Lynette Khalfani-Cox

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97 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2023 last heard Mar 2023

Lynette Khalfani-Cox’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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WSJ Your Money Briefing · Buying a Home? Here’s What to Do Before Starting Your Search · 31 Mar 2023 podcast

They don't know what your holiday gift giving or spending is like.

So all of those other personal or lifestyle expenditures and considerations really do need to be taken into account when you think about your overall cost of living and how that might impact your ability to buy and support a house over the long term.

Well, for 2023, obviously the big thing is that rates are unfortunately on the rise.

Now, we've seen, of course, recent turmoil in the banking sector.

And so nobody has a crystal ball.

But what we can say unequivocally is we saw rates initially peak back in October of 2022, right around 7%.

They've come down now to maybe six and three quarters.

But overall,

The expectation is, of course, that rates are certainly far higher now in 2023 than they were a year ago, substantially higher.

So given this, you need to be thinking about your own economic circumstances and whether or not you'd be comfortable getting into a fixed rate mortgage that is going to be kind of a plain vanilla 30-year set it and forget it,

Or whether or not you'd be willing to hedge a little bit and to consider an adjustable rate mortgage or an arm and whether that's right for you.

I think you should also be thinking about the term of any loan that you would consider.

Certainly not just for people who are buying, but even those who are refinancing, you want to be thinking about, do I want to be in the traditional 30-year note or would a 20-year better suit me or even a 15-year?

And again, it's going to be based on each individual's circumstances and their budget.

Well, I certainly like for people to understand that it's absolutely not a requirement that you come up with, say, a traditional 20% down payment.

Because a lot of people think, well, geez, I'm never going to be able to afford a house if I had to save up at that level, especially given regional variations across the country where we've topped $440,000 or so nationwide in terms of median home prices.

So if you thought about a 20% down payment, $88,000, maybe $90,000 would be required.

But again, that is not required.

Depending on the type of loan that you get, you can put down as little as 3.5% if you get a government-insured, an FHA loan, for example.

But you do need to understand what happens whether or not you go the conventional mortgage route or the government-insured loan route.

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