The Jon Sanchez Show

Opening Monologue Imagine spending months preparing to buy a home. You improve your credit. You save the down payment. You provide tax returns, bank statements and pay stubs. The lender reviews everything and gives you a preapproval. Then you find the house. It has the right location, the right floor plan and enough room for your family. You write the offer, the seller accepts it and you begin imagining your life in the home. Then the telephone rings. There is a problem with the financing. Your income hasn’t changed. Your credit score hasn’t fallen. You haven’t purchased a new truck or opened another credit card. The problem isn’t you. The problem is the house. This is something many homebuyers do not understand. A mortgage lender does not simply approve a borrower. The lender must approve the borrower, the loan program and the property securing the loan. A preapproval primarily tells you that your income, assets, debts and credit appear to satisfy certain requirements based upon the information reviewed at that time. It does not guarantee that every property you select will qualify for financing. The appraisal might come in below the purchase price. The appraiser may identify repairs required by the loan program. The property may have an unpermitted addition that cannot be included in the value. An accessory dwelling unit may not be a legally permitted rental. A solar lease may add another monthly obligation to the buyer’s qualification. The homeowners association may have inadequate insurance, pending litigation, excessive delinquencies or a large special assessment. The roof may be too old for an insurance company to accept. The property may sit in a wildfire or flood-risk area where adequate insurance is unavailable or prohibitively expensive. The buyer can be perfectly qualified—and the property can still fail. That possibility is especially important today. Mortgage rates are approximately 7.4%, meaning many buyers are already near the limit of what they can comfortably afford. An unexpected $300 HOA payment or a homeowners-insurance premium substantially higher than estimated can change the monthly payment enough to destroy the buyer’s qualification. Today, I am joined by Realtor Aaron Clark and mortgage professional Dwight Millard. Aaron is going to explain how buyers and agents can investigate properties before becoming emotionally and financially committed. Dwight will explain what the lender must know about the house, how the loan program affects property eligibility and which problems can be repaired, documented or negotiated—and which problems may kill the transaction. We will cover appraisals, insurance, solar agreements, condominiums, homeowners associations, unpermitted additions, wells, septic systems and property condition. Most importantly, we will give buyers a checklist they can use before submitting an offer. Because getting preapproved is only the first approval. The second approval belongs to the house.

Good afternoon, Northern Nevada. Today we’re talking about a part of estate planning that too many families overlook until they’re under pressure. “Imagine you’re in an accident, you’re unconscious, or you’re dealing with an illness that makes it hard to understand information or communicate a decision. Your spouse or children are at the hospital. Bills still need to be paid. The bank may need instructions. The doctors need to know what you want. “Who has the authority to step in? And even if you named somebody, do they know what you want them to do? “Today, we’re going to make this simple. We’ll talk about the financial power of attorney, the health care power of attorney, and the instructions that can help your family make decisions in line with your wishes. These documents do different jobs, and a trust by itself may not answer every question.”

Rental real estate can create wealth in more ways than most investors realize. Cory Edge, Dwight Millard and Jon Sanchez examine the five potential profit centers of a rental property: cash flow, mortgage principal reduction, appreciation, tax benefits and future rent growth. They also analyze a hypothetical property and explain why a good wealth-building investment may still be a poor source of retirement income.

Stocks are celebrating. Bonds are screaming. Oil is boiling. And the American labor market may be running out of gas. Welcome to one of the strangest economic environments we have experienced in decades. This week, the stock market once again approached record highs. Investors appear optimistic. Technology companies are rising. Artificial intelligence continues attracting enormous amounts of capital. Corporate earnings expectations remain strong. If you looked only at the stock market, you might conclude that the American economy is doing beautifully. But then you look across the street at the bond market. The yield on the 10-year United States Treasury is approximately 5.25%—near its highest level since 2002. That yield influences mortgage rates, business loans, government borrowing costs and the value investors place on practically every financial asset in America. Then we have oil. Brent crude is above $100 per barrel, threatening to push gasoline, transportation and production costs higher. Then we have the labor market. Last Friday, the government reported that America created only 29,000 jobs in September. That was not simply a disappointing number. Over the previous 12 months, monthly job growth averaged only 45,000. And yet the stock market rallied. How can all of these things be happening at the same time? The answer begins with understanding that the stock market is not the economy. Stocks primarily measure what investors believe publicly traded companies will earn in the future. The bond market measures something different. It reflects expectations for inflation, interest rates, government borrowing and the value of money over time. Stocks are voting on profits. Bonds are voting on the cost of money. And right now, they are delivering very different messages. The stock market believes that large American companies—particularly technology and artificial-intelligence companies—can continue growing their profits. The bond market is warning that inflation may remain stubborn, the government must borrow enormous amounts of money, and investors are demanding substantially more compensation to lend that money for ten or thirty years. Both markets could be correct—at least temporarily.

The most important showing of your home may happen at 11:30 at night, on a buyer’s phone, while you are asleep. That buyer is sitting on the couch, scrolling through listings. Your home appears on the screen for a few seconds alongside dozens of competitors. They see the price. They see the lead photograph. They swipe through the first few images. And then they make a decision: save it, share it, schedule a showing—or eliminate it. The seller never meets that buyer. The listing agent may never hear from them. But the showing still happened—and the house may already have been rejected. That is why selling a home today is not simply about putting a sign in the yard and uploading photographs. It is a digital product launch. The price determines whether buyers discover the property. The first photograph determines whether they stop scrolling. The remaining photographs, video, floor plan and description determine whether they become curious enough to take the next step. And in today’s higher-rate housing market, buyers can afford to be selective. Mortgage rates are once again above 7%, and more than one out of every five active sellers recently reduced their asking price. That means sellers cannot assume that simply being on the market will create demand. A listing can receive thousands of online views and still fail to generate a single meaningful showing. So, what does the technology tell us? If buyers see the listing but do not click, is the lead photo failing? If they click but do not save it, is the price wrong? If they save it but never schedule a showing, is there uncertainty about the property? And if they tour the home but do not write an offer, did the online marketing create expectations that the house could not fulfill? Today, I am joined by Realtor Aaron Clark, one of the most technologically sophisticated agents I know.