home buying

YFP 316: Real Tips From Recent First-Time Home Buyers

Posted on by Tim U

Neal and Kaitie Fox join Nate Hedrick, The Real Estate RPh, to reflect on the lessons learned as first-time homebuyers.

About Today’s Guest

Neal and Kaitie travelled from their hometown of Coshocton, OH to attend Cedarville University in 2011. A year later they married at age 19 and began their joint financial adventure. Kaitie began working at the University food service contractor and eventually became the Head Baker, supporting the family through pharmacy school and until the birth of their second son. Now, Kaitie is home raising Timothy, 5, and David, 1, while Neal works. Neal completed his PharmD at Cedarville and a PGY1 residency at Premier Health Miami Valley Hospital, a Level 1 Trauma Center with over 950 licensed beds and over 110 adult ICU beds. He currently serves as one of the Medical ICU Clinical Pharmacy Specialists and the Research Project Coordinator for the PGY1 pharmacy residency program. He occasionally gives lectures or hands-on training at Cedarville University while also taking APPE students from several pharmacy schools throughout the year.

Episode Summary

Buying a home can be a daunting, exciting, and overwhelming experience. On this weeks podcast, sponsored by Real Estate RPh, we are joined by Neal and Kaitie Fox to discuss how they went about buying their first home. Neal is a pharmacist and Kaitie is a stay-at-home mom, and in this episode, they tell us what made them decide to buy a house when they did, what they would say to someone wanting to purchase their first home, and how interest rates and other aspects played a role in their decision. They delve into how they chose a financial lender and why they decided to change who they financed their house with at the last minute before explaining how YFP assisted them in this process. When looking for a real estate agent, it is important that you find someone who takes your needs into consideration and communicates effectively, and Neal and Kaitie explain why they decided to change agents early on in their journey. Finally, our guests remind us to use our resources wisely and ask as many questions as possible when buying a home.

Key Points From the Episode

Introducing today’s guests, Kaitie and Neal Fox, and a brief overview of their careers.
What made Neal and Kaitie decide to buy a home when they did.
Their advice on a starting point for someone wanting to buy a home in the near future.
Why interest rates were a barrier for them when buying their first home.
Things to consider when choosing an area to look for a house in.
The importance of moving fast when you find a house you’re interested in.
How Kaitie and Neal navigated financing a house and what that process looked like for them.
Their home-buying team, changing agents, and why YFP was so helpful to the Fox family.
The importance of having clear and responsive communication with your real estate agent.
Why you must utilize your resources and ask questions when closing on a house.

Episode Highlights

“The biggest thing is to find that person who is your trusted expert in home buying.” — @ThePharmFox [0:05:10]

“Have at least two, maybe even three [financing] options because as long as your pre-approval is still valid, you should be able to pick the best option that fits you.” — @ThePharmFox [0:16:44]

“Utilize those resources that are right there [and] are helping you through the process anyway.” — @fox_kaitie [0:29:06]

“Expect the unexpected because it is a very long, complicated process and you will almost certainly run into something that you didn’t think about before.” — @ThePharmFox [0:33:51]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.4] TU: Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrick here, and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast, where each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. Today, I pass the mic over to Nate Hedrick, founder of Real Estate RPH and cohost of the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast, where he welcomes Kaitie and Neal Fox to talk about their journey as recent first-time home buyers. They discussed the lessons learned along the journey, including common pitfalls to avoid that will be helpful to anyone that is looking to buy a home for the first time. So let’s hear it from today’s sponsor, Real Estate RPH, and then we’ll jump into Nate’s interview with Kaitie and Neal Fox.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:00:39.2] TU: Are you planning to buy a home in the next year or two? With the state of current home prices and mortgage rates, the home-buying process can feel overwhelming but what if you can leverage the knowledge and ongoing support of someone who has worked with dozens of other pharmacists through their home-buying journey, all at no cost to you? I’m talking about Nate Hedrick at the Real Estate RPH. Nate is a pharmacist who has been a partner of YFP for many years now and offers a home-buying concierge service that can help you find a high-quality agent in your area and support you throughout the entire process. So head on over to realestaterph.com or click on the link in the show notes to schedule your free 30-minute jumpstart planning session with Nate.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:26.1] NH: Hey, Neal, Kaitie, welcome to the show.

[0:01:28.1] KF: Hi, thank you.

[0:01:29.2] NF: Yeah, thanks for having us.

[0:01:30.4] NH: Yeah, absolutely. I knew when we had first talked that you guys are going to be fun to work with and I’m excited we get the opportunity to talk all about home buying today with a couple of recent home buyers, it’s going to be great. So maybe for our audience, just kind of give us a brief introduction on yourselves and a little bit about your pharmacy career and we’ll take it from there.

[0:01:49.7] NF: Yeah, sure. So I’m Neal Fox, I am a 2018 graduate of Cedarville University. I practice as a clinical pharmacy specialist in the medical ICU at a large level-one trauma center in Dayton, Ohio with just over 900 licensed beds and just over 110 adult ICU beds.

[0:02:15.5] KF: I’m Kaitie, I’m Neal’s wife, and I am currently a stay-at-home mom with our two boys and I’d previously been a baker for about eight years.

[0:02:24.7] NH: And we got connected, gosh, it was back in late 2022, talking about you guys are ready to buy your first home and we wanted to help you with that and so you know, what we thought we do today is get together with you guys, talk a little bit about first time home buying with someone who has recently gone through it and you know, talk through any pitfalls or words of advice. Things you guys learned along the way because I think a lot of our audience is sitting out there looking at current market conditions, looking at the current financial situation, and saying, “I don’t know if I can do this” or “I’ve got questions but I don’t even know where to start” or, “I don’t even know enough to ask questions” right?” I think if we talked through a couple of things, talk through the process, it might help a lot of the audience out there that might be trying this for the first time. So if you’ll indulge me, I’ll be firing off the questions and you guys just give me your hot take on what it was like and we can learn from each other. So does that sound good?

[0:03:14.1] NF: Yeah.

[0:03:14.1] KF: Right, yeah.

[0:03:15.0] NF: No problem, happy to share.

[0:03:16.5] NH: Awesome. So I think, you know, one of the things we focus here a lot at YFP is kind of the “why” behind the financial decision and it could be putting money in your 401(k) or paying off your student loan or in this case, you know, buying a home. Did you have a particular “why” behind you know, buying a home like when you felt you were – you felt like you were ready to do that?

[0:03:34.3] KF: Frankly, at this point, we have outgrown our current living space. We’re currently renting a two-bedroom apartment and we have two young children and then ourselves and it’s getting very, very cramped very quickly.

[0:03:49.6] NF: Yeah, home ownership had always been an intermediate to long-term financial goal for us. We definitely were not in a position to do that coming right out of residency but over the last few years, we’ve been able with YFPs help a lot to get into a better position and now for us, the living situation, the space, you know, we’ve been room sharing with our 14-month-old for 14 months.

[0:04:16.4] KF: 14 months.

[0:04:17.8] NF: So we don’t really have anywhere else to put him. So the “why” for this year was kind of that, like we didn’t feel like we had the option to wait much. So in some ways, that made it easier because we had the resolve to get it done, to go all the way through the process.

[0:04:33.4] NH: Yeah, I love that and I am sure there are many people resonating with that of like, “I am out of space” and sometimes it’s kids, sometimes it’s pets, sometimes you know, whatever it is, right? It’s time to make that move, so I think that totally resonates. What about you know the getting started process, right? So you have this “why” and you say, “Look, we’re out of space, we got to move, it’s time to buy” but how do you get started? Like, now that you’ve done this and kind of looking backward, you know, we talk about ways to get started all the time but for you guys, specifically, like what would you recommend as a decent starting point for somebody who is thinking about buying a home in the next, let’s say six months?

[0:05:07.7] NF:1 Yeah, for sure. So I think, the biggest thing is to find that person who is your trusted expert in home buying. So obviously, I’m not that person, that’s not what I went to school for and if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably not that person either, right? So you know, what I’ve always said, what we’ve always said working with YFP is they’re like our money mechanics. So in the same way, that I go to a mechanic for my car because I know nothing about my car, because again, that’s not what I went to school for, I need a trusted person, a trusted expert who can tell me what’s wrong, explain it to me in simple terms and then help me make a decision very similar to how they teach healthcare professionals that you know, we need to explain things in patient-friendly language. You know, I need that same person when it comes to money, financial decisions and that’s what YFP is for us, and then home buying is another like sub-specialty within that. So that’s why we immediately went through YFP to find a point of contact, which started with you, Nate, to guide us through the first part of that process.

[0:06:21.9] NH: Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense and again, we’re biased here, right? At YFP because we like what we offer but I think you’re totally right, you don’t know where to start, getting a great expert on your team is a great place to start, you know? We’ll talk about this more in detail but we use the home-buying concierge services with you guys, getting you connected with a great real estate agent and then getting off and running. We even had a couple of bumps at the beginning, which I think I like to talk about here in a bit but you know, having that point of contact is how you get passed those bumps. I think that will resonate really well. So I appreciate you sharing that.

[0:06:49.9] NF: It was a really good way for us to initiate a process that we felt like we had studied and talked about but didn’t really know what to do and had never been through before.

[0:07:02.8] KF: Right.

[0:07:03.3] NH: Makes a lot of sense, I like that. One of the things that I think people are talking about right now that I think is kind of scary, especially when you’re thinking about getting started is that “current market” right? High-interest rates, lower inventory, do you feel like those were a factor, a barrier to you guys buying your first home?

[0:07:18.8] KF: To some degree, especially the higher interest rates right now because you know, we had this idea of you know, we have this wide range that we are able to buy from and so then looking at our interest rate and talking to our realtor, we were able to decide like, “Okay, we need to look at this you know, lower end spectrum” to say, “You know, we’re comfortable with this monthly payment” because of the interest rates. I feel like we didn’t really run into like low inventory in our area. I mean, hundreds of houses that were for sale but again, it was making sure that they were within our budget, that we had kind of decided on, that we were comfortable with paying like every month.

[0:08:01.4] NF: Yeah, and we’ll talk about this more in a moment but there was definitely, Kaitie was doing more of the house watching and there was a decent amount of turnover even though there were constantly houses up, they weren’t staying on the market in general for very long and what we realize, so what Kaitie was alluding to is we kind of had a number for total purchase price that we thought we would be able to get to. And then we realized that it was less about total purchase price and more about what our monthly payment would be because you know, we’ve worked with YFP for years on thinking about like a zero-based budget and you know, you can have whatever purchase price you want but if that monthly payment doesn’t fit within what you can reasonably do and right now, we’re a one-income household, you know, that was the number that we needed to focus on more.

So once we realized that, the thing about the market in our area that I came to realize was that it’s not homogenous, that different neighborhoods, even different sides of the same highway, obviously different school districts and things like that, there is a wide variety in terms of what you were going to see in price per square foot and stuff like that and thinking about us, for our family, you know we’re thinking about possibly private school for the kids. So public school district wasn’t as important in considering these things, we actually shifted our focus to a different area within our geographic region that’s really only like, five minutes away or so from – at least, in terms of distance – from my work from where we are now and where we had been looking and that made a big difference in terms of the length of time that houses were staying on the market and their cost per size.

[0:09:48.8] NH: It totally shows how local real estate is, right? It can be different 20 minutes away, 10 minutes away sometimes. Just like you said, you know if you shift that locust of search from a five-minute geographic area to a different five-minute geographic area, you’re going to get totally different results. So that’s good to hear that you know, I think you guys went into it with the right mindset but were able to shift as you started to learn more and see what made sense in terms of the areas you were looking in and the numbers and ultimately, that monthly payment is what made that determination, so that’s cool. Did you lose out on any houses? I know you said that the inventory was turning over quickly, did you lose out on any houses or anything? I mean, I know a lot of people are struggling with that right now.

[0:10:26.8] KF: The first couple of houses that we looked at were super early in our process. We kind of went into them thinking you know, we probably aren’t going to put an offer on these but we want to get the feel for actually physically going with our agent to a house and looking at it and seeing what that feels like but I think both of those houses went off the market that night. Like, the night that we looked at them, they went off the market.

[0:10:49.2] NF: And both of them, we went there and either someone was already showing when we got there or someone showed up to show before we left. So that was in the initial “hotter market” near our geographic area but even though we weren’t planning necessarily to make an offer that early in the process, it did give me some trepidation. This feeling like, “Oh man, when we find the right house, we have to move really, really fast or we’re going to lose out on it.” You know, that’s how it made me feel, that was my initial impression to the market, these houses just gone.

[0:11:29.1] NH: I think a lot of people feel that way and it can feel more overwhelming, especially if you’re like, looking at a house and someone shows up and you know, waiting for you to leave so they can go look at it. That feeling is like, I’m with you. I totally get it.

[0:11:39.2] KF: It was a little scary there first, you know, not knowing if we were going to be able to get the house that we wanted.

[0:11:44.5] NH: But I like your approach of you know, even though we’re not maybe a hundred percent ready or these aren’t houses that we’re a hundred percent certain on. It’s nice to go through the process, walk through the steps, and understand that, what that looks like so that when you were ready, when that house did pop up and come along, you can make the action point very quickly. So I think that was a smart move, that makes a lot of sense. You know, so talking about looking at houses then the big thing that I think people run into at that point too is, “Okay, well now, I’m ready to look at homes, I figured out my budget, you know, all these pieces are in place but what about financing?” I think that paying for a new house is a pretty overwhelming part of the process. How did you navigate that I guess and what did that look like for you guys?

[0:12:20.1] NH: So through our local realtor contact, we first were talking to her about – we had talked with YFP over the years about the different options available to healthcare professionals like pharmacists, you know the “physician style loans” or healthcare professional loans, whatever and particular institution chooses to call them and we’d said, “Hey, you know, this is something we’re interested in because we’re pretty sure we qualify and do you know anyone who does this?” and she got a contact that she was pretty sure did. So that was the first bank loan officer that we talked to and separately, through YFP, we had a resource that let us look by our state and my degree, which is pharmacy, PharmD, and see what banks have the pharmacist included in their physician-style loan programs. So we kind of had that list and then we had this contact and we worked through the process of pre-approval and kind of talking about some of the things and we actually found out that that bank didn’t routinely include pharmacists. The loan officer was super great, she felt like she could get us an exception and essentially get us one of those style loans, and then the week that we went to get that pre-approval all the way through, get that loan kind of nailed down was the week that there was some kind of like banking crisis, some bank in California.

[0:13:53.0] NF: Collapsed?

[0:13:53.4] NH: Collapsed. Yeah.

[0:13:54.4] NF: Something like that.

[0:13:55.6] NH: I remember.

[0:13:57.1] NF: And so that bank institutions were not doing any exceptions right now.

[0:13:59.7] KF: Yeah, they completely locked on exceptions for all of their loans.

[0:14:02.4] NF: So she put together the best custom loan that she could do for us and we went ahead and got that pre-approval but even she said like, “You should talk to another lender and see what they can offer you.” So then we went back to that list that we had through the resource from YFP and talked to one of those lenders and they, who did explicitly include pharmacists in their healthcare professional loan program and we went through the process with them as well of getting pre-approved. Now, their pre-approval was a little more vague in terms of what the interest rate would be in things. It was a lot of like, “You’re pre-approved but you won’t know any details until you give us like a purchase price and a date” kind of thing.

[0:14:49.3] KF: Yeah.

[0:14:53.1] NF: So we actually ended up going all the way through the process, getting to the point of making an offer, starting off with bank B, and then when we got the final numbers, it was not good.

[0:15:04.3] KF: They were terrible.

[0:15:05.6] NF: They were not good compared to bank A, and so we ended up switching lenders in that final week of between putting in the offer and having the offer accepted. We ended up switching lenders because everything across the board between the two offers was better for bank A, even though it didn’t end up being explicitly like a physician-style loan program. So that was surprising to me, it definitely wasn’t something I was expecting. I also didn’t fully realize before the process that pre-approvals only last for a certain period of time and because they’re a hard check on your credit, you obviously don’t want to go and get pre-approved at like 10 different places. It was definitely a process but we started with our local realtor to get someone that she was familiar with and had worked with before and that’s ultimately where we ended up back and so that ultimately was a good experience but there was definitely some angst. Once we started getting –

[0:16:06.4] KF: To put it lightly.

[0:16:08.0] NF: Once you started getting those final numbers from the second place that on paper, should have been better.

[0:16:13.4] KF: Better for us.

[0:16:14.1] NF: But again, we’re really focusing on like, “What is that monthly payment going to be?” Of course, we were talking about like PMI, we were going to like have to have PMI with the second place and I don’t really know why. One of the big distinctions with those healthcare professional loans is the amount that you need to put down in a down payment and we’re going to have to put down a lot more for Bank B. So like all of these things, again, just everything across the board ended up being better for Bank A. So I’m so glad that we talked to them first and had the option. That’s the bottom line is have at least two, maybe even three options because as long as your pre-approval is still valid, you should be able to pick the best option that fits you.

[0:16:56.0] NH: So many good nuggets in there and I want to make sure we highlight a few because I think you guys hit the nail on the head on all that stuff, right? So point one that I want to highlight is shop the lender, right? Talk to multiple lenders, don’t just buy into one person and lock into it. I am notorious for this. I will like, convince myself that once I’ve had a decision that like, I’m just going to stick with it because I’ve already made a decision, and even if it’s the bad one, I don’t care like I’m in, right? Don’t be me on that, right? Shop lenders upfront, that’s super smart.

Then, what I loved too is that you mentioned about changing the lenders along the way. So many people don’t realize you can do that, right? Even when you’ve put an offer in already, with the pre-approval letter, you can go back and get a different lender after the fact, right? You can’t be a week away from closing and change lenders but if it’s still early enough in that process even after the contract’s been accepted, you can change lenders. So definitely approach it for you guys on that and then the other thing you mentioned too was the hard credit checks. I advise my clients, any time they’re shopping around, try to do all of your pre-approval shopping within a two-week period that will ensure you only get one credit check. It will basically you know, trunk it down to one credit check across all those lenders, and then if you have to re-up your letter in three months, you know, you can do that for another poll but at least it won’t hurt your credit nearly as much.

So really, really good stuff you guys mentioned in there, I love that.

[0:18:10.4] NF: Well good, because we learned it by doing it.

[0:18:12.7] KF: As we were doing it.

[0:18:14.5] NH: It wasn’t that we knew it going in, which again is the point of this conversation.

[0:18:18.6] NF: Yeah, that’s exactly why I wanted to talk about this stuff because it’s those things that you don’t even know to ask those questions until you’re in the middle of it and then you learn it, you’re like, “Oh, wish I would have known this.” So yeah, I’m glad we’re covering this. Talking a little about the lender piece, you’ve mentioned your real estate agent a few times. We talk a lot here at YFP about using a team, right? Especially when making a financial decision, especially in the world of pharmacy, you know just about everything can benefit from that team approach. Were there other people on your team or were there key pieces of your team that you felt like were essential that maybe we haven’t mentioned or anything you want to highlight within the team that we’ve already touched on?

[0:18:51.0] NF: When you think that you know, it started with our YFP financial planners and so we’ve worked with YFP for three and a half years about. We started early 2020, actually just pre-COVID, which was a really fun time.

[0:19:04.3] KF: Yeah.

[0:19:04.9] NF: To get started, we were actually a week away from refinancing our student loans when the lockdown hit and everything. So I mean, we were on the cusp. So all that to say just to give people some context, so we’ve had three different people that we’ve worked with as our one-on-one financial planner and we actually started with Tim Baker, which is a ton of money.

[0:19:25.7] KF: Yes, it was.

[0:19:26.6] NF: And so along the way with all three of them, we’ve talked about our goals and we’ve talked about home buying, so it always started there and we definitely went there first to get in contact with you. You got us in contact with our local real estate agent. Our local real estate agent got us in contact, like I said, with our loan officer. Those were really the main people. They kind of facilitated most of the communication with all of the other, to use medical lingo, all the other consultants, if you will. We did a little bit of emailing back and forth with like a title agent and some things like that but I don’t feel like I knew those other people the way that I feel like we knew and talked a lot with our loan officer and our realtor.

[0:20:14.4] KF: Yeah.

[0:20:15.0] NH: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I know we touched on this a couple of times but you know, you guys used the home-buying concierge service that we offer here at YFP, and for those who haven’t heard about it maybe, basically it’s a free service that we offer, not just to planning clients but to anybody who’s interested. You can go right to our website, yourfinancialpharmacist.com, and click on “buy a home” and right there, you can sign up for a call with me. A 30-minute phone call or less, we can talk about your goals, we can talk about what you want to achieve, kind of home you want to buy, and then we’ll get you connected with a great real estate agent and something we really like to be upfront on here, right? Is like it’s not always perfect, right? So we’re pretty good at what we do, matching people up with great agents but sometimes the communication isn’t there upfront. So when we connected with you guys with the first agent, somebody that we’ve actually used in the past for other clients and has been fantastic the communication just wasn’t there, right?

[0:21:05.2] KF: At very first, things were fine. You know, we email back and forth, we were trying to set up a date to have a not really face-to-face but –

[0:21:12.9] NF: A more in-depth.

[0:21:14.1] KF: Like a more in-depth –

[0:21:14.8] NF: First conversation.

[0:21:15.6] KF: Conversation to get to know each other a little bit and what we’re kind of looking for and I had told her, “You know, we’re free at these three or four days the following week” and I never heard back from her and two weeks go by and I still haven’t heard back from her. I’ve reached out a couple of other times and so then we reach back out to you, Nate, and we’re like, “We don’t know what’s going on. We hope she’s okay but she’s not responding to anything. So what do we do?” and you were like, “You know, I’ll reach out to her, see if we can get you guys back in contact. If not, let me know and we’ll move on from here.” I was like, “Okay, great” and then we still didn’t hear from her.

So then you got us in contact like the very next week with our current real estate agent and she has been absolutely amazing. You know, she’s been very responsive, she’s been easy to communicate with, almost overly so. You know, there have been a couple of times that she’ll email us back and you know, “As soon as I get back from the gym, I’ll call you and do this, this, and this” and like, “Wow, you do not have to email me while you were working out but okay, thank you.”

[0:22:26.2] NH: Yeah, that’s good and it just shows that like you know, real estate is like any other business, right? There are good people and bad people within every business and there are good times and bad times for those same people, right? These are agents that we’ve worked with in the past and it just maybe there is something going on with their life that doesn’t work and this isn’t the right time for that connection to take place. So one of the things we really try to focus on with the concierge service is not just giving you an agent and walking away but being part of that team, right? YFP stays a part of your team the whole way so that if you do have that, we can come back, get you reconnected, and get you on the right path.

So again, I like to be really transparent with these conversations and tell people exactly what it’s like because it’s not as easy as picking up the phone, calling the first agent with the most highest reviews and then you get off and run, right? It doesn’t always work out that way, so I’m glad we get to share that story a little bit and it sounds like once you guys got off and actually looking at houses, it was the right fit and you guys were able to close, right?

[0:23:20.5] KF: Yeah.

[0:23:20.8] NF: Yeah, absolutely. Everything went well from there and honestly, like probably would have been fine because we were starting very early in the process but just again, with so much uncertainty and ignorance, for lack of a better term, on our part we wanted to start really early because we didn’t actually even know if that was early. We thought maybe six, seven months from our target buy date might have been late. We didn’t know and so that’s why we were really keen to start having conversations with someone and so that’s why we’re willing to go ahead and make a connection with someone who’s going to be able to interact and respond to us right then. So it was really nice, like you said, to have that lifeline of being able to come back to you, Nate, and say, “Hey, is there another direction we can go?”

[0:24:09.3] KF: Yeah.

[0:24:09.7] NH: Happy to do it. I mean, now that you’ve worked with an agent and again, gotten to the closing process. Are there tips you have for people out there that might be vetting their own agents or maybe not using our concierge service, like things that you think are super important to have as part of – as a good real estate agent?

[0:24:24.0] KF: I mean, I think we already said it a couple of times but I mean, being able to have clear and responsive communication.

[0:24:31.3] NF: Yeah, reasonably responsive, you know? I don’t need my realtor text if I send an email at midnight because I’m up just worried and thinking about something, I don’t need you to respond at 1:00 in the morning that kind of thing but you know accessible was certainly a thing, especially because there were times, there were parts of the process that we were working through on weekends, in the evenings. That week of like putting in the offer and getting the offer accepted was a very hectic four to six days and it felt like we were emailing and communicating and doing stuff –

[0:25:08.6] KF: Phone calls, texting.

[0:25:09.5] NF: Finding any paperwork, getting the paperwork signed.

[0:25:11.8] KF: Scanning stuff.

[0:25:12.7] NF: Doing all of this stuff nonstop for that whole week.

[0:25:16.4] KF: For that six days, yeah.

[0:25:18.0] NF: So you know, that’s important but I’d say the other piece and you can speak to part of this honey, is like having an agent who’s really listening to what it is that you’re looking for in a home not just in terms of price and that’s the piece you can speak to but also you know, if you’re saying or you’re finding, that was something we found things that were important to us that we didn’t realize were important to us once we started looking at homes and actually picturing our self living there with our family. You know, so the simple example for us is like we really wanted a fenced-in backyard, you know, just the idea of like being able to tell the boys, “Okay, go outside and play” and not have to worry about wildlife or somebody’s dog or whatever, you know?

As I started looking at different houses, some that had it and some that didn’t, I found that that was important to me and we were able to communicate to our realtor that. And then when you see that they’re responsive and they start then bringing you homes that match what it is that you’re saying that you want and what you’re finding that you want, I think that is really key. You know, if you are working with someone and they’re continually bringing things to you that are outside of your price range or not matching what you say you’re looking for, then that person for whatever reason may not be the right agent for you to find your home because it’s about you finding your home.

[0:26:48.7] KF: Right. Our agent said that to us a couple of times. She goes, “Well, this is not my home. So you know, if you like this that’s great.” That was really fun to hear her say that. What Neal was eluding to earlier was when we had initially talked to her, we had this really broad price range that we were looking at and you know she’s like, “All right” so she put it into her system and was able to email me houses to look at. Once we got closer and we were seeing, “Okay, these houses are probably way out of our comfortable price range” I emailed her and I said, “Hey, let’s change that filter to this price range” and she did it that day and I never received a house after that that was over that price range. So that was really, really nice to see her be responsive in that way, especially that quickly.

[0:27:39.3] NH: That’s great, I love it. I appreciate you guys giving that synopsis because I think those are all super important pieces and things that, like you said really well, it’s the things you don’t realize until after you’ve gone halfway down the process, you’re like, “Oh man, this is important and I didn’t know it’s important.” So that’s really key. So I want to go back really quickly to one other thing you mentioned about that crazy six days that you mentioned, right? So after the sort of like place is under contract, now what? Anything really stick out in there, things like tips you would give to people? I know it’s a ton of hurry up and wait and 30 people are emailing you that you don’t know any of them and they all need documents from you, right? I always know that process is hectic. Any tips or words of advice you can give to our audience that like, “Hey, do this upfront so that the six days aren’t as crazy.”

[0:28:23.8] KF: Well, it’s something that we did really early on in the process with our agent before we had even looked at a house at all was ask her for all the papers that we’d be seeing at closing. So she emailed us all the blank documents, we were able to read through those. We were kind of half-familiar with them by the time we were actually signing them so that we weren’t totally drowning in all that information all at once. So that was something really good that we were able to do but then I feel like something else that we were able to do was utilize our real estate agent and say, “Okay, what does this mean? Why are we doing this? You know, is this reasonable to ask the buyers for this or the sellers for this?” or whatever. Just utilize those resources that are right there that are helping you through the process anyway.

[0:29:11.2] NF: Yeah, I’d say, you know, it’s really easy to get overwhelmed and one thing that you definitely should do is actually sit down ideally together if you’re a couple and read the documents that you’re about to sign because sometimes, there might be things in there that you don’t either understand or didn’t expect. You know, if they say that they’re taking all the appliances out of the house and you didn’t know that –

[0:29:36.3] KF: That’s a big deal.

[0:29:37.6] NF: You need to know that. So that’s like a really simple thing, it’s very easy to skip over that and there were a couple of times where we were like, “Wait a minute, why is this number this? Shouldn’t it be different?” you know, we add a lot of communication about that. I didn’t realize our final closing cost changed multiple times because it’s like a projection and it had things in the projection and then they took them out and then they put them back in.

[0:30:03.7] KF: We thought they were a different price when they put them back in.

[0:30:05.6] NF: And we actually ended up scheduling our wire transfer for amount X and then it changed like 48 hours later and we had to call the bank and change the wire amount again, change it, and that was a little stressful, you know? Because we’re talking about a lot of money so you really don’t want to mess it up.

[0:30:22.5] KF: Right, that is where our loan officer came in. You know, I talked to her three or four times on the phone a week of closing and she was very, very good about walking me through like, “Okay, this is what’s happening right now, this is why the amount says this. This is what it should be closer to actual closing” and again, communicating with her and having her be accessible as well was really good for us not to get lost in the process.

[0:30:50.5] NF: Yeah, if you see something weird or you have a question, you should ask. If you don’t feel comfortable asking, you should take a big step back if that’s a big red flag. It is too big of a decision to go into it not knowing and understanding a lot of it. Now, that being said, I felt like when we actually finally signed our documents electronically, there was like a whole set. I mean, we did a physical signing part too, that was fine.

[0:31:16.4] KF: That was it.

[0:31:16.8] NF: There was like this whole section that was basically like, what is a home loan for dummies, and all this terminology. I was like, “Why isn’t this the first thing they send you?”

[0:31:26.7] KF: Yeah, why isn’t this the first thing that you read?

[0:31:28.6] NF: Somebody take these last 20 pages and just send it to me at the beginning and that would have made things a lot easier but overall, you know because we felt very comfortable asking questions and we just did, we just asked questions all the time.

[0:31:42.0] KF: I sent so many emails and so many text messages.

[0:31:45.2] NF: That helped. I mean, being organized, you know we had a lot of our documents saved like in a folder on the computer for like home purchase documents. That made it really because you’re going to have to upload a million things. Even something as simple as if you have the ability to scan documents, if you are printing them manually, signing them, or you have the ability to sign things electronically, you will make that process go a lot faster. If you have you know, a touch screen device and a PDF editor that you can sign right there, you know, like that is so much faster than printing and signing and going to the library and faxing it to yourself, so whatever.

[0:32:23.2] KF: Yeah, you know whatever you have to do.

[0:32:25.1] NF: You know, whatever you have to do to get all that paperwork done, it’s quite a process. Yeah, so it was fun for lack of a better word and we got all the way to the physical signing and it really was what everybody tells you like you’re going to sit there for an hour and a half and sign documents and get a cramp in your hand. Something that was interesting like we never ever saw our sellers. Like they had done everything ahead of time and just have like their representatives there.

[0:32:49.8] KF: Yeah, they’d pre-signed.

[0:32:51.4] NF: Kind of wasn’t expecting that but it did made a difference. There was even like a little hiccup at our closing, where the title company wasn’t sure that we had actually given them earnest money and we had and so then there’s –

[0:33:04.9] KF: Well and our loan officer was at our closing and she was like, “We definitely have this on file, we sent this to you.”

[0:33:10.7] NF: You know, so and if the title company, you know they have just like someone that they’ve hired, a third party like be there to do all that process so –

[0:33:18.8] KF: She has no idea, she doesn’t know us at all. She doesn’t know anything.

[0:33:21.9] NF: Yeah, she just has a file that’s like four inches thick with all of their documents and these notes in it, so then she’s talking to the title company people and they’re talking to the realtor and you know –

[0:33:34.5] KF: And they’re talking to the bank and we’re just sitting there like, “Okay, better run snacks to the boys.”

[0:33:40.4] NF: It all worked out but all that to say, I think that’s to say you know, do as many preparations as you can but don’t be surprised when –

[0:33:48.5] KF: Surprises come up.

[0:33:50.2] NF: Unexpected that you know, expect the unexpected because it is a very long complicated process and you will almost certainly run into something that you didn’t think about before or you haven’t heard that term or whatever.

[0:34:04.5] KF: Yeah.

[0:34:04.9] NH: Well, I really like the expectation setting, right? Like this is going to be a little crazy, be prepared for that and all the other prep work, the tips that you guys gave and I think creating a file in your computer that’s a great one. Being able to save documents because you might have to send them multiple times, referencing them, right? In case you did send the earnest money, you’ve got a document that says, “Hey, look, this is here” just in case someone else didn’t have access to that. So again, really great tips and it’s very clear that you guys have been through the process because I’m thinking about all these pieces like, “Oh yeah, I remember that. Oh yeah, that’s a problem. Oh yeah, I see my clients running into that.” So you guys are not alone and again, it’s nice to hear hopefully for some of our audience just how overwhelming it can seem but how you can make it through with a little bit of prep work and access to good resources.

So I really appreciate you guys hearing your story today, giving some first-time homebuyers out there some confidence that they can make it through and get to where you guys are now and again, just congrats on the new home, and seriously, thank you for sharing your story. It’s been awesome.

[0:35:01.6] KF: Yeah, thank you for having us.

[0:35:02.2] NF: Hey, thanks for having us.

[0:35:03.2] NH: Yeah, take care guys.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:35:04.3] TU: Nate and I have covered a ton of information in this podcast. So imagine working with Nate one-on-one through your home-buying journey and having his support to give you much-needed peace of mind. We know many pharmacists want to feel confident about big financial decisions including a home purchase. So if you have fears of being house forked, concerns about the impact a home purchase might have on your other financial goals, Nate and his home-buying concierge service can help all at no cost to you. You can visit realestaterph.com or click on the link in the show notes to schedule your free 30-minute jumpstart planning session with Nate.

[DISCLAIMER]

[0:35:43.6] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information on the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog post, and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward-looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

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YFP 160: Navigating the Home Buying Process Through the YFP Concierge Service

Posted on by yfpadmin

Navigating the Home Buying Process Through the YFP Concierge Service

On this week’s episode, sponsored by HPSO, Nate Hedrick, The Real Estate RPH, interviews two pharmacists, Shelby Bennett and Bryce Platt, about their home buying experience. Shelby and Bryce recently worked with Nate via the YFP Real Estate Concierge Service to craft a plan and connect with a local preferred agent to buy their first homes.

About Today’s Guests

Dr. Shelby Bennett

Dr. Shelby Bennett is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Pharmacy. Originally from rural northwest Iowa, Shelby graduated with her PharmD from Creighton University in 2016. She then completed a community-based pharmacy residency with the University of Kansas and Balls Food Stores in Overland Park, Kansas, where she earned a teaching certificate from the University of Kansas Health System. After residency, Shelby designed and implemented clinical services at two independent community pharmacies closer to her hometown. Shelby made the switch to her dream career field and bought her first house (with some help from Nate and the YFP team!) during the COVID-19 pandemic, and she’s here to tell the tale. She is excited to be back in Omaha, where she resides with her cat, Sophia.

Dr. Bryce Platt

Bryce Platt earned his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Kansas and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Population Health Management with Omnicell and Campbell University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in July 2019.

Applying five years of experience in community pharmacy practice and the same passion for improving healthcare, Bryce has worked alongside engineers, data scientists, business analysts, and executives over his career, providing clinical expertise and gaining valuable experience in improving population health. Key projects include leading clinical content preparation for a national health plan program, evaluating international markets for potential Omnicell expansion, working with international teams on protocol development for a research study, assistance with development of a new Medication Therapy Management platform, developing an opioid abuse mitigation program, and preparing business cases for innovative Omnicell solutions.

Bryce is currently the Clinical Pharmacy Specialist at Omnicell and serves as a preceptor for pharmacy students from six different universities during their rotation.

Summary

On this podcast episode, Tim Ulbrich hands the mic over to Nate Hedrick, The Real Estate RPH. As both a pharmacist and a real estate agent, Nate has a unique perspective on the home buying process and he’s used it to help many pharmacists achieve their dream of owning a home. Let’s put it this way: he’s got the insider’s view.

Nate interviews Shelby and Bryce, two pharmacists that both bought their first homes with the help of the YFP Real Estate Concierge Service. Shelby purchased a single family home Nebraska and shares her journey of real estate agent struggles, house she chose a lender and her lessons learned along the way. Bryce recently purchased a condo in North Carolina to house hack. Inspired by YFP 130: House Hacking Your Way to Financial Freedom, Bryce got to work and within months made this dream happen. Bryce talks about how the YFP Real Estate Concierge Service connected him with a preferred local agent, his most crucial team member on this real estate adventure and how he was able to get a pharmacist home loan with IBERIABANK/First Horizon for 3% down with no PMI.

The Real Estate Concierge Service is designed to help pharmacy professionals get connected with local preferred agents and have support well past closing on a home. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Crafting a Plan. We start by designing a plan that works with your budget and your financial goals. Our 30-minute jump start planning session helps determine your needs and answers your important questions right from the beginning.

Step 2: Connecting you with a Pro. You need an agent you can trust. And one that understands a pharmacist’s busy schedule. Our network of agents have gone through a rigorous screening process to ensure they have your best interest at heart. Once we know what you’re looking for, we’ll connect you with one of our preferred local agents that will help find the perfect place to call your own.

Step 3: Staying the Course. After connecting you with a preferred agent, we stay involved well past closing. If questions come up, priorities change, or you need an unbiased opinion, we’re available to lend an ear and a helping hand.

Book a free 30-minute jump start planning call with Nate today!

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome to this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Excited to have back perhaps the most frequent guest on the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast, Nate Hedrick, The Real Estate RPH, who’s going to be joining us as we highlight two case studies of pharmacists that worked with Nate as a part of the real estate concierge service to land really two incredible opportunities. And we’re going to talk about those in more detail on this week’s episode. So Nate, welcome back to the show.

Nate Hedrick: Thanks, Tim. Always nice to be here.

Tim Ulbrich: What’s new and exciting up in Cleveland, Ohio?

Nate Hedirck: Besides quarantining, actually Kristin and I just dove into our first out-of-state investment property. So we’re currently in the middle of figuring that whole game out. So I’ve been posting a little bit about it and I’m sure I’ll be posting more as demo gets underway. But that’s the exciting real estate world that I’m living in right now.

Tim Ulbrich: I saw your photos on Facebook, and I think for those that may not have experienced that firsthand or that experience of doing a flip and a demo, quite a project like that might give some people palpitations. But it looks like you’ve got your hands full.

Nate Hedrick: Oh man, yeah. The smell in there — and I have not been there, full disclosure — but I have been told it is horrible and the heat has not been helping. So we’re starting off maybe on a yucky note. But hopefully it will get better as time goes on.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, which either unfortunate or fortunately, depending on how you want to look at it with real estate, often means a great opportunity if you’re willing to work through some of that to be able to have a good investment opportunity, whether you end up flipping it or whether you keep it and BRRR it, it sounds like it might be a good opportunity. And we’ll feature that perhaps on a later episode of the podcast as well.

Nate Hedrick: Great.

Tim Ulbrich: So really excited, two awesome stories that you are going to feature, individuals, pharmacists that you’ve worked with as part of the real estate concierge service to help them with their home buying purchase as their agent and I think two very different stories. But we’ll really give our listeners an inside look into what that service is all about and perhaps even give some of our listeners some ideas about investment opportunities with Bryce’s story. So tell us a little bit about what our listeners can expect to hear from these two interviews that you did.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, so you let me take the mic for the first time, which is kind of cool. I got to be on your side of the table, which was fun. So I interviewed Shelby and Bryce. And Shelby — both of them, actually — are first-time homebuyers. And what I think is going to be nice to share with you guys is that Shelby was really kind of your standard first-time homebuyer, looking for a place to live, you know, nothing frilly about it. And so I think moving for a new job. So she’s going to be a really great story to kind of showcase what most people are going to go into. And then Bryce is another great case study because he was looking for more of it as an investment property. And he actually ends up buying a 4-by-4, which we’ll talk about. But he’s a house hacker. So we’ll talk about what that looks like and what that’s going to do for him. But it’s two good stories of how first-time homebuyers can go in different directions and I really think it brings interesting notes to what the concierge service can provide.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, I think there’s a little bit of everything here for those that are listening, you know, whether they’re first-time homebuyers going about it more the traditional way, first-time homebuyers that want to do some more creative house hacking, investing, or those that have a home and perhaps want to get into real estate investing. I think there’s something to take away for everyone that’s listening. And you use as the framework for your interviews the six steps to the home buying process, which we outline in the home buying, YFP home buying guide. And so for those that want to download that guide and learn more about those steps and be able to connect that with the interviews that you did, head on over to YourFinancialPharmacist.com/homeguide, all one word. Again, YourFinancialPharmacist.com/homeguide. And hang with us, so we’re going to go into Shelby’s interview and then you’ll hear from Bryce as well and his interview with Nate. And then we will wrap up the show talking a little bit about the concierge service, connecting it back with those interviews and those stories and where you can learn more to connect with Nate from there. So let’s transition to hear Nate’s interview with Shelby.

Nate Hedrick: Hi, Shelby. Welcome to the show.

Shelby Bennett: Thanks, Nate. Thanks for having me.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah. It’s great. I really appreciate you being here. It means a lot to have you on the show. Can you dive in and tell us a little bit about yourself?

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, absolutely. So I am a pharmacist that graduated in 2016. So this is going into my fourth year of practice and recently made a big job change from an independent community pharmacy in rural Iowa where I’m from and recently took a job teaching at a college of pharmacy in Omaha, Nebraska. I went to college at Creighton here in Omaha for undergrad and pharmacy, so it’s kind of good to be back in my old college town. And yeah, I just bought my first house, which is what I’m here to talk about a little bit.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, you just moved in — what? Two weeks ago now? Three weeks ago?

Shelby Bennett: About a month ago. I closed May 29.

Nate Hedrick: OK. Nice. And how’s the move-in process going?

Shelby Bennett: It’s going well. Everyone’s telling me that home projects never end, and I’m definitely starting to understand that. I think I’m finally to the point where all the stuff is out of the boxes. It’s just not put away yet.

Nate Hedrick: I knew that when we moved into our last house that any boxes that were there after like a year, we just didn’t need that stuff. We could just throw it out. So hopefully you’ve got everything unpacked, you’re in a good spot.

Shelby Bennett: Absolutely.

Nate Hedrick: Well we’re going to jump in and do a little bit about that experience. I again want to follow the Six Steps to Home Buying Guide that we have available through Your Financial Pharmacist. That guide will actually walk you through the same six steps that Shelby and I are going to walk through today. So if you take a look at No. 1, we are talking about making sure you’re ready. So this is before you start a Zillow search, before you do anything, you know, how do you determine if you are ready to buy a home? So Shelby, can you tell me a little bit about why you decided to buy a home instead of continuing to rent?

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, absolutely. So I decided to buy a home because I was ready for the permanence of living in one place, because I wanted to feel I had the freedom to make changes to the house or the yard without having to ask for a landlord’s permission. My last rental was a small house, and I liked not having neighbors as close as you do when you live in an apartment. But I was also ready for more space. My last place was only about 650 square feet, so I was ready to expand.

Nate Hedrick: Totally understand that. Yep. We were similar when we made our decision. So that’s great. And then if you’re like any good pharmacist like me, you’re probably extra detail-oriented. But did you dive into the numbers really deep on the budget? Or were you using something more broad? How did you set that ideal budget or how did you look at that question?

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, so this is going to be one of those don’t-try-this-at-home examples.

Nate Hedrick: Perfect.

Shelby Bennett: I discovered the YFP Home Buying Guide after I’d already started looking at houses online. So I definitely did this part in the wrong order. I started looking at house in the neighborhoods I wanted to live in and then extrapolated my budget backwards based on the houses that I liked.

Nate Hedrick: That’s awesome. You’re not alone in doing that. I think most people actually operate that way.

Shelby Bennett: My logic was, OK, so it will cost x amount of dollars to buy a move-in ready house in Dundee, like can I afford to live there? But then I got lucky in that after meeting with Tim Baker and working through some of his equations based on income and expenses, the budget I had originally set wasn’t really too far off topic. So I got lucky there.

Nate Hedrick: That’s good. Yeah. Tim’s home buying guide that he does with the YFP Planning is great. I love that spreadsheet.

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, that’s really nice.

Nate Hedrick: Great. Alright, so you’ve set your budget, maybe in a little unorthodox way, but I think probably more normal for most people, I like that. And then you’ve got to determine what’s important. You’re looking at things like location, size, flexibility, that’s our step No. 2. So this can get a bit overwhelming. You’re going from every house in a particular location and how do you narrow it down to what you’re looking for? So what were some of the criteria that you focused on when you were trying to determine what was important to you?

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, absolutely. So it was really important to me to be close to work. I grew up in a rural area, so everything that you wanted to do from a work perspective was really close, and then everything you want to do from a cultural or a shopping standpoint was a long ways away. But it was important to me to maintain the same short commute that I had had in my previous experiences. So because I’d lived in Omaha for six years during undergrad and pharmacy school, I had a pretty good idea of the neighborhoods that I’d want to live in that would be a short commute to work.

Nate Hedrick: Nice.

Shelby Bennett: And I also wanted enough space for my immediate family to visit and stay. My previous house was too small for all of us to hang out at the same time. And then as I alluded to earlier a little bit, I wanted a house that didn’t need a lot of interior work done. I figured starting a job, buying my first house, moving in a couple hours away, was enough projects to start with, especially since I’d be living in the new house during a renovation. So exterior work I was OK with since it doesn’t really affect the function of your house. But interior work, I wanted it mostly done.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, that makes sense, especially with starting a new job and moving across the state and all that. That makes total sense.

Shelby Bennett: Yeah.

Nate Hedrick: Great. Well, were you able to hone in on that? It sounds like you had a couple of projects, but hopefully they haven’t been too overwhelming.

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, yeah. So I actually had a contractor come earlier today and look at a couple things. But yeah, I ended up picking a place that had some exterior projects that needed to be done but ended up finding a place that almost everything I wanted done was on the inside. So almost everything on the inside was already done, excuse me.

Nate Hedrick: Great. That’s great.

Shelby Bennett: So that was really nice.

Nate Hedrick: Good, good. Well one of the other important aspects that we really want to focus on too is Step No. 3, which is assembling your team. You know, there are a lot of important team members included in the home buying process, right? You’ve got a real estate agent, you talked about working with Tim, so your financial planner, maybe an accountant, sometimes a lawyer in most states. So looking back at your purchase, who would you say were the most essential members of your team?

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, so I’m going to rank my team members by how many questions I asked each of them.

Nate Hedrick: I like this.

Shelby Bennett: Definitely the award for the most questions asked and answered goes to my local real estate agent that I worked with through most of the process, Rebecca. A month out from closing and we still probably talk about once a week. So she was really great to work with. Next up is probably Tim Baker, who’s been working with me on financial planning with YFP since November of last year. So kind of around the time I decided I wanted to be buying a home soon and kind of looking at some of those things. My parents were definitely a sounding board for me when I had questions. And they came with me during showings to catch things that I didn’t. None of us are real estates experts, but it was nice to just kind of have an extra set of eyes and to think about things that maybe I didn’t. And then last but definitely not least was you, Nate. You definitely came in clutch for me during a couple of slightly awkward dilemmas throughout my process.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, I want to talk about that because that’s actually one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on because I think this is really good. We talk about our concierge service and the home buying concierge and how that works. And in my head, it’s this perfect system, right? We match you with an agent and you get off and you find your dream home. But in reality, it’s not always perfect, right? So we originally connected you through the concierge service with Emily, right?

Shelby Bennett: Mhmm.

Nate Hedrick: And things were — it was OK, but it wasn’t a perfect fit. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about that because I think this is a really cool story to share about what this can look like.

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, absolutely. So I think I talked to you probably on a Thursday night, and I think by Sunday night I’d already received an introduction to my first agent, Emily. And I was pleasantly surprised at how quick the process was, even though you hadn’t worked with agents in Omaha before. My first interactions with Emily were pretty positive. She was quick to respond to my questions. I had requested to see a few properties that I had seen online, and she set up showings for them. I’d never really been to a house showing before. So I didn’t know what to expect except that I figured it probably wasn’t exactly like you see on HGTV. I remember not really knowing how to feel after that first day of showings. It was exciting to get out and see houses, but I didn’t feel that supported by Emily as we looked at houses. She’d let us into the house and then just kind of wait for us to be done exploring. She was available for questions but usually gave short answers I didn’t fully understand. The one house I saw that I felt like I could see myself in needed a lot of yard work and some of the windows needed to be replaced. I felt like the more excited that I got about the house, the more she seemed to be talking me out of it. Spoiler alert, that’s the house I ended up buying. But we’ll get to that later.

Nate Hedrick: Nice.

Shelby Bennett: But yeah, my situation was a little unique in that I was looking for houses during the interview process for my new job. So I wasn’t in a place to make an offer for at least another couple weeks. I think that definitely affected my experience with Emily. So the second time I wanted to set up showings, I feel like she tried to talk me out of them a little bit, saying they probably wouldn’t even still be on the market by the time I was ready to buy. When I asked if I could still see the properties to learn more about the home buying process so I wasn’t scrambling at the end when I really needed something, you know, she made me whittle down the list of places I wanted to see from five to three for a five-hour round trip drive on my part. And then all of a sudden she had this schedule conflict, and she sent another agent to show me the homes. And that was super awkward for me. I didn’t really know. I was like, isn’t that your job? I didn’t really know what to expect from her or from me or if I’d done a wrong thing. It was definitely awkward for me. But even though that was super awkward, I feel like it was the best thing that could have happened in hindsight because the new real estate agent, Rebecca, was super personable, she was exploring the houses right there along with us. And she was giving us insight about the homes and the neighborhood. And I felt like she really welcomed my questions. I didn’t feel like they were stupid questions, that I asked too many or anything like that. And we just had a great time seeing the homes. We had a lot of fun, and I left feeling just a lot more hopeful. The only thing is I didn’t know like was it possible to break up with your real estate agent? Could you switch to a new one? Like I had no idea.

Nate Hedrick: Yep.

Shelby Bennett: So thankfully, the next day, Nate, you’d sent me an email just checking in to see how things were going. And thank goodness for that. I had decided to fill you in on my predicament.

Nate Hedrick: I remember that email.

Shelby Bennett: Oh my gosh, I’m so glad I did. I feel like you just really validated all of the concerns I was having, and you helped me make the transition from Emily to Rebecca by helping me understand kind of the structure of real estate offices and kind of what to focus on when kind of asking to switch. I can’t imagine how the home buying process would have gone if I hadn’t reached out to you, taken your advice and then decided to work with Rebecca moving forward.

Nate Hedrick: Well, we messed it up to begin with, right? We gave you Emily first, so we had to fix it and get you back on track.

Shelby Bennett: Well you didn’t know.

Nate Hedrick: No, and you know, it’s hard, right? So we do these interviews, and we interview these agents. But until someone’s worked with them that we know, there’s no way to know up front. And so luckily, Rebecca was on Emily’s team and was just a much better connection point for you. She was much more first-time homebuyer-centric. And it was obvious in your email that she was someone that you connected with and that you were going to be able to work with long-term. So I’m really glad we were able to get you switched over to Rebecca. So again, the point here is that, you know, we try, we do the best that we can, but the concierge service is not perfect. But the good news is that we’re always a part of your team. So when something like that happens, you did the exact right thing, just reached out, say, “Look, this isn’t working. I need to pivot.” And we can help you make that pivot. So again, I really — I love sharing the good stuff that we do with concierge services, but I’ve also got to make sure that we share the real stuff too. And this is exactly that. So thank you for telling that story.

Shelby Bennett: Yeah.

Nate Hedrick: Alright, so then once we found a place, we found the original place and then we got talked out of it, now we’re back. Then it’s choosing a loan and getting preapproved. So a lot of people kind of struggle when it comes to getting financing. And so this is Step 4. So can you tell us a little bit about how you went about navigating that process and any tips that you have for our listeners now that you’ve gone through it once for yourself?

Shelby Bennett: Yeah. Absolutely. So I was in the market for financing in April. So right in the middle of the COVID shutdowns. So Rebecca had recommended that I choose a lender I knew I could get ahold of on short notice since not everyone was working from the office anymore. She said that delays from lenders can delay closing on the house. I definitely didn’t want that, ended up kind of a short schedule from by the time I accepted the job to the time I needed to be moving. So I knew I needed to get going more quickly. So yeah, so thankfully I have an extended family member who’s a home mortgage consultant. So I knew I’d be able to contact him if I needed. So the process I used, I got some rate quotes from both my family member’s national lending company and then I talked to others to see what rates were being offered by IBERIABANK/First Horizon, as recommended by Tim Baker. And then because I’d be putting 20% down with a conventional loan — and that was I guess a recommendation from Tim as well — and the interest rates were similar between the two lenders, I decided to choose my family member as my mortgage consultant because I wanted somebody, kind of like Rebecca, that I was comfortable asking questions to and somebody I felt like would recommend the best options for me and not just try to sell me something. I think my biggest tip is to really just use your home buying team to help you make those financing decisions. I don’t know about a lot of you out there, but I am not an expert on finances by any means. And so it was so nice to have pros to reach out to when I had questions or wasn’t really sure because I ran into another situation I was pretty sure I had all my financing ducks in a row. And then I had an immediate family member recommend I put less than 20% down after reading an article about how COVID would affect the housing market and its potential to be worse than the Great Depression, in the article’s words. And man, that really threw me off. On super short notice, I talked to both Robert and Tim Baker at YFP and to you, Nate, to kind of get your take on the situation. I knew my family member was coming from a place of care and concern for me, but I definitely didn’t want to make a decision I’d regret later, especially not one that costs a lot of money and was spread out over 30 years. So just like with my real estate concerns, both Robert at YFP and I feel like Nate, you really took the time to answer my questions, kind of justify both my concerns and then tailor your response around some of the details of my particular situation. And it was just so nice having another opinion. It made me feel like no question I had was a stupid question. And it just really made me feel like I had another person I could reach out to and I was like, I have no idea what I’m doing.

Nate Hedrick: Good, well I’m glad we could be there for you. And you’re right, the amount to put down and the type of financing and all the things that go into that, it’s so different for everybody. I think we’re so quick to say, you know, 20% is what you’re supposed to do. And it just feels like that’s what you hear about. But the reality is that it’s different for every situation and every person. So it’s always good to get those second and third opinions from someone else that knows your finances and knows what you’re going through. So yeah, definitely a tricky spot, but I’m glad you had the support that you needed. Alright, so Step No. 5 is finding your home and negotiating. So we talked a little bit about finding that home and the home search process. But I guess I’ll ask this too, it sounds like COVID did have an impact. Did that interrupt showings in any way? Or did you have any issues with seeing houses?

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect from that search process kind of at first. I spent a lot of time, especially early on, looking at real estate websites online. I set a lot of email alerts for houses that fit my criteria. But yeah, COVID definitely affected kind of the second half of my search process. Ended up doing a lot more FaceTime showings than in person, which with a five-hour round trip drive was actually really nice. I don’t know that I would have done as many of those without COVID. And so in some ways, it was nice because when you saw a house on FaceTime and you knew it definitely wasn’t the one, then you didn’t have to drive so far. But it was hard to get a really good feel of the house just from your phone.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, until you’re standing in that space, it can be tricky to get a true feel for what that house is going to be like.

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, so I got really lucky in that the house I ended up buying I had seen in February before I knew I was going to be moving and before all of that. They had fixed up a lot of the windows and some of the yardwork, and so then Rebecca actually reached out, you know, mid-April to say, “Hey, what do you think about this house?” And I was like, “Funny you should mention. I feel like that was the house I liked.”

Nate Hedrick: “I know the house well.”

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, “that was the house I liked that nobody else liked for me.” COVID also made me feel a little bit like people weren’t putting houses on the market. And so it was frustrating at times to feel like I wasn’t going to find a place in time. But kind of by the end, I guess the search process was more or less like I imagined. You go to the house, you open up all the cupboards, you explore everything, and then you kind of talk about pros and cons of each place. Turns out Omaha is a seller’s market, so it was a little more stressful than I thought with fewer homes on the market and a little more buyers competition. Some houses I liked were off the market in less than a day, and so that was just kind of blew my mind.

Nate Hedrick: Wow. Yeah, no doubt. Gees. And we’re actually seeing that around the country right now. We’ve got a seller’s market pretty much everywhere. Inventory is very low. I know of very few areas in the country right now that are buyer’s markets. So that’s not totally unique to Omaha at this point. And then did you — you know, the part that intimidates most people about this step is the negotiation. Did you get into any negotiations with the seller or how did that part go?

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, absolutely. So Rebecca was really great at walking me through the negotiation process because I definitely wasn’t comfortable with that going in. So she had recommended a price range to start my offer at and actually had reached back out to Emily to kind of get her thoughts since she had seen the house as well. And so they kind of helped me understand where would be a good place to start and then helped me understand a little bit of the seller’s thought process kind of through the negotiation process and what they’d likely be thinking. And then, you know, she talked with me about common things home buyers usually negotiate on when they offer versus like what you might negotiate or put into the offer after the home inspection and kind of at different points along the way. We ended up negotiating the price of the home down about $17,000. And we got the seller to purchase the home warranty, so I was really happy about how that all ended up.

Nate Hedrick: Nice. That’s great. And it’s really nice to hear that Rebecca and Emily helped you really kind of step into the seller’s shoes for a minute because I think it’s easy to walk into a sale as a buyer and think, gosh, I’ve got to get this for as low as I possibly can. And I’m going to negotiate hard on everything. And the reality is like, there’s just two people trying to have a transaction. And so stepping into their shoes can actually help you a lot of times with that negotiation. So that’s great.
Shelby Bennett: Yeah, absolutely.

Nate Hedrick: And then the last step is Step 6, which is inspect, insure, and close. And I think a lot of this tends to run together, right? All these steps are kind of going on simultaneously. So you know, with all of the stuff that’s going in this, I guess I’ll just ask, is there anything that you learned or that you would have done differently now that you’ve gone through the closing process as a first-time home buyer?

Shelby Bennett: Yeah, so I definitely learned at the inspection that I don’t know a lot of structural things about houses.

Nate Hedrick: They didn’t cover that in pharmacy school? What the heck?

Shelby Bennett: No. My inspector and my agent were really good about explaining the significance of the findings during the inspection and kind of suggesting what to ask the sellers to fix. I definitely recommend being present for your inspection walk-through, even if it’s in the middle of a pandemic and you have to wear a mask like I did. But so you can physically see the inspection report findings, they can physically point out different things throughout the home. There were a lot of terms that I didn’t understand. But once I could see what they were talking about, it made a lot more sense. I definitely recommend that. Closing was definitely a blur for me. I was I think the first in-office closing the title company had after doing drive-through closings for COVID.

Nate Hedrick: Oh, wow.

Shelby Bennett: My title agent said she would email me the closing documents to review beforehand, and with all the craziness going on, I wish I’d remembered to reach out and tell her I never got them. But I couldn’t until it was too late, and then I closed right away in the morning. So when I got to closing, like there would be all these super long documents, and my title agent was great and would say like, “Hey, this is just a document that your lender needs to do x.” But I’m like, “It’s four pages long and this is all it says?” You know? But I definitely didn’t take a lot of time to read them being close proximity like in an office was definitely something that was very taboo kind of at the end of May with COVID anyways. And so I didn’t necessarily probably take as much time as I would have to like read everything. And then it was a bummer that Rebecca, my agent, couldn’t be there either. Turns out real estate agents and sometimes family members can be present at closing to kind of help answer any questions and kind of be there for support. And instead, I was in a conference room across from the title agent with a big plexiglass divider and just a little slot to pass papers back and forth.

Nate Hedrick: Wow. Oh my gosh, that’s so crazy.

Shelby Bennett: So yeah, so that was a little wild. So I wish I had been a little more proactive and remembered to reach back out and see those closing documents ahead of time. But overall, you know what, it went well. I haven’t discovered yet that I made any big mistakes. So you know, it all turned out for the good. But definitely something I feel like you just, you don’t know about until you have the experience.

Nate Hedrick: Absolutely. I remember my first closing as a home buyer and was just overwhelmed with the amount of things I was signing and I just wrote a giant check for a bunch of money, and it was terrifying.

Shelby Bennett: Right.

Nate Hedrick: So yeah, I totally understand. And that’s really great that you were able to share some of that with our listeners because again, step back, ask questions, and review the documents ahead of time. That’s a really good piece of advice. Well, you’ve given us some great tips, and I really appreciate you sharing your story today. Is there anything else that you want to share with our listeners that you — about the home buying process or really anything in general?

Shelby Bennett: Yeah. So really the only thing I had to share was something you just touched on. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. I think especially as a first-time home buyer, I definitely felt a little bit like I was annoying people on my team at times. But I’m like, this is your job. You know, like.

Nate Hedrick: I pay you for this. Hold on.

Shelby Bennett: I was like, home buying just isn’t one of those things, like you mentioned, like we don’t learn that in school. There’s no place to learn about it except for when you go through it. And it’s a huge decision. So I definitely say reach out, take advantage of all your resources. There’s lots of pros who’ve done this before and are super willing to help. So you don’t have to do it alone, and no question is too small.

Nate Hedrick: That’s really great advice. I really appreciate it. That’s awesome. Well Shelby, thanks so much for being on the show. It just means a lot that you would come on and share your story. And again, I think our listeners are going to learn a lot from what you had to say. So appreciate it.

Shelby Bennett: I appreciate that, Nate. Thanks again for having me.

Nate Hedrick: Hi, Bryce. Welcome to the podcast.

Bryce Platt: Hey, Nate. Thanks for having me.

Nate Hedrick: Absolutely. We’re glad to have you on the show. So I guess we’ll start off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Bryce Platt: Sure. My name is Bryce Platt. I’m from Kansas originally and went to the University of Kansas for my pharmacy school, graduated in 2018 and then did a post-grad fellowship in population health management in North Carolina. I’d never been to North Carolina before until that fellowship. Spent a year there and did I guess not bad enough that they felt the need to get rid of me, so they decided to keep me. And stayed on as the clinical pharmacy specialist for pop health programs. And that’s where I’m at now.

Nate Hedrick: That’s great. That’s amazing. And you just bought a house there, right?

Bryce Platt: I did. I just bought a four-bed, four-bath condo.

Nate Hedrick: That’s amazing. Yeah, and that’s exactly why we’ve got you on the show today to talk a little bit about that experience. So again, we appreciate you being here.

Bryce Platt: Thank you.

Nate Hedrick: Great. So what I thought we would do is out on our website, on the YourFinancialPharmacist.com Real Estate page, we have a home buying guide. And it is the six steps to follow to basically have a great home buying experience. And so I thought we’d walk through those six steps and kind of see what your experience with those six steps and get some feedback from you, if that works for you.

Bryce Platt: Yeah, hopefully I can share a little bit of knowledge and help some people who haven’t done this before.

Nate Hedrick: Perfect, that’s what we’re looking for. So alright. We’ll start with No. 1 — oh, and if you’d like to get access to this yourself, you can to YourFinancialPharmacist.com/homeguide. And you can download those six steps. You can follow right along with us or work on your own plan there at home. So Step 1 on there is making sure you’re ready. So this is kind of the before you start searching on Zillow, you know, when you’re deciding that buying a home is the way you want to go, there are a number of steps that you should be taking, things like budget, things like looking at your location and all that goes into that. And so Bryce, tell me a little bit about how you decided to buy a home instead of continuing to rent.

Bryce Platt: Neither you or Tim know this, but this completely started from me listening to Episode 130 on this podcast.

Nate Hedrick: Oh nice.

Bryce Platt: It was where Craig Curelop from Bigger Pockets came in to talk about his house hacking strategy guide, his book that he had released.

Nate Hedrick: Yep.

Bryce Platt: So I listened to that mid-February and was like, I mean, my lease ends in early August. So I can go ahead and do this. It wouldn’t be any more expensive than renting, and I’d have the benefit of the cash flow and building some equity in an actual property. So I went forward with buying the book and from that first step in mid-February, I had closed on this condo by June. And before that never even considered should I look at a property? Should I buy a house? Didn’t even cross my mind at all.

Nate Hedrick: That’s great. Well, that’s awesome. I’m glad we’re inspiring a couple people out there. That’s the goal. So that’s amazing. And like I mentioned, one of the other steps to determining if you’re ready is figuring out things like budget and questions like that. So did you sit back and were you the classic detail-oriented pharmacist doing all these hard numbers? Or how did set about things like a budget?

Bryce Platt: You know, I can’t say that I had a budget. What I did was I completely looked at deal numbers. I looked at it completely as an investment. So I didn’t have a top number except for what the bank was willing to loan me. Beyond that, just did the numbers for the property work? Which of these look like the best deals and investment property? So as long as those numbers worked, it was very loose on the actual list price.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, this is really different than buying a traditional home that you’re going to live in. It’s really more of an investment. And so approaching that like a business decision makes a lot of sense.

Bryce Platt: Absolutely.

Nate Hedrick: I guess, so that leads us really nicely into our next point, which is determine what’s important. And it sounds like house hacking was the thing that you wanted to do. So maybe you can — I know we talked about, like you said on Episode 130 with Craig, but can you talk a little bit more about exactly what is house hacking and how does that work?

Bryce Platt: Sure. House hacking is the idea of you owning a property, buying some kind of property, and being able to essentially lower that mortgage payment by having other people pay you money to live there. So that could be as intense as you buy a mobile home and live on the parking lot in front of your apartment or your property and rent out the actual property. Or it could be as minimal as you live in the house and you have like a garage that you’ve turned into an Airbnb spot. And you just rent it out occasionally for short-term renters. So there’s a big spectrum there. The traditional is you buy like a duplex, a triplex, quadplex, and rent out the extra units and you live in one unit. I tried to do that, and we can talk about that a little bit later. But this condo worked out much better as a investment property for me.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, and so you’ve got a four-by-four. So maybe you can explain what that is for someone that might not know.

Bryce Platt: Sure. So the — if you remember, I don’t know, maybe back in college, you have this shared space where there’s a living room, a kitchen, that four people share. And then each person has their own bedroom with a door and a lock, a bathroom and a walk-in closet. So we all have our own private space as well as sharing the living room and kitchen.

Nate Hedrick: That’s great. What an amazing setup. And I’m sure that’s not possible everywhere, but it sounds like that’s a great fit for you guys.

Bryce Platt: Absolutely. It’s near the big public college here in North Carolina, so it’s traditionally been for students. But with COVID just happened in March, the students that were here broke their lease and moved out. And that wasn’t uncommon for the seller. So he had multiple properties like this that had nobody in there.

Nate Hedrick: Oh, wow.

Bryce Platt: And so he was looking to get rid of some of these.

Nate Hedrick: That’s great. And I guess we don’t have to get too far into the numbers, but I mean, is it looking good? Like are you going to be able to live for free? Because that’s the dream, right?

Bryce Platt: Yes, that is the dream. The reason I chose this property was — so I looked at multiple duplexes, which were really all that are around this area of North Carolina. There’s not really triplex or quadplex that are available. And the duplexes had decent cash flow numbers, but because of COVID, no one really wanted me to come like look at it in person.

Nate Hedrick: Oh, wow.

Bryce Platt: Because, you know, they were listed before COVID happened. So these were just people looking to sell eventually but not in a huge rush. For this condo, the numbers are much better anyways. So I essentially am doing a rent-by-the-room strategy, as you might imagine, with four-bed, four-bath. So these aren’t people that knew each other before coming in. So if we talked about the 1% rule here, this is more like the 1.5% rule. So the numbers are pretty good. And even with me living here as one of the rooms, I’m making a few hundred dollars every month over the mortgage.

Nate Hedrick: That’s amazing.

Bryce Platt: And the interest and the insurance and the taxes and the HOA fees, even.

Nate Hedrick: That’s amazing. Good for you. And for those of our listeners that don’t know the 1% rule, really popular in rental property investing, means that if the purchase price is, let’s say it’s $100,000, you should be able to bring in about $1,000 in rent every single month. So 1% of the purchase price is your goal number. And that 1% rule is kind of a quick back-of-the-napkin math for determining if a rental property is going to be worth considering.

Bryce Platt: Absolutely.

Nate Hedrick: So anything over the 1% rule is great, and it sounds like you’ve almost hit the 1.5%, which is amazing.

Bryce Platt: Right, and that’s even, like I said, with all of the PITI, insurance, taxes, interest and including the HOA fees, which are an extra couple hundred dollars on top of all of that.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, those HOA fees can be killer, so being able to include that and including that in your budget, like that’s amazing. That’s great.

Bryce Platt: Yeah, I really am not bothered by the HOA fees because as my first house and as never having even considered doing things before this, like I mentioned, I do not want to have to figure out how to do landscaping and take care of huge roof, replace the roofs and the siding on the houses. Here, they have a pool and a sand volleyball court and a basketball court. And there’s no way I’d want to take care of those either.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah. I mean, your repair costs go basically to $0. It’s great.

Bryce Platt: Well, I wouldn’t say that because inside the condo, I have to take care of everything inside the condo. But anything that’s really — that’s typically a really large capital expenditure for a house, I don’t really have to prepare for those.

Nate Hedrick: That’s perfect. Great. Well and then I guess the next step, we’ll move along here, No. 3 is assembling your team. And there are a number of important team members that we list in our document, everything from a real estate agent, a financial planner, an accountant, sometimes there’s a lawyer that needs to be involved. So now that you’ve kind of made this purchase and you’re looking back, who were some of those most essential members of your team, would you say?

Bryce Platt: It was easily my real estate agent, Adam.

Nate Hedrick: OK.

Bryce Platt: When you’re looking for a real estate agent for house hacking specifically or any kind of investment property, really, you want a real estate agent that has done investing themselves so they know what you’re looking for. You’re not looking for the super expensive, granite countertops and the high-rise ceiling and the fancy chandeliers. You’re looking for a place that, for example, meets the 1% rule or you are able to cover the mortgage with your rent. So working with a real estate agent that understood that made it a lot easier.

Nate Hedrick: Good. And we were actually lucky enough to be able to connect you with Adam through our concierge service, right? So can you tell me a little about that experience? It sounds like it worked for you.

Bryce Platt: Yeah. Again, neither Nate or Tim paid me for this. So I will give them my endorsement.

Nate Hedrick: Uh oh.

Bryce Platt: It was super easy and working with Adam, made connecting me with Adam here in North Carolina. Because I had — like I said, I started from absolutely no idea what I was doing to getting this book and was able to eventually turn it into a condo a little over three months later. So the connection with the real estate agent was vital to doing this.

Nate Hedrick: Wow, that’s so good. I’m so glad you had a good experience. That’s what we’re all about. I appreciate the endorsement, and I’ll send you the check after this.

Bryce Platt: Yeah, alright.

Nate Hedrick: Great. Well No. 4 is choosing a loan and getting preapproved. A lot of people tend to struggle when it comes to financing. I get this question a lot that people are pretty good about the home search and what they want. But when it gets to financing, people kind of struggle a bit. So how did you go about navigating that process?

Bryce Platt: With house hacking, you want essentially the lowest down payment as possible. Obviously on Your Financial Pharmacist, I mean, I’ve followed you guys for a little while and I use the website, so I started with Credible to compare the different lending institutions and what kind of rates they had and the limits and such. But after that, IBERIABANK/First Horizon, which is a specific partner of YFP, they had the best interest and guaranteed no PMI, which is Private Mortgage Insurance where if you typically on a normal property, if you put down less than 20% on the property as a down payment, you have to pay PMI to protect the lending institution. The insurance doesn’t cover you. It covers the bank in case you default on that. So you’re paying them insurance for the bank, which is ridiculous. Anyways, and they also only require a 3% down payment. So I only had to put down 3% and was able to go without PMI and still have a pretty low interest rate. The 3% down payment, I will say was only if it wasn’t multi-family. So even if it was a duplex, triplex or quadplex, they do require for IBERIABANK/First Horizon 15% down payment.

Nate Hedrick: OK.

Bryce Platt: That’s something that both Tim Baker and I learned. And so I felt the need to share that. But if it’s not a multi-unit property, you can do as low as 3% down payment, and that’s what I did.

Nate Hedrick: Nice. Yeah. So this was — it basically is almost like a four-plex, but it wasn’t considered that because it’s a four-by-four as far as the bank is concerned.

Bryce Platt: Right.

Nate Hedrick: Oh, that’s great.

Bryce Platt: It’s a single family property.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah. Cool. Interesting. That’s a really neat mix. And for our listeners who are interested, you can go learn more about Credible and IBERIABANK/First Horizon at YourFinancialPharmacist.com/real-estate. So please take a look at that and you can learn more about those sources, just like Bryce did. Great. So No. 5 is finding your home and negotiating. So a lot of people, again, struggle with the negotiating side of this. But we’ll start with the home search, so can you tell me a little bit more about the actual search process, and it sounds like COVID kind of impacted some of that as well, so maybe you can share a little bit more about how that went.

Bryce Platt: Absolutely. So it was easier than I expected, but like I said, I didn’t really have any preconceived notions on what it was going to be like because I had never even considered this before. So Adam set me up on the MLS, the listing service, so I could see everything that was available to buy and so I could evaluate properties based on, you know, evaluating the deals and investment property whenever I wanted. And in the MLS, I could even request a showing from Adam to see these properties. This aspect was kind of impacted by COVID, like I mentioned. There were a couple duplexes that I had tried to see. But they didn’t want to open for showings, so I kept looking at other deals that were coming up and then eventually, this condo came up. And he was in much more of a hurry to sell, you know, because he had been vacant for a month or two at that point because the students had broken their lease. So it came on the MLS, the numbers were way better anyways than the duplexes, so made it a lot easier to request a showing here. And since there were no students or anyone here, didn’t have to worry about COVID stuff.

Nate Hedrick: Nice. Yeah, and it sounds like, you know, with it being vacant, you might have had a little room to negotiate there too, I imagine.

Bryce Platt: Yes. So personally, I’m comfortable with negotiation. If you guys have ever read the book, “The Difference,” about a boss — it’s an amazing book.

Nate Hedrick: Yes.

Bryce Platt: I’ve read it multiple times, both before I negotiated for this property and before I bought my car. And it worked out very well. I was able to bring the price down about 5% and keep all of the furniture that was here.

Nate Hedrick: Oh, wow. That’s amazing.

Bryce Platt: It worked out pretty well.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah. Well, we should put a link to that book in the show notes. I highly recommend that book. It’s good for business negotiations, life negotiations, I use it to negotiate with my toddler all the time. So I definitely recommend it. Very cool.

Bryce Platt: Throwing some mirroring out there.

Nate Hedrick: Exactly, mirroring works great on a toddler, I promise. That’s so cool. Well, and then the last step is No. 6, inspect, insure and close. So a lot of this can kind of get a bit nebulous. There’s a lot involved. So I guess what I’ll ask is, is there anything you learned or would have done differently now that you’ve gone through the closing process, you’ve been a first-time home buyer and made it out to the other side. You know, what are some tips you can share with our listeners?

Bryce Platt: Find a really good real estate agent because Adam made this go so smoothly for me. I had no issues. He provided me with a very good inspector. I had an insurance broker that I had no issues with, a closing agent, and had nothing that I needed help with. Zero issues with closing. And I hope that I can say that after every property I close on.

Nate Hedrick: Good, I’m so glad. And you’re totally right. That agent is so in charge of connecting you with the right people, otherwise you’re going out and finding your own lender just magically, and you’re going and finding all these different people. If you’ve got one point of coordination, it can get so much easier. So I’m glad that you had that great experience. That’s amazing.

Bryce Platt: Yeah, if people have the connections, which obviously I did not just starting, I mean, you could maybe find some good people to work with. But when you’re just getting out here in the first place, I think it’s more important to just figure out the people that your real estate agent trusts, as long as you trust your real estate agent.

Nate Hedrick: That’s great advice. Awesome. Well, good. Well those are the six steps. It sounds like you’ve made it out the other side. How is everything going with the actual finding tenants? I mean, that’s where we’re at now, right? Are we still running into COVID issues? Or how is that going?

Bryce Platt: Sure. So I had expected to rent to mostly students. As I had mentioned, it’s nearby the school and there were students living here before. As I made my listings, almost mainly following what Craig mentions in his house hacking strategy, I had many people interested. But they were mostly non-students. So right now, I have one person that’s in a similar life position as me, recently graduated out of school, so a young professional. And then one that is an intern and in school or I guess in the summer part of school. And then the third person of the, you know, there’s four rooms, I’m taking one of them obviously, so two of them are filled. The third one just applied this morning, and I expect that he will be accepted as well. So I think I’ve got it all filled out. And as I mentioned to Nate before we started the podcast that I don’t have to pay the first mortgage payment until August. So I am getting — I got my first rent payment like a week and a half ago. And that was nice to have before I even have to pay the property costs.

Nate Hedrick: That’s a cool moment. That’s when it feels real, like OK, I’m actually doing this. This is pretty awesome.

Bryce Platt: Yeah. And like I said, from starting mid-February from absolutely nothing to middle of June or the beginning of June, I closed on a property, I would not have ever guessed that.

Nate Hedrick: So yeah, so now you’re basically a landlord a couple of months later. That’s pretty incredible.

Bryce Platt: Absolutely. And like I said, no — I could have had no idea this was something I could do. But with lots of education — the YFP podcast was what kickstarted it. And then that’s also how I found Bigger Pockets, and Bigger Pockets was a huge education for me. I’m still working through all their podcasts. I haven’t even gotten through to the current ones, and I was still able to do it before I even caught up on Bigger Pockets stuff. So that’s two great communities that can help educate people to feel at least comfortable enough to take a step and do it.

Nate Hedrick: Great. We’ll make sure to put that in the show notes as well. I love Bigger Pockets, and I’ve been really diving into the Real Estate Rookie podcast they’ve been putting out recently. That’s been a great show.

Bryce Platt: Absolutely.

Nate Hedrick: Well Bryce, anything else you want to share with our listeners before we let you go?

Bryce Platt: Spending time to educate yourself is going to make you feel better about actually taking action. But you can’t stop with just educating yourself. There’s always — you have to take an action step. And after I bought that book, I kind of felt like, oh, I’ve made my step. I’m doing well now. But luckily for me, in my toastmasters group, there’s a real estate agent. And so I started talking to her about investment properties. And she kind of worked with me a little bit and wasn’t able to commit the time because she was working on her own investment property at the time.

Nate Hedrick: OK.

Bryce Platt: And then Tim Baker actually recommended I work with Nate to get a real estate agent here in North Carolina. And so that was the real action step that after I had done that, it was just a snowball effect. You didn’t have to worry about like, oh, am I doing the right thing? It was, I’m in the action phase now.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, it’s hard to make that first jump. But once you do, it’s easier to make the next one and the next one. So that’s great.

Bryce Platt: Oh yeah.

Nate Hedrick: Well Bryce, we really appreciate you being on today. I think this has been an awesome story to share with our listeners. So just appreciate your time.

Bryce Platt: Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me on, guys.

Tim Ulbrich: Alright, great stuff, Nate. Thank you for taking the mic and taking the time to interview Shelby and Bryce. And a thank you to Shelby and Bryce for taking the time out of their schedule to do that interview. So let’s talk, Nate, through the concierge service. Obviously they saw it come alive through these stories. But we’ll talk step-by-step what folks can expect from that service, how it works, and what they can expect throughout the entire process from looking for a home all the way to landing that property. So Step No. 1, crafting a plan. So talk us through that.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, so just like we were talking a little bit in the interviews, the whole first step is figuring out a plan, right? We want to come into this with your goal is to buy a home or sell a home or invest or whatever the plan is. Let me help you put some framework behind that plan, so looking at things like budget, looking at things like location, what’s your goal with this property, right? Are you looking to buy your first house and then rent it out in a couple years? Or are you looking to buy your forever home? And those are all very different approaches, and they require very different agents and what they specialize in. So that very first step is really going to be our 30-minute jumpstart planning call. And during that call, I’ll be connecting with you and actually talking through those things that I just mentioned to figure out what the best course of action’s going to be. And that allows to kind of move forward with a really good mindset of, this is the goal. This is what we’re trying to achieve with.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome. So Step 1, crafting a plan. Step No. 2, connecting you with a pro.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, and this is where we then jump in and use that information from that jumpstart planning call to actually connect you with a local agent. And this is either someone that we’ve worked with in the past that other pharmacists have utilized or worked with recently, or it’s maybe a new person if you’re in an area where we haven’t added someone to our network yet. And what I’ll do is I’ll actually go out and interview a couple of agents, find somebody who I think is going to be a good fit, and then I’ll get you connected with that person. And it’s not just an agent too, right? Because that agent is going to become the boots on the ground leading your team. But it’s also going to lead to connecting you with lenders, connecting you with contractors, lawyers. Whoever you might need in that local area, they’re going to be the expert for that. And so we help kind of facilitate all those things with that connection.

Tim Ulbrich: And after connecting with a pro, Step No. 3, staying the course, to me is really important. Because I think while they’re going to have that interaction with the agent, obviously questions will come up. And through that crafting a plan in Step No. 1, you’ve got an idea of what they’re looking for for their situation and how that may fit, you know, in with other questions that they have as it relates to that home buying experience. So talk to us about staying the course and your involvement with them throughout the process.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, this is the part that I think is actually most important because finding that initial agent is not a foolproof process, as you can tell with Shelby’s interview, right?

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Nate Hedrick: We didn’t get it right right off the first bat. And that’s OK because we’re there as a part of your team the whole time. So even if it doesn’t go 100% the first time, we’re still involved in the process. And we’ve had a couple of clients now where we’ve pivoted a little bit from the initial person that we worked with to maybe a subagent or a totally different agent based on needs and how those have changed. So that whole idea that we are still on your team during the entire process, it’s absolutely essential to the concierge service. And it’s really the cornerstone of what we do.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I’m so glad that came out in Shelby’s story. And as you said, we’re not always going to get it right, and I don’t think we should expect to, right? As I think about so much of the agent relationship with a client and my experiences buying a home, sometimes that just comes down to personality fits. You know, obviously there’s the knowledge component and you want somebody who knows the market and who’s going to be your advocate. But sometimes, you know, an agent that works for Shelby or for Bryce may not be a good fit for me or somebody else that’s listening. So really finding that right fit and if it’s not the right fit being able to get back with you to be able to make sure that that right fit ultimately does get in place with the client.

Nate Hedrick: Yep.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome. So as a reminder, if you head on over to YourFinancialPharmacist.com and you click on “Buy or Refi a Home,” from there you’ll see an option where you can find an agent, get a time scheduled with Nate for that 30-minute jumpstart planning session. Again, YourFinancialPharmacist.com, at the top you’ll see there “Buy or Refi a Home,” find an agent, and that will take you to get a time scheduled with Nate. So again, Nate, thank you for taking time to come onto the show again and thank you for taking the time to bring Bryce and Shelby’s story onto the show as well.

Nate Hedrick: Happy to do it.

Tim Ulbrich: As we wrap up this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast, I want to again thank our sponsor, HPSO. HPSO’s the leading provider of professional liability coverage, insuring more than 100,000 pharmacists nationwide and sponsored by the American Pharmacists Association. As I mentioned before, when I was a practicing pharmacist, I carried my malpractice insurance through HPSO. And with individual policies for qualified persons starting at just under $150 per year, it’s a no-brainer compared to the cost of a claim and worth the extra peace of mind. Plus discounts are available for qualified students and recent grads. So head on over to HPSO.com/YFP to learn more. Again, HPSO.com/YFP. And as always, if you liked what you heard on this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast, please do us a favor and leave a rating and review in Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts each and every week. Have a great rest of your day.

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YFP 067: Rapid Fire Home Buying Q&A

Posted on by yfpadmin

Rapid Fire Home Buying Q&A

On Episode 067 of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, Tim Ulbrich, Founder of Your Financial Pharmacist, is joined by Nate Hedrick, the Real Estate RPh, to wrap up the month long series on home buying by taking questions from the YFP Community in a rapid fire Q&A format.

Summary of Episode

Nate Hedrick answers questions from the Your Financial Pharmacist community covering various facets of home buying process. Nate shares advice, resources, and parts of his financial, real estate, and home buying journeys to help answer these questions. The first question asks how to save for a down payment. Nate recommends using a savings account if the home will be purchased soon, otherwise he suggests to use a higher interest rate investment. The second question is in regards to comparing rates from different lenders without committing to them. Nate shares that it’s best to be upfront with lenders upon your initial conversation and let them know you are shopping around for a mortgage lender. During this process, you’ll receive a GFE (Good Faith Estimate) which is a document you can use as a comparison tool. Question three asks about tax advantages for home buyers. Nate discusses potential tax advantages for home buyers, such as buying down the rate or mortgage points, as well as property taxes. When asked about the process for building a home, Nate suggests asking pointed questions to the builders and to be wary of perks and additional up-sells they may pitch. Nate then talks about real estate crowdfunding sites which pull money together from different investors to leverage larger investments. Finally, Nate discusses buying a home while in debt with student loans.

About Today’s Guest

Nate Hedrick is a 2013 graduate of Ohio Northern University. By day, he works from home as a hospice clinical pharmacist for ProCare HospiceCare. By night, he works with pharmacist investors in Cleveland, Ohio – buying, flipping, selling, and renting homes as a licensed real estate agent with Berkshire Hathaway. This experience has led to a new real estate blog that covers everything from first-time home buying to real estate investing. Nate’s blog can be found at www.RealEstateRPH.com

Mentioned on the Show

Splash Financial
Real Estate RPh
YFP Concierge Service w/ Nate Hedrick
YFP Episode 064: 6 Steps to Home Buying (Part 1)
YFP Episode 065: 6 Steps to Home Buying (Part 2)
YFP Episode 066: 10 Home Buying Lessons Learned
Home Buying Quick Start Guide
YFP Episode 56: Rapid Fire Student Loans Q&A
YFP Episode 61: Rapid Fire Insurance Q&A
YFP Facebook Group
Ally.com
Script Financial
YFP Episode 009: Interview with Carrie Carlton
Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert T. Kiyosaki

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Welcome to the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. This is Tim Ulbrich, and I’m excited to have again Nate Hedrick, the Real Estate RPH, back on the show to do a rapid-fire Q&A to wrap up this month-long series that we’ve been doing on home buying. So Nate, welcome back to the show.

Nate Hedrick: Hey, thanks for having me again.

Tim Ulbrich: So for our listeners, we’ve been all over this topic of home buying during the month of September. And if we have anybody listening who’s just jumping in at the end of this series, I’m going to quickly recap where we’ve been before we jump into the Q&A because I think that will help set the stage and hopefully give you an opportunity to go back and listen if need be. So here we are in Episode 067, and at the beginning of the month in episodes 064 and 065, Nate and I covered the six steps of the home buying process. And I think for those that are just getting started or want a refresher on home buying, that’s a great primer, and I’d highly encourage you to go back and check out episode 064 and 065. In 064, we cover three steps. In 065, we cover three more in detail. And then in Episode 066, last week, I talked through 10 home buying lessons that I have learned over the past few months, maybe some hard lessons, mistakes, lessons reinforced as my family gets ready to make the move from northeast Ohio to Columbus. And just as a reminder, along with this series, we have developed a YFP first-time home buying quick start guide that you can download for free at YourFinancialPharmacist.com/homeguide. Again, that’s YourFinancialPharmacist.com/homeguide. Nd if you’re looking to buy or sell or home or you want to get started in real estate investing or you just have a question that you want to have answered by a licensed real estate agent that is also a pharmacist, head on over to YourFinancialPharmacist.com/realestaterph, where you can get in touch with Nate, the Real Estate RPH. So Nate, you ready to do this rapid-fire Q&A?

Nate Hedrick: I’m ready. I’ve got my coffee, so I’m good. Let’s do it.

Tim Ublrich: Me too. I’m ready to go. So an early morning, here we go. And here’s the format. We’ve done several of these before. We’ve done one on student loans, insurance, and just like those, we’ve taken questions from the YFP community via email, via our Facebook group, and I’m literally going to throw them off one-by-one to Nate, and we’re going to hammer some of these. And then if we have time, I’ve got a couple at the end that are ones that are of interest to me and I know that have been asked out there before. So first question, Nate, comes from Austin via the YFP Facebook group. He says, “What is the best vehicle for saving towards a home purchase? Putting 20% down means holding onto a significant amount of money until finalizing a home purchase? So do you feel it is best to invest that money or save it in a low-interest savings account?” What do you think, Nate?

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, that’s an awesome question, Austin. So it’s funny, I’ll tell you the safe plan. And I’ll tell you what I did. The best bet is honestly to put that in a high interest savings account or some sort of rotating certificate of deposit, something that’s going to be able to basically meet or get near to inflation so that all those dollars you’re saving are basically protected and that your money is worth as much as it was when you put it in. Because if it takes you two or three or four years potentially to get that full 20% down, hopefully not that long, but depending on how long it takes, you want that money to be still worth as much as it was when you put it in. So the safe plan is a high interest savings account or a rotating certificate of deposit. But what we did when I was saving for our down payment, we didn’t have a high interest savings account. I think my savings account made .065% annually. It was a joke. So you know, I knew I was getting beat up by inflation every year that we basically didn’t pull the trigger. So what my wife and I did at the time was I took half of the money that we saved for a new home and put that in a savings account. And the other half for that down payment went into basically a short-term investment account. And I basically, the goal was to make about 6% on that investment, which isn’t outrageous. And if I could do that, basically and inflation was 3%, then I’m basically beating inflation with all that money. And so that was kind of the idea behind it. And it worked pretty well. It’s a riskier play, obviously, you can easily lose money that you’re investing, even in short-term investments, especially. So it’s a risker play. But again, at the time, I didn’t really have a whole lot of options. I suppose if I were just doing it today, I would look for some aggressive certificate of deposits, some of those online banks like Ally and whatnot are fantastic for that.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and it’s nice that some of those higher yield savings accounts, the interest rate has come up a little bit, you know, so I think the last statement I got from Ally, it’s up towards 1.8% or something like that, which is nice from the .5%, .4%, .6% that we were living in. You know, to me, Nate, when I hear this question — and you alluded to this — I think about what’s the time horizon, what’s the appetite for risk? And then also just thinking about some of the tax implications and things along the way as well because if somebody’s looking at, you know, I really want to buy a home in six or 12 months, does the math on getting 6% in an account versus getting, you know, 1.5-2% in a savings account, you think about the potential risk that you’re taking out in an investment account versus a savings account, is it worth it with that time period when you really need the cash? Probably not. But if we have listeners out there that are thinking, you know, I’m in a position to start saving or maybe I have a gift from a family but I’m thinking about buying in five years or six years or seven years. When you think about that type of time horizon, to Nate’s point about the impact of inflation, I think that’s where you then start to think about, OK, how could I leverage these funds? Where yes, I’m investing them so they’re growing and beating inflation, but ultimately, I don’t necessarily want to be losing these moneys or at least minimize the risk of losing those moneys along the way. So for somebody that is thinking about investing, any other details you can provide? So you alluded to a little bit of a CD. When you talked about putting that money into a fund, were you just investing it in mutual funds out in the open market? Obviously you’re not doing that in a retirement account, I assume, correct?

Nate Hedrick: No, no. This was basically open market. Basically, you sign up with an online brokerage. I was doing individual stocks and bonds, I was doing larger investment vehicles like mutual funds, like you said, high dividend stuff. And obviously, like you said, there are tax implications to doing that. So this isn’t something you do lightly. But it’s something I had experience with and felt comfortable doing. And it was something that was, again, successful for me at that time. But I also had a larger time frame to look at. You know, we kind of started looking at that while I was still finishing up college, so I totally agree with you. If you’ve got a short-term play, you’re looking at a year, just throw it in a savings account, just protect that investment. And know that that money’s going to be worth it here in the next year, and you can use that down payment.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think this is another good place too to think about, you know, the peace of mind variable, which often gets lost in the math and the weeds of this, right? So if you and/or a significant other or a spouse or somebody really wants to have the peace of mind that that money’s there and I’m not going to lose it, you’ve got to factor that into the equation.

Nate Hedrick: Definitely.

Tim Ulbrich: So Nate, I’m guessing some people are hearing this and thinking, 20% down? Do I really have to do this? I know we’ve talked about this on previous episodes, and you know, you do the math on this. On a $300,000 house, you’re looking at $60,000 down. On a $400,000 house, you’re looking at $80,000 down and so forth. And so we got a follow-up comment to this in the Facebook group where somebody alludes to, well, maybe you don’t need to put 20% down. So the comment here was, “I would consider weighing the option of not paying 20% down. Local credit union offers a first-time home buyer with 0% down. This avoids the PMI without having to save a boatload of money for down payment. Although credit scores were high, we were still approved, even with a pretty high student loan-to-income ratio. Keep in mind that the fixed rate was around 1% higher than going mortgage rate at the time. But with enough equity put in, we may explore refinancing to a lower percentage down the road if possible.” So we’ve talked before about in episodes 064 and 065, we talked a little bit about, OK, if you don’t have 20% down, you’re going to be paying Private Mortgage Insurance. However, there are some instances, and it looks like this is the case, where somebody’s not putting 20% down, and there’s no PMI, in fact 0% down loans. But the implications here are potentially a higher interest rate and obviously not having equity in the home. So what are your thoughts here and what are some variables for people to think about that may be leaning towards, you know what, I’m not going to put 20% down. What are your thoughts?

Nate Hedrick: Yeah. I think it all comes down to your priorities. You know, if your priority is to get into a home quickly, then yeah, I think it’s a really reasonable thing to not put 20% down. You know, before I started this financial journey, you know, our home, we didn’t put our full 20% down. We just got to the point where we had saved a good, I think we were at like 15%. And I said, look, this is the time, we’ve got to move. Our rental lease is up, and we just need a home for a couple of reasons. And so we just went for it. So it’s not for everybody, you kind of have to take that emotional side sometimes, which is harder to think about with a financial decision, and know that now, as we’re getting much, much further. We’re 10 years out now — well, almost 10 years out from the financial collapse of the housing market in 2008. There are a lot more options available to you now. I’m seeing a lot of 10% down conventional loans that have no PMI and the rates are pretty comparable. So there are products becoming more available. I think that the 20% down is very good in terms of being very financially stable and starting off with a lot of equity, but it’s by no means necessary.

Tim Ulbrich: Awesome. Next question comes from Mac via email. He says, “They say nowadays, your best off to obtain multiple loan quotes when buying a home. Sometimes it can be hard to compare rates when you are comparing apples to apples and fee structures, rates and commissions. What’s the best way to compare rates without going too far with one lender and then feeling committed to them? Or depending on how far down the road you are buying a home, is it too late to switch lenders and not put your purchase at risk in the market that we are in these days? What do you think?

Nate Hedrick: Yeah. That’s a great question. And there’s a couple aspects to it. So the first thing is I would go in with the expectation when you go to these lenders and tell them up front, I’m shopping around for a mortgage lender. My wife and I or my spouse and I or whatever are going to buying a home. And we wanted to find the appropriate mortgage lender for us. So help us make that to be you. And if you set that stage from the beginning, it’s going to be a little bit of an easier conversation. So they should be able to walk you down the road of OK, what kind of home are you looking for? What’s your budget? So on and so forth, which you have when you go in. And they should be able to give you a good faith estimate. This is a GFE document, it’s a very, very common thing. A good faith estimate shows you all of the numbers that they expect a loan to basically take. So an interest rate, it’s going to be all the fees, it’s going to be all the terms of that loan. So how long the loan is going to last, you know, are there prepayment penalties, are there escrow charges, what are the — all the aspects that go into the loan process. So that good faith estimate is that comparison tool because if you get three of those, one from each of your lender, although the individual loans may be a little bit difficult to compare, you’re going to have all that information in front of you, and you can do the math yourself to figure out how those stack up. So really once you get those good faith estimates, focus on the big numbers, APR or annual percentage rate, not just interest rate is a good way to do that. APR basically takes into account a lot of those fees. So if two loans are 4.5%, but one has $5,000 in fees and the other one has $0, that one with the fees is going to have a larger annual percentage rate, basically the effective interest rate is what they really should call it based on those fees that are built in. So you can use an APR to get a better estimate of what that loan is going to look like. The other big thing is you want to watch for — especially on your GFE — are things like rate locking and the ability to lock your rate at a certain time. That can be really beneficial. What the lender fees actually look like because these are one of the most negotiable aspects of a loan. You can basically take one lender’s fees and throw them at another lender and say, ‘Look, they’re not charging for this. I don’t think you should either.’ So that’s a good option. Watch for prepayment penalties. And then also watch for things like mortgage insurance. We’ve talked a lot about private mortgage insurance, but different loans require different amounts of it. And the GFE will basically show you exactly what those are going to look like.

Tim Ulbrich: I think that’s great advice, and the GFE, the good faith estimate to me was kind of the Aha! moment as Jess and I were going through the process. Once you can see that document, you’re like, OK, I can look at this, I can understand it, I can break down all of these costs and you can really start to get that full picture and not just focus on the interest rate, which I think is the common practice when you just get started and you’re getting quotes that are out there. So I love the recommendation of the practice of getting two or three different GFEs from companies, then you can really compare, as Mac’s question, is kind of apples-to-apples. Couple thing that I’ve learned as we’ve gone through this process here over the last month is that I think it’s very easy to just get locked in with a lender really early. And once you’re far enough down that rabbit hole, it’s hard to come back out of it. So I think really starting up front and being clear that you’re getting quotes, get those multiple quotes because I think what we’ve experienced actually on the side of those that are buying our current home is they actually did switch lenders, as Mac’s question is about, can you switch lenders? And how far down the road are you putting things at risk? And the thing you’ve really got to be careful about is that really restarted the whole process and put our sale about two weeks behind. And so you know, documents had to be transferred and how willing is a mortgage company — I mean, how readily available are they going to be to give documents over on a loan they’re no longer doing? And all of these things, and so it can certainly delay the process, so I think shopping up front is really key. And then you can go forward with one lender before you’re too far down the process. To your point, Nate, about the rate lock, I’m actually paying for this right now, this week. So I don’t know if this is something I could have negotiated up front, I think it was one of those things I looked at and said, ‘No big deal. We’re going to close on time, so why does this matter?’ Well, guess what? Closing got delayed, now the rate lock — I’m actually having to pay a few hundred dollars to get an extension on that rate lock.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, that’s fairly common.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think that if that was something I would have played out and thought, well, what if closing gets delayed? Then I think we could have hopefully prevented that in advance. So great question, Mac. And actually, Mac had a follow-up question via email, unrelated, but on this topic of home buying. He asked, “What should be considered when buying a home to help maximize your tax advantages?” So the dos and don’ts in terms of home buying and tax advantages. And obviously, this is a big question. What are some of your thoughts, Nate, around home buying and tax advantages?

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’ll try to just hit on a couple of things here because like you said, it is a fairly big question. The first thing I think is important to talk about is what can you do up front? Like what can you do kind of as you’re buying that home to reap some tax benefits? And there are a number of things from, you know, first home buyer tax credits that are available depending on a number of factors. But one of the easiest things you can do is actually — it’s called buying down the rate. And you’ll hear this referred to as mortgage points or buying points. And this is something where if you have extra capital to put into a home purchase, you can actually percentages of that loan to lower your effective interest rate. So if you are buying a $100,000 home, just for easy math, every point on that loan is 1% or $1,000. And every point that you buy, every $1,000 that you spend, drops your interest rate by a certain amount, you know, whether it’s .25% or whatever. So you can put extra money on a loan to effectively lower your interest rate, which is great for the long term, right? If you had that home for 30 years and your interest rate is now a full 1 percentage point lower, let’s say, that’s going to make a big difference over the life of that loan. But in the very next year, basically as soon as you file those taxes for that year that you bought the home, you can also deduct all of that mortgage interest as a deductible on your taxes. So there’s a really cool kind of tax benefit right up front. So that’s one big thing to look at, at least early on. The other thing that you want to look at is — and this is really kind of a thing that’s changed. If you had asked me this question a year ago, it’d be a little bit of a different story. But with the new tax laws, you want to probably know, are you going to be taking the standard deduction next year? Or are you going to be doing the itemized? And with the standard deduction being raised to what it is, a lot of the individual benefits we used to get from homeownership have kind of fallen away. They’re still there, but they’re just not something that you’re going to get any benefit from. The example I have is that basically now that the aggregate amount of state and local sales and property tax is capped at $10,000 a year, people that are buying in New York and California and Hawaii, all these expensive places, they’re not going to see that benefit. You know, you’re no longer really itemizing that deduction anyway. So that cap at $10,000 is not enough to be worth it. So things like that you want to consider: Where am I buying? How am I going to be filing my taxes next year? You know, an accountant can really help with that because that may change your decision a little bit as well. And then the last piece I guess I’ll talk to is that you want to watch for the individual taxes for that area, so the property taxes. And this isn’t something that you can deduct or something that you have to worry about. It is one way to maximize your advantage, right? If I live in a township that has much higher taxes but much better schools, or do I live in a township that has much lower taxes but less amenities and maybe it’s nearby to the things that I want. You know, so that location aspect can be really important as well when talking about tax advantages.

Tim Ulbrich: So Nate, quick question for you on the buying of points, the first tax advantage that you mentioned. You know, I struggled a little bit when I got that offer on the table during the process we’re going through now. And the way I was trying to think about it — and I didn’t think about the deduction side of it, so I’m learning here right alongside the listeners as well — but what I was thinking about it from what’s the break-even point. So if I — just as an example — if I have to spend $2,000 to get my rate down whatever, .4%, you know, I can do the math on that to see that over how many months of saving that interest paid, why recuperate those dollars, and what if I would have just had that cash up front and done something else? So is that the right approach? Or how do you help your buyers evaluate whether or not that purchasing of points is worth it? Or whether those funds could be used elsewhere for other priorities that they’re working on?

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, and that’s a great point. So think about — there’s a couple aspects, and one is how long are you going to be in that home? That’s kind of the first decision. And how long do you expect to pay off that mortgage? If the answer is I can’t wait to buy this down and pay this off in 10 years or less, then buying points is probably not worth it. I think the break-even point is something around the 15-year mark or something like that.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, that’s what it was for us. Yep.

Nate Hedrick: Yep. And it varies based on the individual lender, but that’s usually where it’s at. So if you plan on having a true 30-year mortgage, then points can really be worthwhile. But if you plan on buying down your mortgage quickly or paying it off quickly, it’s usually not as beneficial. The other aspect to consider is that as soon as you pay that off, as soon as you put those monies in, it’s harder to get them back out, right? So that money is immediately tied up. So unless you’ve got a real excess of capital, which is obviously harder to find, it may not be worthwhile to tie up that extra money in the property.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, I’m especially thinking maybe for some of our listeners that are buying a home, and maybe they don’t yet have a fully funded emergency fund or they have high interest rate credit card debt or other things. So really, it sounds like buying points is an ideal scenario for somebody who is in a great overall financial position, has extra capital, and plans on being in the home for a long period of time.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, if you’re spending 5% on your student loans every month or every year, you don’t want to be paying, you know, a couple thousand bucks to get a couple of miniscule percentage points off. It’s not worthwhile.

Tim Ulbrich: OK, good stuff. Mac, thanks for your contribution, great questions. Mindy has a question that actually came in via the Real Estate RPH contact form, which is over at YourFinancialPharmacist.com/realestateRPH. She asked, “I’m building a house, second-time home buyer. Wondering what I need to know about the process, things to watch for, etc.” So thoughts for those listeners that may be thinking about building and whether they do or don’t currently own a home, what does that building process bring in terms of new factors and items that people need to be thinking about?

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, yeah. Besides the regular aspects of buying a home, it does add a couple things to the mix. The nice thing is is that you know you’re getting kind of — you know what you’re buying upfront, right? They’re building the home new. You’re not going to find any lagging issues that the home’s been there for 60 years and now the foundation’s starting to crumble, right? As long as everything is done quality upfront, you’re going to get everything brand new, which is a really big advantage. So I think the first question you want to ask if you’re considering building a home is you know, question around the idea of quality. And I think you don’t want to go to them and say, ‘How nice are your homes? Like what’s your quality?’ Like that doesn’t tell you anything because they’re just going to say, ‘They’re fantastic.’ And then you’ve learned nothing. But you want to ask some pointed questions, you know, things like, ‘Talk to me about some of your building standards. Talk to me about how energy-efficient your homes are.’ Because those are things that are going to show you yes, they follow code, but how close do they get to modern building standards? How close do they get to really high energy efficiency standards because those are much more better indicators of quality than just, oh yeah, we always follow code. Like you wouldn’t be a home builder if you didn’t follow code. So asking the right quality questions is a really good place to start, and that will help you know that what you’re getting when you put all that money in is going to be worthwhile. The second part is really the additions or the amendments or the kind of the perks, right? So you’re going to sit down when you’re building a home, and they’re going to walk you through and they’re going to say, ‘OK, the base model that you’ve selected is $400,000. Now let’s get to some of the upgrades.’ And these upgrades can take you — I’ve seen them honestly double the price of a home from that base value. So be careful when they say, ‘starting in the $300s.’

Tim Ulbrich: Starting at…

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, exactly. Like you’ll see that advertised on the big signs for the new developments. ‘Starting in the $200s,’ and realistically, no one’s walking out of there for under $300,000. So the upgrades, the things I would caution you on or draw your attention to is that take the upgrades that you find beneficial. Don’t let them talk you into things that, oh, this ups the resale value. So if you sell this home in five years, this is what people are going to want. If you’re building a home, in all likelihood, you’re building it for you. And so you should buy the upgrades that you want. One of the things I just had a client walk into it and was working through is that they said, ‘Well, we can do your upgraded kitchen cabinets. And right now, the popular thing is to do dark cabinets on the bottom and light cabinets on the top. And that’s only going to be $10,000 more, and you get this super modern kitchen.’ Well, if they sell that home in 10 years and that’s not popular, they may have to redo that. So if you don’t want that, don’t buy it. And that’s I think a good addage for all the upgrades that go with building a home. If you don’t want it, don’t invest that money because you’re the one that you’re building it for.

Tim Ulbrich: So Nate, one of the things that I’ve always wondered about building a house — we’ve never been through the process — is how does the cash flow needed differ from a buying a existing home? So if I’m in a current home, and I’m looking at building, how does that work in terms of selling and the timing? Am I having to put down money earlier where I necessarily can’t wait until the sale of my home? Or is it very similar to buying an existing home that those things are all ironed out?

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, it’s a little different because a lot of times, you have to buy the lot or you have to put in some sort of down payment to secure the lot. And sometimes, you have to buy the lot like upfront. Like it’s a $28,000 or a $50,000 piece of land that you have to basically buy upfront, and then you move forward. Or sometimes they can say, ‘OK, well it’s a $50,000 plot. We need $5,000 to secure this.’ But generally, it’s a lot more. It’s usually on the higher end of securing that location. So depends on the popularity, it depends on how they want to structure it. But there’s really two sides to it. One is basically securing that land and buying that land, and then the second is getting the mortgage on the home itself. And you can often wrap those things together so that everything’s kind of one piece, but the builder and the developer usually wants a lot more upfront to secure that property to begin with.

Tim Ulbrich: You know, one of the things that I’ve seen in our neighborhood, and we don’t actually have a homeowners association, so this may be different in areas that have a little bit tighter regulations, but we’ve actually seen several houses go up where my guess is maybe they didn’t anticipate all costs involved where six or 12 months later, like the yard is still not in or something’s not fully finished, you know, in terms of a porch or something else. So I think just things to consider, to your point earlier about, you know, what is the starting out price? What’s the actual price? And going back to you really defining your budget before you go into those conversations with the builders or else I think it easily could be a conversation where you start at $250,000 and you end at $400,000, you know, depending on what you’re looking at. So Lauren via the Facebook group asked, “What are your thoughts about real estate crowdfunding sites like FundRise?” So talk to us a little about what are real estate crowdfunding sites and what are your recommendations on these for those that may be interested in doing some real estate investing?

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, this was an awesome question from Lauren. I actually answered it on the Facebook page because I’m in the middle of writing an article about it right now. My wife Kristin actually found FundRise — I had never heard of it before — and said, ‘What is this? Like what’s going on with this?’ And I said, ‘I’m going to find out.’ So I’m actually in the middle of writing this article right now because it’s super interesting. The basics is this: So it’s a REIT, which is Real Estate Investment Trust, but they’re calling it an e-REIT, or an electronic or online or whatever they want to define it as. But the idea is very simple. The idea is that they’re a group of individuals who buy real estate — and this is many aspects. They’re buying rental properties, they’re buying commercial development, they’re buying land, they’re buying all sorts of stuff. And you yourself wouldn’t be able to buy those pieces, you wouldn’t be able to buy the land, you wouldn’t be able to buy the commercial buildings, but if you could buy a very, very small chunk of that, you could still reap some of the benefits. So if you put in, you know, a couple thousand dollars, and 50 people do that, now all of a sudden, they’ve got the capital they need to go forward and take on these big investment and real estate investment properties and projects. So you’re basically crowdfunding a investor group to do these things. So it’s kind of like a mutual fund where you’re buying small chunks of a larger company, but instead, you’re buying small chunks of a larger real estate investing group. And I’ll say a couple of things about FundRise in particular. And I don’t have any personal experience investing with them, so I’ll say that upfront, but the reading that I’ve done and looking through their fine print, I think there’s a couple of aspects. One is that I think that their model is very good in terms of what they’re investing in, where they’re doing it. I think they’re a little ahead of the game. They’re kind of targeting areas that are still not quite on the rise but will be on the rise soon. So I think they have good investments. People in the industry that are talking about them, they’re investing in the right areas. And their current return on investments in the 10-12% area are indicators that they’re doing the right things. So that’s a good sign, right? That they’re investing in the right areas. The problems I think come in when you look at how that money that you’re giving them is being used and how you get it back. They are not a publicly traded entity. They are a publicly available entity. And those are two very different things. If I go into my brokerage account and buy a REIT, a buy a portion of an investing property, I can sell that at any time. It’s publicly traded, so a broker will take that off my hands as soon as I am ready to sell it. Just like a stock — if I buy Apple stock and then go sell it tomorrow, someone’s going to buy that. That’s publicly traded. But if it’s publicly available, I may not have someone available to buy that investment whenever I need to sell. So I could say, ‘Hey guys, I want to cash out. I’m done with FundRise. I want my money back,’ and they would be like, ‘Well, nobody’s buying right now at the price you’re offering. So I’m sorry, we ahve to hold onto your money.’ And if you read all the fine print, they actually really talk about how illiquid the money really is. They can hold onto your money almost indefinitely if it benefits the group of investors. And really, I want you guys to look at that on your own terms because it’s pretty interesting to see how that breaks down. But the idea is simply that if they find it to be in the best interests of the investor group, they can hold onto that money for a long period of time, so it’s pretty difficult —

Tim Ulbrich: That’s interesting.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, it can be difficult to get that money back out. And I’m sure people are — right now, at least it’s fine. But who knows what it’s going to look like five years down the road? So that’s one of the big concerns that I have. The other one is that even though there have been great returns — and again, 10-12% is fantastic returns for something like this — their fee structure is a little bit high. They talk about only charging about 1% upfront, but if you really break down the fees that are built into the back end, fees can be upwards of 3% a year. So the fees can be quite high, and that’s something that you really want to take into account because that’s taking away from your gains. So all of a sudden your 12% is down to 9%, and if they start dropping and they go to 8-10%, now you’re talking about gains that are less than the S&P. And so is it really worthwhile to have this illiquid money making less than you make in a general just brokerage account. So there’s a couple of pieces to consider there.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, those are great points. And I would encourage to our listeners that are thinking about this, don’t forget about your tax advantage retirement savings account. So your 401k’s, 403b’s, Roth IRAs, obviously there’s inherent tax benefits of being involved in those accounts that you may not see with something like a FundRise. So don’t forget to factor that into the equation. And certainly I know in my 401 account, I certainly have the option to invest in REITs, and so is there a way that you can get involved in diversifying your investments into real estate while still taking advantage of those tax advantage retirement accounts if you’re not already doing so. Couple other questions that I want to throw out there briefly because I think they’re ones that I get often. The first one is, Nate, probably the most common question I get. And I was surprised we didn’t get it on the Facebook group is, where does home buying fit in with student loan debt? So is buying a home appropriate when I have $150,000-200,000 of student loan debt? If so, is there an ideal or a right time? And what are some of the principles I should be thinking about? And so I wanted to get your thoughts on this one.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s actually a really large question. And I think the simplest answer is it fits in wherever your priorities say it does. And that’s almost too simple of an answer, but it really is the truth. If you need a home right now. If your family or your personal environment says that I need a home right now, then you’re going to make it work with your student loan debt. It’s certainly possible. If you are someone that just hates being in debt and hates the idea of owing somebody more than your salary, you’re probably going to wait. You’re going to pay off those loans first before tackling the home buying process. But it really depends on that priority set. In fact, Tim Church and I — Your Financial Pharmacist Tim Church and I have been working on an article that will be coming out probably around the time this podcast is launched. It talks all about how to buy a home with student loans and what that can look like. So it really comes down to your personal journey and where you’re at and trying to fit that in. I mean, I’ll be honest. I’ll tell you, when my wife and I bought our home, we were well into the negatives in our net worth at the time. But it was something that for us, we wanted a home, we needed a home at the time. So it was worth doing. And it really depends on your own situation.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, Jess and I were right there with you. And I think for me, this is such a personal, customized question that the answer to this is different for everyone, right? So you know, I think this is a great example of sitting down and really looking at all of your financial goals in terms of things we’ve talked about before on this podcast: emergency funds and how much debt? And is there credit card debt? And where are you at with retirement savings? And what other financial priorities are on the table? And I think the thing I would encourage the listeners to think about is on a month-to-month basis, depending on your student loan payment, as you look at evaluating the home purchase, you know, you really want to be cautious and not put yourself in a situation where you feel like between your student loan payment and your mortgage payment, you really got no margin to do anything else or a little margin where you’re feeling super stressed each and every month. Now, that can also be tricky because some people may say, ‘Well, I’ll opt into income-driven repayment plan, I’ll minimize my student loan payment, I’ll free up cash, and I’ll then be able to purchase a home.’ But obviously, that has limitations as well, being in student loan debt longer. So I think really taking a step back, working with a financial planner like Tim Baker or really looking at all of your financial goals to say, ‘OK. Where does home buying fit in with all these other priorities?’ And then if it fits in at this point in time, what’s the best next step in terms of how much down, what’s the overall purchase price of the home, location, all of the other factors we’ve been talking about this entire month. Nate, one last question I have here. We’ve gotten a lot of action in the YFP community about real estate investing. And I think there’s a big interest out there, rightfully so, especially while the market’s hot, of course. But we had Carrie Carlton on in Episode 009 that talked about real estate investing, which is one of our most popular episodes. For those that haven’t listened to that, I would check that out. But I think many people are thinking about, OK, where is the job market heading? You know, I want to think about an alternative revenue stream. Real estate investing may be that alternative revenue stream. So for those that are thinking about investing in real estate, whether that be for a side income, a business, diversification of investments, what is the best first step they can take? And I think with other financial priorities also in mind, such as emergency funds, debt, etc., is there a right time to jump into real estate investing? So I know this is a huge question. We could do a separate series in episodes, we probably will in the future. But I know we have listeners that are thinking about real estate investing. I want to give them something to hang onto as the next step. What do you think?

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, no, I think that’s great. And you’re right, it’s a huge question. This is why I have a website, right? This is why I have the Real Estate RPH because this is exactly where I was. I remember reading “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” learning about passive income and real estate investing and thinking, how do I jump into this? What’s the next step I can take? So if you’re looking for the next step, I think the very first thing you should do no matter what is educate yourself. Listening to podcasts like this, checking out blog posts for our site and for Real Estate RPH, that can be a really great tool. And there are so many other resources out there. There are books, there are blogs, there are podcasts. But educating yourself about the types of investing can be a really great first or next step. And then once you’ve done that, and if you want to take a tangible action, you know, I want to do something and see what this actually looks like, I really encourage people to assess some deals in the area that you’re considering. I work with a lot of pharmacist investors here in Cleveland, and the very first thing if they’re new investors, they say, ‘Well, where do I start? What do I do?’ I say, ‘Well, I need you to assess some deals first. Understand the market in which you’re looking in so that you know what a good deal looks like.’ And there are a number of tools that can help you do this. But really, the best thing is just go pen and paper and a calculator. But seriously looking at what available homes are there on the market right now? What are rents looking like if I’m going to rent that? Or what are flips looking like? Or comps looking like if I were to flip that home, depending on the type of investing you’re going to do? And just figure out if that is a good deal, a bad deal or something in between. And then once you have that pulse on the market and you understand it and you’re doing the education and the background, it becomes that much easier when a good deal comes along, you can actually pull that trigger and look at seriously putting an offer on that home.

Tim Ulbrich: So for me here, I think it’s all about learning. Reading, blog posts, books, listening to podcasts, engaging in communities like this one. And I love your advice of really looking at deals and doing the math on them. And I think when I think about real estate investing, Nate, I think all of us have either a family member or a friend or somebody who’s doing this and who is encouraging us to get involved in real estate investing and talks about all the upside of real estate investing. And of all the things I’ve read, for every good, positive return on investment story when it comes to buying homes, there’s probably five that have gone bad that maybe you’re not going to hear about. So really doing your homework, doing the math, making sure you understand all of the costs, everything involved. But we’ll definitely have more content coming on this topic in the future, so stay tuned in the YFP blog, podcast and Facebook group as well. So Nate, this month has been a ton of fun. We are super excited about the partnership between YFP and Real Estate RPH. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast, contributing to the blog. And for our listeners, again, we continue to bring you content around real estate investing, buying and selling homes. If you have a question that you’d like to get answered by Nate, head on over to YourFinancialPharmacist.com/realestateRPH, and Nate will get back to you in regards to your question. As we wrap up today’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast, I want to take a moment to again thank our sponsor, Splash Financial.

Sponsor: If you’re looking to refinance your student loans, head on over to SplashFinancial.com/YourFinancialPharmacist, where in just a few minutes, you can check your rate. Splash’s new rates are as low as 3.25% fixed APR, which can literally save you tens of thousands of dollars over the life of your loans. Plus, YFP readers receive a $500 welcome bonus for refinancing with Splash. Again, that’s SplashFinancial.com/YourFinancialPharmacist.

Tim Ulbrich: Hey, thank you so much for joining me for this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Next week, Tim Baker and I will be talking about the pros and cons of Dave Ramsey’s seven baby steps and how they do and don’t apply to the pharmacy profession. This is a good one, you’re not going to want to miss this episode. If you’ve liked what you’ve heard on this week’s episode, please make sure to subscribe in iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Also, make sure to head on over to YourFinancialPharmacist.com, where you’ll find a wide array of resources designed specifically for you, the pharmacy professional, to help you on the path toward achieving financial freedom. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 067: Rapid Fire Home Buying Q&A

Rapid Fire Home Buying Q&A

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Navigating the Home Buying Process Through the YFP Concierge Service

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Rapid Fire Home Buying Q&A

Summary of Episode

About Today’s Guest

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Join the YFP Community! I Want In!

Compliance/Legal

Disclaimer and Disclosures

Firm Brochure (ADV Part 2)

Brochure Supplement (ADV Part 2B)

YFP Planning CRS

Subscribe to YFP Money Matters and get financial tips, money resources, and the latest podcast episode sent straight to your inbox every Friday morning!

Join the YFP Community!