Since the dawn of time, mankind has searched for ways to shelter themselves from the elements. Over the centuries, these shelters have evolved from bamboo huts to concrete towers. The last few years, there's been a push to save the planet. Are you ready to embark on a more sustainable lifestyle? Look no further. You're about to enter the adventures of Container Home Living. And now, contractor, radio and TV personality and your host for Boxcar Universe, Steve Dubell.
Hi, I'm Steve Dubell, host of Boxcar Universe, along with my co host Melanie Clearwater. And we want to send out some healing vibes to Melanie because she is definitely under the weather. I don't know what it is. Everybody is getting that four or five day, call it, I don't know, crud or whatever and everybody's sick and it comes on. I know that hit me a few weeks ago, but sending out some, some good vibes to Melanie, hope she gets well really quick.
But we want to let you know what's coming up on this week's edition of Boxcar Universe. Today's edition, we are talking with David Dion from Whole House Inspections. And if you're interested in buying or selling a home, you need to know all the issues about your property. David will also review some of these things that you need to know. Also with us, longtime friend and show guest Jeff Kadleck from NEXA Mortgage is with us.
In January of this year, 2025, there are going to be a lot of changes coming and we all need to know what is coming and try and prepare for them, especially in it's going to be, I believe it's going to be, a volatile housing market. Jeff will let us know all the things that you need to know and what's going on in the mortgage climate for today for all our homeowners and investors, all that and more on this week's edition of Boxcar Universe, your home for remodeling and renovating your world.
And I'd like to welcome all our listeners. A happy new year for 2025. And we've got a lot of good things planned for you this year and we want to welcome our guest in because I want to have a little talk a little bit before we get into our topic today, a little bit about the LA fires that are going on. So David Dionne from Whole House Inspections, welcome to Boxcar Universe, first time on the show. Hello. Thanks for having me. Great to have you here.
And Jeff Kadlak is with us from NEXA Mortgage. And if you ever need any, any mortgages, there's only One person you have to look at, you have to go to Nexa. Jeff Kadleck. How you doing, Jeff? Good, Steve. How you doing? All right, Good, good. Hey, you know, we've been, I'm sure all of us have been just watching a lot about the California fires and there are a lot of things that are going on there.
One of the things that I want to let all our listeners know about, if you have watched, been watching TV and you see a lot of places that you can, you know, make donations for the people in California, the link that I saw the most, and actually you're watching some of the NFL games last week, there is a link. You can go to The Red Cross, redcross.com NFL if you'd like to go there or just go to Red Cross.
And I'm sure there are links there that you'll be able to donate to help all our friends in California who are have lost their homes and really need a helping hand. And now's the time that we always need to reach out. But some of these conditions that are out there. I know my TV producer from several years ago lives out in California. She's only 18 miles from some of the fires and she actually volunteers for Cal Vet out in California.
And she told me yesterday that the people, the location where she was volunteering had to be evacuated. So sometimes it's a little closer than you think. And I'm sure some of the pictures you see look devastating. I mean, I heard somebody make a talking about the way that looks, made a comparison. That's the word I was looking for, a comparison of the way the pictures in LA look in the Palisade area, especially to Ukraine that completely burnt and bombed. I mean, it looks horrible.
And I think it's going to take years, years for that to, to go back and be good.
You know, some of the things that the Santa Ana winds, you know, here in the Valley of the sun, you know, we have our own weather conditions that we always deal with, you know, extreme heat in the summer and monsoon storms in, in July and August, you know, and I'm sure, guys, you've seen a lot of those things that have affected the houses, like Jeff David, for instance, the homes that you go into, especially after monsoons. I mean, you must get a lot of calls for water damage.
Yeah, I mean, we're always looking for any signs of water intrusion as part of our thing. Sometimes it's a bit hard when we're at almost 150 days now without rain, but we're looking for any signs of that. Usually we can find some of that stuff. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, we're coming into, you know, usually January or February. We do get a little more rain, though last summer, you know, I think the monsoon just passed us by because I don't think we had really much at all.
But David, for first time on the show, give our listeners a little bit about, you know, your background and in your company and some of the things that you. You are, some of your specialties of what you get into. Yeah. So Dave Dion, whole home inspections, we launched a bit over nine years ago, and I've personally done over 2,000 inspections all over the valley. And I mean all over the Valley. So mansions to mobile homes type things, fourplex. So we do specialize in residential home inspections.
So there are commercial inspectors out there and things like that. One thing that we're really good at is first time home buyers and working with kind of buyers that, that aren't familiar with the process because we walk them through everything. We make sure that when we're giving information about a home that we're letting them know, hey, this is homeownership. There's going to be some maintenance items that come up.
A lot of stuff that we do see as deferred maintenance or things that just, you know, they're on the checklist. They just never get checked off and then the house gets sold and then they don't get checked off again. And so it's, it's kind of like I. Out of sight, out of mind. Yeah. It's like clean your dryer vents. All right, everybody. Oh, my God. I have, I have a. Talking about dry events. I have, I have a story to tell you. Okay. And it just, it, it's not due to lack of maintenance.
Okay. Though sometimes the builder could be just as at fault. Okay. Back in 2007, my wife, who I was married to at the time, we had built a new custom home in north Phoenix. So the gentleman, don't get me wrong, he did. He does great stucco work. Great stucco work. Okay. I've used him for years on all kinds of remodeling projects. Well, I had him come by to do my stucco. My house.
Well, little did I know, the flap that's outside on the wall, he accidentally stuccoed part of it over and he couldn't. It was stuck, closed and it couldn't air. Okay. Very. I should say very little air got out. So, you know, a couple years go by. Okay. And then all of a sudden my wife says to me, you know, there you Know, I just smell this, like, this burnt smell in the laundry room. And I'm like, burnt smell. So it's one of the first things I thought of.
I'm like, come to think of it, you know, it probably, it's. It's probably long overdue to clear and, and clean out the, you know, the dryer duct. And then all of a sudden, you know, I, I snaked it. I snaked it from the bottom up. And then all of a sudden when I got up, I felt like I hit a dead end. And I'm like, what is going on here? And then all of a sudden I go outside, pull out the ladder. I go up to go up the ladder. I look at the. I look at the vent. It's stucco closed.
And I called him up. I'm like, you did a great stucco job, but you did a little more than you needed to. And I told him what happened. But those are things that people don't. Aren't aware of that, you know, when, like, it's like, when's the last time you opened up your love box and looked at your, your. Your book for your car, your manual? Probably never. And that's what, what the home inspection is. It's kind of the, the, the. The user guide, the starter guide for, for back to dryer vents.
I mean, we, we see overspray a lot. Overspray paint. That happens a lot as well, where it just gets sealed shut and all you got to do is, is open it once and then it's good. Yeah. But when it's sealed shut like that, or we see a lot of times people want to put screens over vents to, to help with roof rats and things. And then they screen over their dryer vent, which is a huge mistake as well, because it, it builds lint a lot faster.
So if it is screened, you got to know that it's screened and get it cleaned much, much more often because, you know, it's. It's best to go with a damper versus a screen because you'll get that same, Same issue back up. Yeah, I mean, and I remember some of the stuff I pulled out was just. It was just. It was, it was. It's no wonder. I mean, it's all at lint. And what happens is, you know, some people may wonder, well, besides being clogged, what it's going to do. It could cause a fire.
Could somebody. Yeah, it could. It could get so hot from the, from the heat from the dryer. And it's so compacted after years of being compacted it could literally start a fire. I mean, and that's. And that's not a good thing. But, you know, one of the things, too, and Jeff, you probably. Probably ran across this, you know, I did. Was not a fan.
And then all of a sudden, several years ago, and all of a sudden, I think the realtors started getting a little, you know, sell and buy happy when they turned around and they're like, oh, you don't have to do, you know, some of the. We'll buy your house with no inspection. Okay, well, that's all well and good, but you're asking. You're asking for a lot of trouble without knowing the history of the house. And, and, and the.
I think there were some of the realtors touted it as, well, you could save money. You don't need a home inspection. Or they have a home inspector come in, and the home inspector goes in there, and then like, you know, ask you for, like, $400, and he's out of there in an hour. I mean, you know, I mean, and I. I've seen most of that, and it's just like, you know, did the guy do this? Did the guy do that? I mean, what did he do for you in an hour and he asked you for 400 bucks?
I mean, it's not good. And it could come back and bite you. Yeah, for sure. It's very important. And, you know, if you do buy a house or you did buy a house back in, you know, a few years ago, when they were doing two day inspection periods, five day inspection periods, there were waiving inspections and things like that. Hey, get an inspection. We will find things that you don't see, that you don't know about. We just have a different eye. We're trained to see those kind of things.
And we've been out there so many times that, you know, again, experience matters with. With something like this. With home inspections, there's only so much you can read in a book. And, you know, home inspections is one of those things, too, where you could see something a thousand times and not know what it is. And once you know it, then you know it. Yeah, and that's where experience comes in as well, is being able to see something and be able to know exactly what it's telling you.
So I have an analogy for home inspections is that we are translators. We go in and we just tell you what the house tells us. I mean, so. And experience makes a better translator the house. Jeff, have you ever had any houses that talk to you that you wanted to flip I think so. Don't let them yell at me, Steve. I was just talking. Yeah, I've had a few. We've had a few together. You and I have done one or two and. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, some of them were talking. You know, I was coming out of.
The windows was the first skull that I was hearing. And then. But. Yeah, but you, you know, when you're buying stuff like that, there's not enough time to have it inspected. But you and I both know that I've inspected all my homes because if I have a budget I'm trying to keep, I'm going to find out the major issues first and make sure they're handled. You know, I think there was one that you did with me down there in San Tan. This goes back. We're talking decade ago, maybe. Yeah, maybe.
And you know, I thought I had a great deal until I found out one of the trusses up in the top were cracked and that had all be pulled out. Yeah, it wasn't that much. I mean, I think we probably spent about 2,000 bucks fixing it. But the other one was house looked great from the run by on the auction because I was buying stuff off the auction block and $16,000 worth of foundation problems really took away the profits on that one.
Said, you know, it wasn't until we actually walked in the house and noticed that, you know, everything was rolling to the right of the house, right down your paper and the roller was rolling away like, you know, we met our problem here. I think that's what all the thick coughing was covering up. Sure enough. Right. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's unbelievable too. But I got, I have, I have some home. I've got a home inspection. You know.
You know, sometimes when you find, when you do remodeling work, you actually. Because I'm always looking for something that's. That's bad. Not looking to make more money. It's just something. It just happens to work that way. But when you find looking for things that are bad or a danger to the homeowner and to the people living in the house, well, that's when it becomes critical. And I always try to make people aware of it. I have a story to tell you that you just will, you will not believe.
But. And I'm sure David, if you saw it, you'd like the first thing red flags would go up. But we're going to save that for when we come back from break and David's got some other information that he wants to share and you know, general things that you could do as a homeowner that you could get, get ready if you're going to get your house for sale.
You know, like you said, some of those things that, you know were bad that you really need to take care of, but you just really haven't gotten around to it and now you want to sell the house and now it's crunch time. So I want everybody to stay tuned. We're going to get into that and more right here on Boxcar Universe. Don't go away. Looking to transform your space.
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For more info, visit stardustbuilding.org. All right, we are back and you're listening to Boxcar Units Universe. And we are talking home inspection today. Traditional homes, boxcar homes, anything residential homes where there are things that you need, you need to know things about that you could be wrong with your house. Especially, you know, if, you know, with now in 2025, new administration going into the White House.
If the market gets a little more friendly and people want to sell, if the interest rates come down, and I want to talk a little bit about that with Jeff a little bit later. You know, people may see that it might be a little more conducive to, to sell their home. Well, you know, you need to take a look at and assess what your house is. And then again, if you know that there are things that need to be done.
You know, I've gone into people's homes already and they say, well, I've got, I know I got this one, a little bit of this that needs to be fixed, but I haven't addressed this or I haven't done this. Can you take a look at that and then, then I get into a little bit more of, you know, discussion. Well, are you just catching up or do you have a purpose behind this? And then they say, well, yeah, you know, I'm going to sell a house and there are things that need to get done.
And you know, I guess it's almost like, David, I've run into times where the homeowner, I get the impression they're like in fear, like, oh my God, the home inspector is coming and there are going to be all kinds of things wrong and I'm going to have to fix everything and I'm going to have to chop, you know, thousands off my asking price. And it's just like, well, that might be true but you know, you take care of them beforehand so that it's not a big surprise.
Yeah, that's a pre listing inspection is a really good tool for a seller. And then they, they, they know going into it what's, what's going to be coming up in the buyer's inspection side. It's not necessarily to say don't get your own inspection. It's to say, hey, here's full, full disclosure. This is every, everything we know. Because the standard seller's disclosure is kind of nice. But I generally tell people it's not really the stuff on the seller's disclosure.
You got to wor stuff that's not the stuff that they don't even know about. And most of the things that do come up in a home inspection the seller doesn't even know exists. And so yeah, pre list inspection is a really good way to start. And we try as home inspectors, I hope all of my industry does is that we try really hard to, you know, let people know that homes are sold as is. And this isn't a negotiating tool. We're not here to help you negotiate for the house.
We're here so that you know what you're stepping into and you know what is coming up in your future. This is your purchase. This is the home that you chose. This is a neighborhood you chose. And we're not there to say don't buy the house. The battle says xyz, we don't grade it. I've gotten people to say, would you buy this house? And I'd say, well, my wife would miss me if I, if I bought this house. So, you know, we're there to educate the homeowner.
This, this is to better understand the property. Things that they're going to need to, to address sooner than later and, or you know, put on the honey do list and knock it off as, as they, as they live there. I'd say, I'd say one of the best resources for you if you're selling your house is pull the inspection report when you bought the house and see what's still pending. It's still pending. You know, things that you never forgot, you never had a chance to do or completely spaced on.
Yep. Yeah. No, yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, and a lot of those things, you know, like you say the trained eye is worth more a lot of times, like, I know an investor has a house in Mesa that I did some work for. And he asked me, like, he's got this huge living room on this one side, and you could see that the foundation in the floor had sank because the bottom, the base molding was put on top of the tile.
And then all of a sudden, now he's got like in one corner, he's got a half inch space between the bottom of the baseboard and the top of the tile. He says, well, what do you think's happened? Is my foundation sinking? I'm like, well, yeah, it's something wrong. And then we went outside and we looked around the outside of the house and found out that over time they had.
The person who was living there before had a, a garden there right outside it, you know, because we always tell people, don't plant three feet from the stem wall because that's not, that's just not good. You can't, you can't keep water, like planter boxes and stuff that are right in the stem wall. Well, it was so bad that they had used it so often for years. I'm going back like 10 years now that the foundation just sank in that corner of the house.
Plus here in the valley, we have expansive soil which is clay and clay, it. It sucks, literally. So, I mean, it's like a paper towel. So if it gets a little bit of that moisture, it's going to want to pull in that moisture. And if that clay is underneath your home, it'll expand and retract through our seasons throughout the monsoon. And then we have the super hot. And so that expansion and retraction over time, that's why we use post tension. I say we lightly.
That's why post tension is used in the valley a lot of times is because to help with the expansive soil issues that we have out here. Right. I mean, and then that's what from years ago, that's one of the things that besieged the new area up north. Anthem. Anthem had tons of tons of homes a year or two years after they were built where everybody was having all kinds of problems and they just didn't, you know, the builder just didn't, you know, do what he was supposed to do to help maintain.
He's building, you know, three, 400, $500,000 homes up there now the foundations are cracking and they're sinking and they're doing all kinds of strange things. So which is, and it's not cheap. I mean, not saying you can't fix these things, but they have new techniques now. But still, I mean, I know a gentleman who actually does foundation repair.
I mean you could drop five grand easy in, in, in jacking up the foundation through the use of the, the special foam that they have that they inject under the, under the slab. They dig holes on an angle underneath and they inject it under slab and then it just expands and it comes to, it hardens, it gets it level. That's how they fix cracks on air court one day runways.
So speaking of cracks there, you know, it's very common to see in drywall joints where you'll have a crack, especially in garages, I mean 90%, 95% of garages you're going to have cracks. And in the joint lines of drywall, I think it's time to get a little bit more concerned. If you see ripping drywall, if you see drywall ripping through instead of on that joint. And that would be kind of a. Let's dig in a little further. Let's see what's going on here. Is there racking going on there?
Are all the windows and doors not opening and closing properly or just in line? You know, there's little things that add up to bigger things. A one off doesn't really tell us much, but we may see another thing and another thing. There's about seven signs of foundation failure that I personally look for. A foundation specialist looks for like 12 signs of foundation failure.
So at least for the time that we're there and what we're doing and the types of things that we're looking for that should lead us down a path of is this a foundational failure? Is this from ground up or from top down? Is that something going on in the attic space? And look through the attic space. And so yeah, yeah, again, you've got to be, you got, you have to be observant. The story I wanted to tell you before and share with you is about a homeowner who actually had a home for several years.
I mean, I think it's probably either five or 10 years. And I had gone in here to do some work and I noticed in the toilet closet that someone, I guess, you know, trying to emphasize the amount of caulk that they use, they went, they went space happy. They must have emptied at least a caulk or maybe even two tubes of caulk around the bottom of the toilet where it met the linoleum. I mean, and it was at least 2 inches thick. I mean, in height. Okay. And it was like, what was that over there?
And he's telling me, well, you know, they, we didn't do that. We. We think that the previous owner did that. Okay? So nobody had done anything. But, you know, the other day we were taking off the baseboard and my guy says to me, he says, you know that the floor feels a little squishy over here. You know, I'm like, okay, well, let me look at it. So we pulled back a little bit of the linoleum right next to the side of the toilet and the plywood.
Now that substrate is at least 3/4 of an inch plywood, because it's on the second floor. Okay? It was like oatmeal. That's how bad it was. I mean, this had to be going on for like years. And he said to me, steve, he says, you know, I didn't want to go use the bathroom upstairs. And then wind up when I left and I was done, I'd be downstairs because it was afraid it was going to fall through the ceiling. That's how bad it was. And you just never know it was linoleum on top covers everything.
You would never, you would never see this. It's just amazing. So again, you've got to. If something doesn't look right in your home, it probably isn't. And if you don't know, you need to call somebody who can tell you, hey, I've got this problem, you know, and. And sometimes, you know, people call me and then, you know, I'll. Unless it's something really odd that I haven't seen before or really serious.
I. Sometimes I've seen enough over my 30 some years that I can have a good idea what might be wrong. But Stan, there's nothing to. There's nothing to take away from actually going and looking at it and inspecting it, because that's the only way to tell for sure, you know, that's why I would say I am a big. A big fan of. You need to get your. You need to get your inspections done. There's just no. No way. Data. One of my old One of my friends is a retired home inspector. Now they used to.
They nicknamed him the. The realtors nicknamed him the deal killer because every time he would go in and look at a home and he'd find all these different things wrong. And here's the realtor, just like that. Please don't find anything wrong. I want to sell this house and make the sale. And I'm like, no, man, look, this is wrong. I mean, like you say, you're not there to, to take sides. I mean, you giving an accurate assessment of what the house looks like? Yeah, for sure.
And like, as a homeowner, if you notice that your toilet is loose to the floor, that, that's a good time to call in a handyman. Start with the handyman because then they can lead you to. Hey, it's actually been leaking so long that the subfloor is damaged. So loose toilet seats is a sign of something more. So it's loose for a reason and sometimes it just needs to be tightened down. But as my grandfather raised me, if you ever pull a toilet, you gotta replace everything, replace the ring.
And even if it was just set, you know, so if you, if you pull it, you got to replace the ring. And, and so absolutely little things like that, you know, helps homeowners if those little things that, like you said, if it doesn't seem right, it probably isn't. And how big of a deal is it is really the road you should travel down? Yeah. Do you get up on a. You find a lot of. Do a lot of roof inspections. Yeah. So every inspection is the roof is part of that inspection.
I say that there's nothing like getting boots on a roof. You should do that every possible chance. Luckily, with the pitches in the valley and most of the construction around here, 90% of the roofs we can get on for those roofs that we can't. Or let's say the builder a new build says we can't. We were drone licensed pilots as well, so that we can fly a drone on it. Licensing is very important for flying drones. I know a lot of people fly drones without licenses.
However, if worst case scenario happens, the last person you want to get spanked by is the faa. Yep. Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, you want to make sure you. You do that. But yeah, again, and that's one of the first questions I always ask when I'm. People are interested in doing solar and I'm like, okay, how old is your roof?
Because I'm not going to put, you know, a 30, $40,000 solar system on your house if your roof is like 15 years old and we know in five years or less that you're going to have to get the substrate underneath or the, the underlayment underneath changed. So let's talk about doing that all at one time and make that happen. And for, for most roofs after we have a really hard monsoon or your neighborhood gets high, high, high winds, that's a really good time just to get a roof evaluation.
Just get a roofer. Now me personally, I know other, other inspectors do one off inspections or that kind of thing. However, I always point people towards a specialist. If they say I have a roof concern, just a roof only concern, I'd say go directly to a specialist because I'm going to go up there and go, yep, I'm concerned too, get a roofer. So let's bypass the person that's going to tell you your suspicions are correct. Just go directly to the source. Generally that's my advice.
Most of the time I can talk, talk through a lot of phone conversations and lead them down the right path. And a home inspector is just a great resource for a home or for a homeowner if they just want to talk to somebody who's unbiased and say what do you think I should do with this thing? Like we're probably a good phone call to somebody to call, especially your home inspector. The inspector that did your home.
You can't pick up the phone and talk to anybody that's going to know your house as much as he does. So that's true. Yeah, I mean I've, we save all the documentation of an inspection. So there's several times I get a call, I just jump in, pull up all the pictures and then I can lead them down the right path. Yeah, it's like, hey, the reset button's hidden in your pantry for the gfci. Right. So yeah, you got to know those things. It's amazing.
But David, tell our listeners a little bit about how they can contact you and your website. Yeah. So whole Home inspections, you can find it on anywhere. I've been around long enough that we're well established. Website is www.phxinspect.com. so abbreviations, abbreviation for Phoenix PA checks, inspect.com or wholehomeinspections llc.com nobody's going to write down a phone number while they're driving or anything. So just look up Whole Home inspections.
You'll see us and feel free to reach out anytime if you have any questions. Home questions. I tell people just think of us as your local Home guru guys that can just call. So that's right. Home guru guys and edged. And again, don't try and be a homeowner who's dangerous with tools and try and fix things yourself. Call the professional. You gotta know your threshold. That's what I'm here for. This way you won't have any problems.
And again, you know, think about, think about your roof and make sure you walk around. I tell everybody, make sure you walk around your house, the exterior at least like once a month just to see if anything looks odd that shouldn't are there, you know, is anything loose, is anything, you know, especially after storms and go back, you know.
And the other one thing that you want to just touch base on that people should be well aware of termite tracks, especially if you don't have a post tension slab. You could conceivably have termites coming up through the insulation expansion boards in between your slab and your stem wall. And that's one of the things that, you know, I'm always on the lookout for. Having a slump box block house doesn't, doesn't stop the termites, no, they're still going to come in.
So even if you're thinking, oh I got a slump block house, it's fine. Termites, termites won't come here and they'll find it. Because if, you know, I've seen it, don't forget that a lot of people I've seen where the termites will actually go up maybe on the inside of a stick built wall. And all of a sudden you've got a track coming down from the center of your ceiling. You're like, what the hell is that? It's a termite track.
And they don't know where they're tunneling, they're just looking for food. So again, those telltale signs of those and you could really tell usually tell an active track from a, an old track. So please make sure you're aware of that. And David, thank you so much. Appreciate it. We'll get the word out and hope to have you back soon. Thank you very much. All right, David Dion from Whole House Inspections.
And we're going to take a short break before we get into our mortgage discussion with our good friend Jeff Cadle from Nexa Mortgage. So stay tuned, don't go away. Hi, I'm Erica Thompson, the dominating designer, a hard working artist with a sense of humor. What is the dominating designer process? It's just like what you see on tv.
We discuss your wants and needs about your project, go over your ideas, then I provide you creative, one of a kind options that fit your budget with respect to your home's value. When we finish your project, you are set to enjoy your new space. I would love to help you with your upcoming project. Please reach out to me on Instagram thedominatingdesigner. Govern the future of sustainable lifestyle living with Boxcar Universe.
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All right, we are back and you are listening to Boxcar Universe and we want to thank David Dion from whole Home Inspections with us and he's going to stick around for a little bit because I'm sure he'll have some two cents to give us regarding some of the stuff that we're going to be talking about. Homes and mortgages and everything next to mortgage with Jeff Kadleck. Jeff, thanks for being here today. And what the heck can we expect in 2025? What's going on? Where have we been?
Where's the mortgages now? And give us a little idea. What kind of ride are we looking at here? You got a coin? Yeah. Can I flip it? And they'll have this good of a decision that I would make telling people what to do with their mortgages at this point. Pull straws, maybe. Pull straws. Interest rates. Yeah, interest rates they've been promising us.
And I say they meaning the economists of the world, those that are much more intelligent than myself, not promising us for almost two years now that rates are coming down. Rates are coming down. But we all know inflation is driving that. And now there's discussions that they're not sure rates are really going to come down that far yet. We were hoping by the end of this year we'd be sitting at the low sixes. Even the high fives would be fine.
Anything lower than that, we're probably going to deal with another economic crash. You don't want rates to go too low. As much as we all love the 1.9 nines and the 2.5s we're all sitting on, the problem with that is number one, right now there's an inventory shortage. Nobody wants to sell that rate. And number two. I'm sorry, there is no number two. I forgot what it was. So I'm going to say there is no number two right now, but it'll come back to me.
But yeah, people are just locked into their homes right now. And if we have rates of 2 and a half and 3 percent, the only reason that's happening is because we're trying to stimulate the economy because it's crashing. So as much as I love those rates, they're great for refi booms. I don't, because it means the market's crashing and we have some problems with the value of our homes going down again. But right now we have an inventory problem and that's our main thing.
But there are strategies out there people can use and they can use. And I'm finding a lot of little niches out there that the ones who are buying are being successful doing. But yeah, it's going to be fun to see once the new administration comes in. Nothing like a real estate guy in the office in the White House. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be, it's, it's definitely going to be interesting on what, what kind of things we're good.
You know, hopefully price, you know, everything's got to happen all at once. You know, we're talking about all these things are wrong. Mortgage rates are, are too high. You know, food's too high, we're paying too much in fuel. I mean, he's got a lot of work to do here and hopefully a lot will happen in 2025 so that this way everything could become more normal again, which I think is really, really important because like you say, a lot of people just, they don't want to leave their home.
You know, they don't want to leave a payment. I mean, most people can't even rent for what they're paying on a mortgage right now. That, that's, that's the other thing. Why would you want to sell it? You know, and the, the strategies that I see working right now for people when it comes to buying homes and a lot of people are just, they are blinded. They're blinded by their rate and they don't even realize that.
I just dealt with a couple last month last, it was actually, it was probably end of December and they just started doing their paperwork this week, but they were just blown away at, you know, they're sitting on a, I believe it was a 3.75% 30 year fixed on their home. Well, their home has about probably $300,000 in equity sitting in it. They're sitting also on about 70 to $80,000 in bad credit card debt, charging them anywhere between 16 to 29%. And they just couldn't fathom leaving their home.
They need a bigger home. And at first they wanted to refinance, but once we recalculated all their stuff, I showed them, listen, at six and a half percent, even that could be there on a buy down or whatnot, you're still going to be able to buy your home and you're still going to have a lower payment every month than what you're living on right now. And they're like, yeah, but we're at like, you know, 1100 bucks a month.
And I said, yeah, but your total expense going out the door every month is about $4,000 a month, not including your utilities and your, you know, the other things, your phone bills. I'm talking debt. And now you can go out, take that $300,000 that's just rotten away inside the equity of your house, grab 70 grand of it, get a new mortgage, put the rest down on a house, and your payment's going to be about 2,600 bucks a month. 2,700 bucks a month.
So now you're, when you've been living on, you've been, you've been spending 4,000amonth on your debt. Now you're on 2,600amonth in debt, no credit cards, and hopefully you don't run them up again. But there's, there's one solution that a lot of people are figuring out. Well, they don't always figure it out. They're just locked on that rate. So sometimes you have to take a look at the blended rate that people are playing with.
And so when I did their blended rate, their blended rate was somewhere around seven and a quarter percent. So I told them, you're already paying seven and a quarter. You think that three and a quarter is, is so great or 3.75 is so great. The blended rate was almost 60 of their debt. So they had an opportunity to, to move on to the next house.
And that's what a lot of people don't realize is that you, you can't just look at that, that great rent payment you're paying because you are paying rent to the bank. You got to look at your whole financial situation and people are, it's like having $300,000 in the bank and not using it to pay down your debt. Yeah, I mean, and obviously he's got equity in the house and the equity's not making him any money. It's just sitting there. No, no, the equity is not actually. It's in my book here.
I have it. I don't want to go through thinking it's personal stuff, but, yeah, just. It's amazing when people. When you can actually get people to the table to talk to them and, you know, I would say seven out of 10 times, it doesn't help. But, you know, those three, three, three times, people will go, wow, I didn't realize. Sometimes no one's real. There's a. There's a new software out there. I see the app all the time. I wish they. Maybe I should create that software.
We can take all your finances and tell you what you're paying every month to the banks and interest. But right now they have that. There's a software out. I can't remember the name of it, but it basically put it, Put, put, put, put this app on your finances through your bank, and it's going to tell you all your payments that you're making to, like, subscriptions. And we've all seen those commercials because people Pay for subscriptions. 70amonth or 25amonth.
I don't even know they're paying for it anymore. Yeah, Rocket Mortgage. It's. It's not Rocket. No, it's Rocket. I think it's Rocket. You're right. I think the app is called Rocket something. But yeah, yeah, it's kind of philosophy. All of a sudden you realize, wait a second, I'm paying $4,000 a month in credit cards and housing payment. And housing payments, only, you know, maybe 1500 of it. That's insane.
And I can go buy a new house even bigger, and I'll only be paying 3,000amonth, and that's $1,000 savings. That's. That's a strategy that most people forget to even think about. Yeah. I think they get stuck. They get stuck in a rut. Yep. You know, they locked into that rate. Yeah, that's exactly right. And they don't want to take. They don't want to take a look at, make, make changes. You know, we're actually like. You were creatures of habit.
Yeah. You know, just like, Just like we were talking about before with David. You know, people just. They get into a habit. They. They see things wrong with their house and they just. They'll accept it instead of trying to fix it. And then. Right. And that's. And that's a problem because it's like, would you do that to your car? The check engine light Came on and you're like. And don't worry about it. It's just check engine. I saw somebody once, they put. He took it about check engine light.
He took a piece of black electrical tape and put it over his dashboard. That covered up the check engine light so he didn't have to see the check engine light. So it's out of sight, out of mind. One of these days it's going to come back and bite you in the ass.
I tell you, David's going to be in a lot of trouble for even mentioning to go look at your home reports from when you bought the home because a lot of husbands in the area are going to be going, son of a. Glad my wife doesn't listen to anything I talk about. So we'll be fine. I'm safe. Oh, you're safe. Okay. But you. But. But list down. I'd be doing a whole bunch of that when I bought the home 20 years ago, they told me was wrong with it. Right. But you know, could you. Hey, as long as.
As long as you don't get into it, you know, and. And you have it, nothing's happened. Don't worry about it. Right. Yeah. Your roof will last forever. Sure. Now I gotta go out to my garage and find peeling paint. Son of a. Ah, See that? Yeah. Sinking paint. That's what we're talking about. Yeah. That was just amazing.
All right, we're gonna take one more break before we wrap things up on the mortgage side and we're gonna talk a little bit about some of the things that are going to be influencing the rates that want everybody to be cognizant of. Because it. If you're looking to sell your home again. Jeff made a very good point. You could have an awesome rate in spending a lot more in other debt.
But if somebody and a financial planner or somebody takes a whole entire look at your financial situation, you know, changing your rate and maybe moving up in with your home rate and doing away with your debt could be just the ticket that you need and you wind up having more money in your pocket. So keep that thought in mind. And when we come back, we're going to talk about those other factors. So don't go wait. You're listening to Boxcar Universe.
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To have someone come out from our team may only take a portion of a day, but it could potentially save you a lot of money or your life. And that's just another way Mr. Electric has the power to make your life better. All right, we are back, and you are listening to Boxcar universe. And today is home inspection day and talking about mortgage day. So I guess, you know, obviously a lot of us who own homes, you could say you're under the influence. And I don't mean alcohol.
I'm talking about mortgage. Most of us probably on high mortgage. The other people that have low mortgages, you know, Jeff brought up a good thing before that we went to break. People with low mortgages could have just, you know, issues, different kind of issues than people that, you know, are out getting 6 and 7%, you know, mortgages, you know, but like Jeff had said to me and a lot of other people, it's like, you know, this isn't going to last forever.
If you could afford the payment at 6 or 7% and you want to get your house now and you can't wait, you could always refinance, you know, so you could get it at 6% and wait, you know, another year or two, hopefully. Yeah. What do they say? Marry the house and date the mortgage? Is that what. Date the rate. There you go. Date the rate. There you go. All right, date the rate.
But, but what do you think are some of the, you know, now that where we're going now, what, what influenced mortgage rates to go up? I mean, we did talk about a little bit about inflation and of course, like you say, supply and demand. You know, if there, if there's not a lot of supply, obviously the rates are going to go up because people are going to want to buy. I remember in the last four years and I just couldn't believe it. You know, the rental rates were just absurd.
No one, at least I never heard of in all my life before. Like what the mid. Like we'll say 2022, when the rental rates. You people were actually bidding on rental rates to rent apartments where, you know, that was unheard of. You know, a rental rate was a rental rate. The only time you heard people bidding on things is if you wanted to get a property. I remember when my ex wife and I and my family, we bought a Property back in 2007.
We were in a bidding war between another person that wanted the five acres and us. Well, you know, we wind up spending $50,000 more on those five acres than, than it was listed for, but we got it. But never, never bidding on rental rates. I couldn't believe it. You know, the rental rates are bad enough. You're going to try and spend more money just to get housing. This is ridiculous. This is the, this isn't the American way.
Right, but so what other things are going to influence us going into, you know, 2025 that you think are going to, are going to get. Where do you think the rates will get down? Do you think they'll hit the low fives in the next year? I don't know if they're going to hit that low in the next year, Steve. I truly believe that it's going to be. It's going to be a slow ride down. It's always a fast ride up and a slow ride down. But the main thing that's.
That's been hurting our, in my opinion, I mean, I mean, there's a lot of different economic forecasts and what's happening, but we know that our country is in serious debt. It's the, it's the demand on our money, our money supply, the monetary policies, things like that. You know, if you have only 10 pounds of gold in the world, how much is that gold worth? We know the game. It's a money supply. And if you print up more gold, how much is that gold going to be worth?
If you print up double the gold, half the price. If you print up another double third, now 30% more gold, what do you have? Your prices keep dropping because the demand is low. And that's monetary policies. And then the other thing is just, I mean, government policies, it's a deficit spending that's killing us. They're spending money pulling, you know, paying Peter to pay pull.
If you and I ran our household the way our government runs our money supply or our monetary policies, we'd be broke because you can't spend more than you make. Right now, America's spending more on interest than they are bringing in. So that creates a problem that, you know, no matter who's in office might not be able to control it. So it's scary.
I mean, when you, the other thing you have to understand in the economic policies that are killing us is we all remember the minimum wage fight and we knew this would happen. Minimum wage fight. Basically think about, you have a restaurant and you're paying all your employees and salaries is minimum wage and they're making money on tips and that's how they make their earnings. But if you force me to pay them double, where's that money coming from?
It's not coming out of the owner's pocket, it's coming out of the consumer's pocket. Right. So that's, that's really where we're going. We're looking at the tariff talks now. I mean, will tariffs do anything to do it, it has the same effect as taxes, but I think it's going to, I, I, in my opinion, I think it's going to keep more, more countries in line with what they're getting away with in our country as far as trade deficits. So, but there's so many things that, that take it to effect.
I mean, we, I'm tired of hearing about the supply chain disruption because that thing that should be over by now, I believe. But I don't know. What are your thoughts? What do you think? I, I, I think it should, I don't think that should be even an issue anymore. I mean, we pretty much all caught up, you know, but you never know. The, you know, the outgoing administration, you know, will probably have something to say about that they'll probably uses as an excuse for the way things are right now.
But it's just, you know, like I say, it's, I'm looking Forward that with all these different situations that we're talking about for homeowners to be able, it should not cost you the same amount of money to rent an apartment that it costs for a mortgage payment. It just, it just shouldn't. I mean, what's that? What's the advantage? Well, what happens if we have, if mortgages are less than rent? Guess what happens? We run out of supply. Well, that's true.
Everybody's running out to buy houses now. Why pay rent? That happened in 2004, 5 and 6. We were just dealing with people that like, hey man, I'm paying $1,000 a month in rent and I could buy a house for $800. Let's go do that. Unless you get the tax write off, which, you know, a lot of people don't take into consideration. But the other challenge, Steve, we have is our, you know, the housing prices in some areas of the country have just skyrocketed and the incomes have not kept up with it.
So when you have that mixture where it's going to take a while for people's incomes to go up. So let's raise minimum wage. I'm kidding. But incomes have got to go up in order to afford. That's, that's my biggest challenge with the buyers. I don't have any less calls than I had in 20, 21, 22 and 23. 22. In 23, the calls pretty much went the same way, but they started a little different.
I used to be able to tell, ask people how much they made, what was their debt, let's see what we can qualify you for, blah, blah, blah. Now my first question is how much do you want to pay? And they'll give me a number and I'll say, how much do you look at to buy? And they'll give me a number.
So if someone comes in and saying, well, I want to spend 800 bucks a month, but I want to buy a half a million dollar home, I say, Great, you got 200,000 in the bank because you're not buying a 3% down half a million dollar home and going to get an eighteen hundred dollars a month payment. And that not only could some people not afford it, some people could they just like, oh, I'm not paying $4,000 a month to buy a house. So it's a pricing issue in some parts of the country, not everywhere.
I mean, it's just where your housing index is the best. And there are some parts of the country that are out there that the housing index is low enough where people can still afford based on their income. And that's, that's what a lot of these cities have to get to. A lot of these metro metropolitan areas have to get to is our incomes have got to increase. Our income's gone up dramatically.
I mean, our medium income in Phoenix is at $80,000 now in some areas when probably three, four, five years ago was probably in the 50s to 60s. Yeah, I was going to say 60. Yeah. Yeah. So the income's going up and you know, to afford a home, you probably need to make about 125 to 150,000 a year. Family, that's between, you know, a family, they have to put. That's how much income has to go in the application, whether it be one, one person, two people.
So people just have to buy smaller or they just have to find other ways to consolidate their debt. Which I think that is the hidden gem that most people aren't paying attention to. Yep. They have car payments that they probably could get rid of. That's the other challenge in my industry I see. I mean, you have a 27 year old kid driving around with an $800 payment on his car. Yeah. You want to buy a house? Let's just get rid of your car. Stupid. Yeah, stupid. It's youth, man.
I would have done the same thing if I had the money. Yeah, if you had the money. Well, it's like you have the money to burn. You can't meet women driving around in your house. You got to get them there somehow. Right. That's true. You're not, you're not going to get that mare on the scooter, that's for sure. That's right, man. So it's. And you know what, we work through this all the time.
It's been a push, but yeah, I just think it's, it's just, you know, if we can get rates down, I think if we get rates down, like just even a point, you're going to get probably about another million people in this country can afford to buy a home. And that's our biggest challenge. Yeah. Well, I was going to say the good plus that just came out. Medical, medical collections are now getting taken off credit reports, which is the big yahoo that just came through last week.
They announced which is, which was great policy. The Biden administration pushed through and it was, you know, I don't know why they waited four years to do it. They should have done in the beginning, but that's a, that's a policy that has really hurt a lot of people or that's policy that's going to help a lot of people. Out of almost 100 million Americans in the country right now, their credit score is going to drop, jump by almost 20%.
So that can take a lot of people to the next level where their rates are going to get a little better to help them. But now they're not going to sit there and go, we used to have a, we have to use a calculation of their total medical debt. And if they have, you know, $10,000 in medical debt, we got to take 2 or 3% of it and count it as a payment. And that excludes them from buying a house. So big, big thing that should help our housing market in some areas.
Well, we all hope for the best going into 20, 25, and a lot of changes coming down the pike. So we're going to just see what happens. So we want to be able to have more people selling homes and doing that so David could have more inspections. I mean, we all have to feed our families, right? So it's all got to be good. And David, you can't be killing the deals. They called the last guy the deal killer. They don't call me.
All right, I'll say to Steve, I said, you know, they put appraises under, you know what happened to appraisers in my industry? They got massive control over them. So they could, I could no longer say, hey, call my buddy Bob the appraiser. I was curious if they were ever going to do that to the inspector industry, because I'm not speaking of you, but I've had many real estate agents in my career tell me, yeah, I'm not using that inspector anymore. He kills too many of my deals.
I just remember that, as Steve said that. So have you heard anything about that going on in the industry at all? Is that something that they've been discussed? There's talks of controlling our industry more than what it is. I mean, Arizona is a licensed state, which is good. We have a state board. We have SOP to follow. That's great. That's about as much government as you want for a home inspection company or industry.
Because if you get too involved and you, you, you tighten the rope too much, you're going to get a bunch of rubber stamps and checklist type of inspection stuff where it's, it's not going to be what it is. Now, you, the homeowner is the client. The buyer is the client. The client hires us. They are the ones signing our agreement. Yeah, realtors are great.
They're great referral Source and realtors refer inspectors that they know their temperament, they know, they know how they're going to present findings. They're going to know that they're not going to be on the hook because the inspector is diligent and does their, their best job.
And not only that, they can relay that information to a client without freaking them out and just explaining that a house is a house and it's going to have some things and these are, these are resources to fix these things. These are the right people to call and be a resource for the client. So but again, the person paying me is my client and their best interest is what I have to have for ethical purposes. I mean look, they're the ones that at the end of the day I need to satisfy them.
They need to be educated and they need to know that they have a resource in me. And what realtors appreciate that they know that hey, they're not the ones going to get the call. And if they do get the call, they can simply go, just call Dave, just call your home inspector. He's going to take walk you through this. I mean whatever comes up, we're the resource for them.
So I've been on both sides of that where I've actually had, you know, real estate agents call me up saying I can't believe he missed this, the roof is leaking the next month or something. I'm like call the, call the inspector. Right, call the inspector. Call the inspector. In your defense, the poor realtors are getting beaten up and sued because they didn't tell the buyer. They say the seller was hiding.
I've seen those, I've seen more my share of those sellers hiding stuff and that's why, you know, it should have been the realtor's responsibility to find it. Yeah. Anyway, Jeff, tell our listeners how they can contact you. They can find me at low rates, fast closings.com, real simple or just give me a ring on the phone. I'm old fashioned, man. I started this business when we use carbon paper. So for 4663 if I don't know how to do it, I'll just click the memory button from 20 years ago.
I'll find out. I did it before, just forgot. All right, one, one more time was left. One more time with the phone, with the phone number. Okay. No carbon paper. 480241 home. H O M E. No one knows how to do that but us. But it's 480241-4663. All right, that's great. All right. Jeff, thank you so much for being on the show today. And thanks for all our listeners for watching.
For listening to Boxcar Universe, you may remember we are your source for cutting edge information for remodeling and renovating your home, plus container homes and container pools. So if you are thinking of building a container home or pool, give us a call. We've got a new 800 number for all our listeners worldwide. It's one eight triple three boxcar. One eight triple three boxcar. Or you could email us, as Jeff said, the old fashioned way.
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