Janet Yellen, The Federal Reserve Chairwoman, said that if the economy is on track with job market improvement and inflation climbing closer to its target rate, the fed will start raising interest rates by the end of 2015. This is a move most have been expecting.
I presume rates will rise very gradually, and it will be a while before it translates to higher mortgage rates, but the process seems closer than its been in many years. Those of us who have been around real estate for a while know that the super-low rates we see today are not the norm. For most of real estate mortgages’ history, rates have been much higher than they are now.
Thus it seems quite likely that in the coming years we will see rates that could climb back into what we used to see in the past few couple of decades. Mortgages reaching 8%, anyone? It’s possible but will not happen quickly. Of course, some veterans remember mortgage rates being higher than that – much higher. Assuming mortgage rates will indeed rise in the coming years, it only drives home the tried-and-true message even stronger: buy a good home in a decent area, finance it with a 30-year fixed-rate loan and you have put an excellent “stake in the ground” towards your financial future.
A 30-year fixed-rate loan has always been amazing. To foreigners they seem like an impossible miracle: how can the loan payments and remaining balance NOT be pegged to the cost of living? That seems like a fairy tale. How could everything else rise with inflation, on average, except for one and only one item: the mortgage rate on a fixed-rate loan?
Once people realize how absurd this is, it becomes crystal-clear: it’s amazing for the BORROWER.
As a borrower – go ahead and get these incredible loans. You don’t have to wait 30 years for the loan to pay off. After some time – perhaps 10 years, perhaps 12, 15 or so – the loan, while still having time remaining on it, will likely look like a joke – VERY low payments and very low balance – as good as paid off in essence. (Down to almost a rounding error as the years advance.)
Inflation AND your tenant pay the loan off. Inflation makes it lower in real dollar value and the tenant makes the payments for you (and leaves extra for you in the form of cash flow which increases as the years go by since the loan payments are fixed, but rents are not). This message is always true – regardless of what interest rates might be.
However when interest rates are so incredibly low as they are now – it behooves real estate investors to go out and buy homes, finance them with 30-year fixed-rate loans, rinse and repeat. This is a window in time that may not repeat itself for many decades. Take advantage of it.
In our ICG 1-Day Expo coming up NEXT SATURDAY 5/30/2015 near SFO, we will discuss this point and many others. There will be lender guests who will teach us about loans for people with over 10 loans in place, loans for foreigners, and other special loan types. There will be market teams for the best real estate markets in the nation. There will be special real estate deals and special houses that can start the process we discuss above for you.
As always, we will also have experts on insurance, credit, financial planning, and other topics, plus a lot of networking. Anyone mentioning this blog can attend free with two guests – please email us at info@wordpress-477489-3816299.cloudwaysapps.com to register.