Hey everybody, what’s up? Sean Zalmanoff here with your mortgage rate update this week. Hey, Merry Christmas. We just finished Hanukkah last week. Happy Hanukkah. Happy holidays to everybody.

It’s been a year. We’ve been very blessed and fortunate in the mortgage and real estate world, and if you own a house, you probably have been too to some extent because of that.

Over the weekend, Congress finally passed a stimulus bill. If I was better with my little sound effects here, I’d be playing for you right now Under Pressure that Queen and David Bowie recorded. I don’t know, I think we just looked it up; 1981 I believe. I know I work pretty well under pressure myself, but dang, I mean really Congress, it took you until things were expiring for you to take care of the rest of America. Sorry, I’ll get off my political rant, but better late than never I guess. I really hope that if you’re in need of the stimulus out here, that it benefits you and at least we are going to be helping some Americans who desperately need this help.

Speaking of Americans and help, one thing that the market is lacking right now is inventory. There are currently 1.42 million homes for sale right now. People ask me all the time. They’re like, “Sean, hey prices are going up, rates are down, like when is this going to crash? It just is. It’s going to crash. Of course it’s going to crash.” No, it’s not. And let me tell you the single biggest reason why.

Again, I dabbled in quite a bit of economics during my college days. If you took any econ classes, you know we talked a lot about guns and butter. Well in 2007, at the peak of the real estate bubble, guess how many homes were listed for sale? 1.42 million now. Guess how many homes were listed for sale? Do you think it was double what it is right now? It’s actually greater than double. 3.4 million homes were listed for sale in 2007. 13 years later as home prices are peaking, they are more expensive in many of our areas than we’ve ever been.

We talk about the home affordability index, and that is lower in a great way driven by rates because mortgage interest financing is the cheapest that it’s ever been. But when you have such a shortage of supply of homes, you’re not going to have a dip in pricing, not a sustainable one right now that we see happening in our market. Again, there’s 2 million less homes for sale listed right now than there were 13 years ago at this time.

Hey friends, I know it’s the end of the year. Man, I’m ready for 2021. I hope you’re ready for 2021. If you need anything, our team is always here for you. We call ourselves the walking yellow pages. If you ever need any help, we are here for you to, for all of your needs. Sometimes buttons click and we do stuff, and sometimes they don’t. Hey, our number is right down here below; (314) 361-9979. If you need any advice in the mortgage real estate world, you need a mortgage anywhere from coast to coast or a great realtor to work with, or just some advice on what things look like in your world, call us. If you’re local in the St. Louis market, like I was mentioning, we’re the walking yellow pages. If you need a plumber, an electrician, if you need an HVAC guy, somebody to help on your house, we have advice here to be able to help you.

We’ll see you one more time before the end of the year. Hope you all have great holidays. I hope you get a few days off to enjoy time with our condensed families over this break. Peace y’all.