market. If they're going down, we might be past the bottom of the market. Same thing at the top of the market. If the days are going down, we're probably not at the top of the market. If the days are going up, we're probably past top of the market.

So I think I said that right, Clint, but those are the things we look at when we try to look at the market. But at the end of the day, like Clint said, the timing is your time, not the market's time. People have life events, getting married, having children, moving up, moving out, moving in, moving down.

that's always all life events and you just do it when it's right for you and whatever the market is you can buy it then and when you have another life event and you want to change it you can sell it at that point and generally over time if it's not too short you sell it for what you paid for it or more

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (05:34)
Yeah, people and this is tying back into more crystal ball stuff.

what exactly are you watching? And we talked about this in the last market update we did. A lot of what you see in the news is California, New York, Florida, the East Coast, West Coast, major metro markets. These are not our market. And so if you're basing your real estate

purchase or sale decisions on what you're seeing in the news. Typically, the majority of what you see in the news is based on those markets that are not our market. And so even the New Orleans market is different from our market. So you can't base your decisions on what's going on in another market because all real estate is local. And so if you're waiting for something,

You you can't wait for the perfect moment. For sellers, you've got holding costs while you're waiting. So you're still paying your mortgage, your taxes, your insurance. You're still keeping up with maintenance. For buyers, you're still paying rent. You know, you're not gaining equity. And while we think that interest rates are going to trend down,

or at least trend down slightly, there's nothing that says that it can't go up from here. While we hope it doesn't, it would only take two or three things to happen and interest rates will start going up. So if that happens, then you might want to wish that you had bought

when you were thinking about it rather than waiting because you're locked in at that interest rate. You know paying that note as opposed to you know whatever the situation might be if it does go up. So those are things that you got to watch out for and then on top of that there's prices. You know right now prices tend to be trending down a little bit over the

the crazy hubbub that we had over the last five years. So that's a good thing. But, you know, that can easily turn around too. don't, ideally you don't want to try and pinpoint something as a target that's external to your life. You know, base it on, we're having a baby, we need another bedroom.

I got a new job, so let me move closer to the job. Things like that. Those are the things that you want to use as the basis for when and where to buy or sell.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (08:10)
do it

on your time rather than the market time. You'll be comfortable in a house longer if you do it that way. And people, like Clint said, the holding costs of buying or not buying, not buying or not selling is people don't consider it. If you continue to pay rent and you're not buying right now, then you're going nowhere.

and you're paying somebody else's mortgage you may as well pay your own and I think we beat that horse to death Clint people know how we feel about that ⁓

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (08:43)
And

if you don't go look in our on our YouTube channel or on our real estate podcast.com and go find a couple of episodes on buy versus rent.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (08:54)
it wouldn't take you long to figure out what side we come down on. And it's not just because we're in the business, financially it makes a lot more sense to buy something than it does to rent it. At least when you buy it, you have a chance of getting some of your money back. When you rent it, you're just paying somebody else's note. And they thank you every month when their deposit hits.

So do it on your time, not the market's time is the essence of what we're trying to point out today.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (09:23)
And the biggest thing is work on the stuff that or worry about the stuff that you can control. Don't worry about things you can't control. Don't focus on interest rates. Don't focus on all the external stuff. Focus on if you're a seller, focus on the condition of your home.

Because the better condition your home is, the better price you're going to get. If you're a buyer, focus on your finances. Control your criteria, your needs versus your wants. While it might be nice to have the parking area for the 40-foot RV, unless you got a 40-foot RV, you might not need that, unless it's a heck of a deal.

Then the other thing that you can control is the team that guides you. So that's your real estate agent, that's your lender, that's your insurance company and your title company that will close you. So work on that.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (10:18)
And one thing I like to tell people, and this is off script Clint is buy your first house first. Don't buy your last house first. If you think you're going to have that 40 foot RV in 10 years, you don't need to buy that house now. Buy something in my mind, and people laugh at me, but I'm going to share my thoughts. There's a lot of new construction going on locally with some incentives.

Find one of the houses with incentives. Go ahead and close on it. Make it home for three to five years while you look around for your next house.

People stay in the house an average of seven years plus or minus But get comfortable because you can make any house a home but if you still in an apartment or or Renting a house you're not it's your home, but you're not making it yours Where if you buy something in a subdivision, that's almost built out by the time you sell it that it's built out there's no pressure from the New home construction all that's done in your subdivision. You get some appreciation

And then you can sit on the sideline when you're comfortable looking for the right house to come up. So that's my spiel just to get out of an apartment or rent house and go ahead and buy something.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (11:33)
Yeah, I support this message.

All right, so homework for everybody listening to this. I want you all to start asking if now is a good time for to buy or sell. And the question that you really need to ask is, is now a good time for me to buy or sell? And if your life and finances say yes, then there's your green light. If your life and finances say no,

then spend your time wisely until your life and finances say yes.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (12:04)
Alright, well that's pretty close, pretty close. At the end of the day, it on your time. And don't worry about the timing in the real estate market. Because you have to live in the house you buy. And the sooner you buy it, the more comfortable you're going to be in it. Alright, think that's another wrap Clint.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (12:05)
not quite words of wisdom, but it's good homework.

Yep, right. Appreciate everybody tuning in. It's rerealestatepodcast.com. Like, share, subscribe. Go to the website, rerealestatepodcast.com slash ask a question. You can ask a question there and we'll answer it on our next episode or one of the upcoming episodes possibly. You can go there to...

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Ben Harang, REALTOR® (13:05)
All right, good commercial. Have a good one, Clint.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (13:09)
Alright, you too, Bye bye.