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People don't call us because they need a mortgage. They call us because they need help making a housing decision.
Mortgage Matters is a Las Vegas, Nevada-based radio show and podcast hosted by mortgage advisors Roland Daniels (NMLS 355859) and Heidi Griffith (NMLS 2247754) with Geneva Financial. Airing every Sunday at 7:30 AM on KUNV 91.5 and available wherever you listen to podcasts, the show explores the real-life decisions, opportunities, challenges, and financial realities that shape where and how we live.
Every week, Roland and Heidi tackle the housing conversations people are already having around kitchen tables, at family gatherings, and on social media. Should I buy or wait? Is my first home supposed to be my dream home? Should I move up, downsize, invest, or stay put? How do I build wealth through real estate? What's the smartest use of my money? Through honest conversations and practical guidance, they help listeners make sense of the choices involved in renting, buying, selling, investing, and planning for the future.
Drawing on decades of mortgage and housing experience, Roland and Heidi break down real mortgage questions, homeownership strategies, down payment assistance programs, FHA loans, VA loans, conventional financing, housing affordability, wealth-building opportunities, and the financial realities that influence housing decisions.
Mortgage Matters also shines a spotlight on the people and organizations working to strengthen communities across Las Vegas and Nevada. Through conversations with housing advocates, nonprofit leaders, educators, elected officials, and local changemakers, the show explores the issues that affect housing, opportunity, economic mobility, fair housing, and homeownership throughout Southern Nevada.
Roland and Heidi are active community educators who lead free homebuyer workshops across Nevada in partnership with organizations including the Nevada Housing Division, Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC), and Nevada Rural Housing Authority. Roland serves as a director with the local chapter of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB), and Heidi serves as President of the Silver State Fair Housing Council, where Roland is also a board member. Together, they bring mortgage expertise, housing advocacy, community involvement, and a passion for helping people make informed housing decisions to every episode.
Announcer 0:00
This is a KUNV Studios original program. The
Wesley Knight 0:05
content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and more, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Roland Daniels 0:43
Good morning, Las Vegas. Welcome to Mortgage Matters. I'm Roland Daniels, a certified mortgage advisor with Geneva Financial. My NMLS number is 355859. Our company NMLS number is 42056, and I'm here this morning as always with my fantastic co-host, Heidi Griffith. Good morning, Heidi.
Heidi Griffith 1:08
Well, happy Sunday, Roland.
Roland Daniels 1:09
Happy Sunday. How
Heidi Griffith 1:10
are you?
Roland Daniels 1:10
I am doing fantastic
Heidi Griffith 1:13
as always.
Roland Daniels 1:14
I try my best.
Heidi Griffith 1:15
Good job. I'm Heidi Griffith. I'm also a mortgage advisor and your director of client services, my NMLS number is 2247754. Here's something that surprises a lot of people: a $700 car payment could cost you around $90,000 in home buying power, and a lower mortgage rate could save you money every month, but it could actually cost you 1000s of dollars upfront out of your pocket to get it. Those sound like two completely different things, don't they?
Roland Daniels 1:44
They do.
Heidi Griffith 1:45
But they do have something in common, don't they?
Roland Daniels 1:47
They actually do.
Heidi Griffith 1:48
When you're buying a house, one number by itself doesn't usually tell you enough.
Roland Daniels 1:53
No, it doesn't tell the complete story.
Heidi Griffith 1:55
Not even close. So let's do this today. Let's put some actual numbers behind the things buyers ask us about all the time, because I think once people see how those numbers work together, some of this might make a little bit more sense.
Roland Daniels 2:08
I agree. We do hear it all the time,
Heidi Griffith 2:10
and something you say all the time, and I love this because it's so true, is buy the house before the car.
Roland Daniels 2:17
Yes, because a lot of times, actually, weekly, when we're looking at credit reports, or we're asking about different loans that they may have, and they just bought that car like three months ago.
Heidi Griffith 2:29
And what's the average car payment in the country right now? Average
Roland Daniels 2:31
car payment here is around $750 a month.
Heidi Griffith 2:35
That's hard. That that's hard to sit with, but it's the truth, right? It's the truth. It's the truth, and I think people hear you say buy that house before the car and think, oh man, what a what a bummer! He just doesn't want me to have a nice car. Not
Roland Daniels 2:47
necessarily true. I want you to have the house first, then you can always get that car.
Heidi Griffith 2:53
Let's create an example.
Roland Daniels 2:54
Okay.
Heidi Griffith 2:55
Say I earn 85,000 a year.
Roland Daniels 2:57
Right.
Heidi Griffith 2:58
I have pretty good credit, and my monthly bills, my minimum monthly bills are at about 400 a month. So if I had a credit card, that would be you know part of whatever I had to pay monthly for that credit card. That
Roland Daniels 3:10
minimum credit card debt.
Heidi Griffith 3:11
Right. So let's say I'm using an FHA loan with the minimum down three and a half percent.
Roland Daniels 3:17
Sounds good.
Heidi Griffith 3:18
Let's say we'll use 7% as an even number for my interest rate,
Roland Daniels 3:22
and remember, this is just an example,
Heidi Griffith 3:24
right? Right, and then you estimate for taxes, homeowners insurance, mortgage insurance, all that good stuff, right? And let's use a 50% debt to income ratio when we're doing that. So before I buy the vehicle, how much house I can qualify for? Remember, I make 85,000,
Roland Daniels 3:41
right, and that's about just over $7,000 a month. Okay,
Heidi Griffith 3:45
okay, I have about $400 that I am responsible for outside of anything.
Roland Daniels 3:51
All right,
Heidi Griffith 3:51
a month, right? My debt to income ratio ceiling is going to be 50% and I want to buy a $400,000 house.
Roland Daniels 3:59
Okay,
Heidi Griffith 4:00
now I decide I really want to go buy a car. I really want to. I've been eyeballing the Tesla for a really long time. We sat down and talked. She told me don't buy the car, but I really want it. It's cute. It's electric. Gas is high. I'm going to go save money on gas.
Roland Daniels 4:15
I hear you.
Heidi Griffith 4:16
So I go buy it, and I was told that they have a great deal going on, and so my monthly payment-it's actually under the average. We'll call my monthly payment 700 bucks a month.
Roland Daniels 4:28
Okay,
Heidi Griffith 4:29
nothing's changed. I I still have my same job. I'm still earning the same amount. Credit hasn't changed. My debts haven't changed. What happens when I go buy that $700 a month Tesla?
Roland Daniels 4:39
Well, you still have that $400 of previous monthly debt,
Heidi Griffith 4:43
right?
Roland Daniels 4:44
But now you have a new car payment at 700, and now I have to account for your total monthly debt of $1,100 a month before anything else.
Heidi Griffith 4:56
Okay, so I qualified for 400 without my. Tesla. Yes, I got the Tesla. What do I qualify for now?
Roland Daniels 5:04
Well, unfortunately, now you only qualify for approximately $310,000.90.
Heidi Griffith 5:11
grand.
Roland Daniels 5:12
Approximately, your borrowing power has been reduced $90,000. So the $700 payment now has to be included in your debt-to-income ratio. So instead of like we were discussing, instead of just the $400 of your minimum monthly debt, now I have to account for $1,100. So using the same mortgage assumptions, your buying power has dropped from 400,000 to about 310,000,
Heidi Griffith 5:44
and those could be two completely different looking homes.
Roland Daniels 5:47
It can be
Heidi Griffith 5:47
right, so that that that could be a big deal.
Roland Daniels 5:51
Between 403 100, I think so,
Heidi Griffith 5:54
because that that's the part that gets me, you know. And I didn't lose my job. I'm still making the same amount of money,
Roland Daniels 6:00
right?
Heidi Griffith 6:01
If you've got a $700 car payment, is that going to lower what you qualify for by 90,000 across the board?
Roland Daniels 6:07
Not necessarily, because it all depends on your circumstance. Everybody has different income. Everybody has different programs or the down payment, but it will reduce your borrowing power.
Heidi Griffith 6:18
So the 90,000 is specific to our example for
Roland Daniels 6:21
this example,
Heidi Griffith 6:22
but the reason it happened-that's the important part.
Roland Daniels 6:25
Yes, it is. I bought
Heidi Griffith 6:26
the car, and you know, there's there's lots of people who can qualify for what they want and still go buy a car. But then we've got folks who, you know, you're close. You're close. Right. We
Roland Daniels 6:35
might right be right on that border line for that $400,000 home, and maybe we haven't seen anything that we'd like at that $90,000 less at 310,000.
Heidi Griffith 6:49
Well, yeah, and if we had our eyes on that $400,000 house, that $310,000 house might not look the same.
Roland Daniels 6:59
I agree with
Heidi Griffith 7:00
it. Might not look the same, so this is really all about my debt to income ratio, right? It
Roland Daniels 7:05
is. We are comparing your monthly debt payments to your gross monthly income.
Heidi Griffith 7:11
So that's debt to income ratio,
Roland Daniels 7:12
right? So the calculation is you take your minimum gross or your minimum monthly debt divided by your gross income, monthly gross income.
Heidi Griffith 7:25
So you can have excellent credit and make good money,
Roland Daniels 7:28
of course.
Heidi Griffith 7:28
But if a lot of that income is already committed to monthly debts, it can actually limit how much you buy.
Roland Daniels 7:33
That is the truth.
Heidi Griffith 7:34
So let's talk about this because we do get this from time to time. Somebody calls us on the phone. They want to get a pre-approval. They want to see how much they qualify for. They're pretty confident when they call because they have excellent credit. Let's say you know they're in the 800 s. They're doing everything correctly, and we do the pre-approval. They want to see the maximum that they would be approved for, and we get back with them after the pre-approval is done, and they're like, "What do you mean? I only qualify for this dollar amount? I have an 800 FICO, thinking that just because you have a great credit score, which is wonderful,
Roland Daniels 8:11
right?
Heidi Griffith 8:11
That you're going to qualify for anything more
Roland Daniels 8:14
because I have that 800 FICO.
Heidi Griffith 8:16
If you've got an 800 FICO and you've got a lot of debt, then that's going to impact
Roland Daniels 8:23
it. It will most definitely.
Heidi Griffith 8:25
And same thing for if you make a lot of money, you know, what if you made I don't know 150, $200,000 a year? Yay! But if you know you've got a lot of outstanding debt, same thing, isn't it? It is
Roland Daniels 8:37
because we have a client who is a a doctor, and they make the mid six six figure salary, but they have over a half a million dollars in student loan
Heidi Griffith 8:49
debt,
Roland Daniels 8:49
and then of course with a car payment, credit card expenses, and there's a couple personal loan debt, and you would think that they would qualify for more, but they don't, even though they have that high income, excellent credit, but they already have that that debt is there,
Heidi Griffith 9:08
right? Because even if student loans are in deferment, we still we
Roland Daniels 9:12
still have to account for a payment,
Heidi Griffith 9:14
right? As lenders, we you know the the the lending institution that you're working with is going to look at it and go, "That's great. We understand why your payments are deferred. We hope that everybody's payments are deferred. We hope that everybody's student loan debt gets wiped out,
Roland Daniels 9:26
right? Forgiven.
Heidi Griffith 9:27
But if in fact you've got that payment still reflecting on your credit, even though you're not paying it today, the lender knows that at some point you're going to have to pay it to make a payment. So we have to make sure that you're able to make that payment and still make the mortgage payment, right?
Roland Daniels 9:44
And if it's not shown on your credit report, it can be anywhere between a half a percent or 1% of the balance.
Heidi Griffith 9:50
And so, if buying a house is somewhere in your plans, this stuff doesn't actually necessarily mean you can't buy a car. It means finding. Before you buy the car, what that's going to do to your qualifying and how much it's going to impact what you can qualify for
Roland Daniels 10:07
before you drive down to that car lot.
Heidi Griffith 10:09
Well, yeah, because I'd rather find out before I buy the Tesla that the Tesla just caught me cost me the gorgeous kitchen I saw on Zillow, right? Because now I can qualify for less. So if you're thinking about buying, or you just want to know where you stand, feel free to reach out. You can call or text us. We're at 702-540-0420. Again, that number is 702-540-0420. And if you happen to miss us on a Sunday, you can actually catch all of our past episodes on Mortgage Matters Radio wherever you get your podcast. Just search Mortgage Matters Radio. Okay, so we talked about the car.
Roland Daniels 10:47
We did
Heidi Griffith 10:48
house before car. Let me go back to that for a second because we've actually had clients who mid transaction, meaning that they'd been pre-approved, they'd been out shopping, they got an approved accepted offer on the house that they loved, and then they bought a car. We've seen one of you know a couple of things happen. Either they've got to get the car out of their name,
Roland Daniels 11:12
right?
Heidi Griffith 11:13
No longer be responsible for that car payment. They've got to get rid of the car, or they've got to come up with the money.
Roland Daniels 11:19
Yes,
Heidi Griffith 11:20
and we've seen it. We've seen it more than we'd like to have seen it,
Roland Daniels 11:24
or make a choice between the car and the house.
Heidi Griffith 11:28
And the house, and I think we probably all know someone who's bought more car
Roland Daniels 11:33
than a house.
Heidi Griffith 11:34
As we talk about keeping up with the Joneses, keeping up with the Joneses, and with an average car payment at you know almost mid sevens,
Roland Daniels 11:41
and higher.
Heidi Griffith 11:42
It can get sticky real quick.
Roland Daniels 11:45
It can.
Heidi Griffith 11:46
So let's talk about another number that everyone. I mean, this is this is the number that people talk about. Interest rate. Feds met this week.
Roland Daniels 11:54
They did, and they actually increased rates.
Heidi Griffith 11:57
That's and that's the short term. That's not directly tied to mortgages, it is
Roland Daniels 12:01
the short term, and it's been the first increase since 23 years. Three,
Heidi Griffith 12:06
yeah, three years, three years. I am not opposed
Roland Daniels 12:10
to it. I I think it is needed to keep our the overall economy going due to inflation.
Heidi Griffith 12:17
Inflation is real.
Roland Daniels 12:18
It is, and it's out
Heidi Griffith 12:19
there. A lot of people obviously not happy about that. That means our credit card interest rates, all that short term interest rate stuff, car loans was affected immediately. Yes, but with that being said, we do need some corrections, in my opinion.
Roland Daniels 12:34
We do.
Heidi Griffith 12:35
It doesn't directly affect mortgage rates, but it kind of does.
Roland Daniels 12:40
It is. It kind of many different factors.
Heidi Griffith 12:42
So let let's talk about interest rates. If I go online right now, I see a mortgage rate. Is it reasonable for me to think that's my mortgage rate?
Roland Daniels 12:53
Well, they definitely want you to think that because they're going to you. You will see something that that will appeal to you that if you ask somebody over the phone compared to what you see online, most of the time it's going to be lower online,
Heidi Griffith 13:10
and you kind of got to know what questions to ask because that's the whole thing. I mean, everyone's interest rate driven. I get it. I get it. We've been taught that that's the most important thing, and I'm not telling you that it's well. It's
Roland Daniels 13:22
it is the number one question that we are asked: is what is your rate?
Heidi Griffith 13:27
Oh, absolutely. And again, it's not it's not a bad question to ask. You want it. I mean, you want to get the best rate you can possibly get. That's a no brainer. But when you look online and you see this rate, understand that there's several factors that come into play. Right. If somebody called you on the phone right now, Roland said, "What's your rate? I just saw this rate online, and I don't know. I'm going to make up a rate it, and it's six and a half percent. Right. So I need to get a six and a half percent. You got that for me. What do you say to them?
Roland Daniels 13:55
Well, I just can't quote your rate. I have to know what you qualify for. I have to know what program we're going to be using. So there's many factors when you're looking at just four rates,
Heidi Griffith 14:06
and and when you're comparing, you got to compare apples to apples too. So you've got to ask, you know, what what does that rate cost? And I know that's a little confusing with what does that rate cost, but there's a lot of things when you see online rates, and and it's very easy to do. And there's some great resources online to kind of keep an eye as to what interest rates are doing, but you got to read the fine print. Yes, most
Roland Daniels 14:31
importantly, read the fine print-the really, really small print.
Heidi Griffith 14:34
And it's really, really small. Yes, it's really, really small. And it's you know that rate that you're seeing posted online is the perfect storm. It's the best case scenario. It's a buyer who has exceptional credit, like
Roland Daniels 14:48
a 760 or higher,
Heidi Griffith 14:50
right?
Roland Daniels 14:50
Putting 30% down,
Heidi Griffith 14:52
buying a single family residence, yes, in a specific state,
Roland Daniels 14:57
right?
Heidi Griffith 14:57
Earning a specific amount. To income ratios below a specific amount, yes, it's the perfect storm. And in fine print, pretty much on every rate that you see right now, you're going to see discount points. And I think we talk about that because I think that we need to figure out what are you paying for, right?
Roland Daniels 15:17
Right.
Heidi Griffith 15:17
Because if I'm if I call you on the phone. If I don't do my research, if I don't do my due diligence, I see six and a half percent online. Just a you know, just a made up number. But I see six and a half online. I call you, and you're like, well, let me pull everything together. You get all of the information. You do a full pre approval based on on my scenario. Yep, your
Roland Daniels 15:40
income, your debts, the situation, the whole shebang, how
Heidi Griffith 15:44
much I'm putting down, the whole thing,
Roland Daniels 15:46
everything.
Heidi Griffith 15:46
You get all of that information, and again, just just making up numbers. You quote me seven. Well, obviously, the six and a half that I saw online looks better than the seven. Of course. But what am I really paying for? Because there could be different rate options available, right?
Roland Daniels 16:01
There can be.
Heidi Griffith 16:02
That's where discount points come into the conversation. That's what I'm talking about. That's the fine print. Discount points. What are discount points, Roland?
Roland Daniels 16:11
So one discount point equals 1% of your loan amount. So in this example, $400,000 loan. That's
Heidi Griffith 16:19
my house,
Roland Daniels 16:20
right? Multiply that by 1% The cost is about $4,000. So
Heidi Griffith 16:25
that means if if my rate was going to be seven, now my rate six.
Roland Daniels 16:29
It does not.
Heidi Griffith 16:30
No
Roland Daniels 16:31
buying or but paying one point doesn't mean that the interest rate automatically drops one percentage point. It's how much the rate changes depends on the pricing available at that time.
Heidi Griffith 16:44
So, it's not going to drop my rate by one
Roland Daniels 16:50
1%
Heidi Griffith 16:51
One, it's not going to drop. It
Roland Daniels 16:52
may only maybe drop it by a quarter or an eighth. If you're lucky.
Heidi Griffith 16:56
If I'm lucky.
Roland Daniels 16:57
Depending on the rates for that day.
Heidi Griffith 17:00
And your rates change throughout the day, right? They do, right? Right. So, so you can pay for a lower interest rate, but is that going to make sense? So, if I say I'm at seven, that's not going to bring me down to six. Let's forget about whether the lower rate sounds better. Okay. Let's kind of take a look at what it would actually cost me, because that's I mean when we talk about purchasing a home and we talk about folks being hyper fixated on the actual interest rate that number we need to think about also you know cash what do you want to spend a month how much money do you have to work with do you want to put all your money into your mortgage are you willing to pay 1015, 20,000 above and beyond? So that's where the question comes in. Let's make up two rate options for our example. Still, my $400,000 house, all of that good stuff.
Roland Daniels 17:52
Okay.
Heidi Griffith 17:52
Obviously, not today's rates. We're not saying two points will always get you this rate difference. This is just going to be an example that we can follow.
Roland Daniels 17:59
Okay.
Heidi Griffith 17:59
$400,000 loan. Give me the first option with that 7% we talked
Roland Daniels 18:04
about. Okay, so we're going to do $400,000 loan, 7% interest rate, no points. So principal, no discount, no discount points. Okay, principal and interest is about $2,661.
Heidi Griffith 18:18
Okay, and that's just the principal and interest. That's not taxes and insurance. Right. Okay.
Roland Daniels 18:22
Option number two, same $400,000 loan. This time is going to be six and a half percent interest rate, but for our example, we're going to say that it costs two points to get that rate.
Heidi Griffith 18:34
So it's a half a percent less than nothing. No, no points.
Roland Daniels 18:39
Okay.
Heidi Griffith 18:39
And it's going to cost me two points to get to this to that same example. Okay.
Roland Daniels 18:44
So that two points on $400,000, it will cost you $8,000 upfront. Now that puts the principal and interest at about $2,500 a month. Okay. So you're saving somewhere about $133 a month.
Heidi Griffith 19:02
Okay, so now now I have a decision. First of all, saving money every month sounds really good to me.
Roland Daniels 19:07
Yes,
Heidi Griffith 19:07
saving money every month sounds really good to me. But you're telling me I'm going to have to pay if my loan amount was $400,000. I'm going to have to pay above my down payment unless I'm using down payment assistance. Yes, and above my closing costs because you're
Roland Daniels 19:19
going to need an additional $8,000 on top of that,
Heidi Griffith 19:23
so that's a lot of money. It
Roland Daniels 19:24
is. So you have to figure out: is it worth it to save that $133 a month?
Heidi Griffith 19:30
Well, obviously, again, 133 sounds good to save a month. I'd like to save $133 anywhere I can. The six and a half rate sounds better than the 7% because I've been kind of geared to to go for the lower, absolutely, and you know all of us want to save money every month, but
does this end up being the better deal for me?
Roland Daniels 19:49
It all depends.
Heidi Griffith 19:51
So I guess this is where we're going to calculate the break even point, right? How long is it going to take me to recoup that $8,000 that I spent?
Roland Daniels 19:59
So. Just a simple number. We can divide the 8000 by the $133 a month, which is roughly five years or 60 months.
Heidi Griffith 20:07
So it's going to take me five years
Roland Daniels 20:10
to essentially break even. To
Heidi Griffith 20:12
break even from that $8,000, right? So here's the here's the conundrum in the world that we live in. We explain that Feds raise rates. Interest rates for mortgages has continued to rise
Roland Daniels 20:25
since 2023.
Heidi Griffith 20:26
We don't have a crystal ball.
Roland Daniels 20:29
We don't. I wish we had.
Heidi Griffith 20:31
The economists don't foresee anything changing any day soon.
Roland Daniels 20:36
Not any time soon.
Heidi Griffith 20:38
So, but but we know that, or we certainly hope-I shouldn't say we know-we certainly hope that at some point we're going to be in a position that rates will be low enough that it will make sense for me on this $400,000 house to refinance. So let's just pretend, fingers and toes crossed, that in two years rates come down enough that I'm like, hey, I want to refinance out of this six and a half percent rate that I got,
Roland Daniels 21:05
and you've already paid that $8,000. I paid
Heidi Griffith 21:08
the $8,000. What does that mean?
Roland Daniels 21:10
That means you're going to lose the difference between what you've been saving these last two years. So let's say you still had three years left to break even. Unfortunately, you're going to lose that portion of that 8000. So it's just gone.
Heidi Griffith 21:25
It I can't roll it. It's just you can roll it over. It's gone. And what if I need to sell my house before that five years?
Roland Daniels 21:31
Same thing.
Heidi Griffith 21:32
So you're just going to lose that money. Yes. So, you know, everyone's situation is different. Everyone's mindset is different. But I think that it's important to kind of note that it might not be the best time to pay for points today. To put all of your money in
Roland Daniels 21:50
that basket up front to make that payment lower, because you can always, and we do have a strategy where we just leave it in a side account, let it earn, let it work for you and earn interest, and then just pull the difference out of that account with your regular mortgage payment. And
Heidi Griffith 22:07
there's one of the silver linings for the Fed's raising rates because if you have a high yield savings account, we should see those interest
Roland Daniels 22:13
rates will go up a little, rising. And I know
Heidi Griffith 22:15
I have a couple. I've got a couple with little bit of money in each one of them. I'm excited to see my money grow. Yes. So here's why I don't want people only asking what's the lowest rate. I personally, I want to know what does it cost me, what's it going to save me, and how long does it take for me to get my money back out of it? Where it may be the
Roland Daniels 22:37
overall cost, the total cost of this loan. Yeah, is just as important as the rate, and sometimes even more important than what's the rate.
Heidi Griffith 22:48
And I think that just having the information to decide what makes the best sense for you, and that's why you and I talk a lot about having options. We do. It's not a one size fits all, and in most instances, there's more than one path.
Roland Daniels 23:03
Yes, it's about options and having the opportunity to do other things with your money, if that's possible, or even to save as much as possible.
Heidi Griffith 23:13
Yeah. So, and if you look at the two examples we just talked about, a $700 car payment doesn't sound like a $90,000 housing decision. It
Roland Daniels 23:21
doesn't, but it
Heidi Griffith 23:23
could be six and a half percent rate. Definitely sounds better than seven. It
Roland Daniels 23:28
does.
Heidi Griffith 23:28
But once we actually looked at both of what at both of what those numbers actually do, there's actually more to the story, isn't there? Yeah,
Roland Daniels 23:34
there is.
Heidi Griffith 23:35
So is that what you see with buyers? We naturally grab onto numbers because it's easier.
Roland Daniels 23:41
Actually, yeah. more often than not.
Heidi Griffith 23:45
Yeah, because mortgages have a lot of moving parts.
Roland Daniels 23:47
They do.
Heidi Griffith 23:48
Changing one thing could that affect everything?
Roland Daniels 23:51
Like, and just like I said, we look at the entire picture. We look at your income. We look at your debts, the money that you're bringing to the table, any down payment assistance programs, or any seller credits, and actually the loan itself, and what the rate actually costs. Then we can show you the different options, and then you can decide what makes sense for you
Heidi Griffith 24:18
and your family,
Roland Daniels 24:19
and your family,
Heidi Griffith 24:19
and you know you want to make smart financial choices. You do so. That's really we want what we want people to do. Don't try and reverse engineer stuff, right? Because stuff online and there's great information online, but there's also really bad information online.
Roland Daniels 24:34
Yes.
Heidi Griffith 24:34
Don't count yourself out based on something someone told you. Don't let no be the answer. And if you'd like us to look at your actual numbers, we'd be happy to do that. If you have any questions about anything we're talking about today, please feel free to reach out. You can give us a call or text us. We're at 702-540-0420. So before we go, as always, I want to take a minute to talk about fair housing. It's. It's that important. It's just that important. Silver State Fair Housing Council is the nonprofit right here in Nevada that works to make sure everyone has equal access to housing. They educate consumers and housing professionals. They help people who believe they may have been discriminated against, and one of the things they do that I think a lot of people don't know about is fair housing testing. I guess the easiest way to explain it is to think of a secret shopper, you know, like for restaurants or stores. But this is for housing. So Silver State Fair Housing Council they train these testers to pose as regular people looking for housing. Two testers may have very similar situations with one important difference. You know, maybe it's one has a child, one doesn't. Maybe it's a married couple versus a single person. Maybe it's people of two different races. Maybe it is you know someone with a disability, someone without. These are all characteristics that are protected by fair housing laws. They contact the same housing provider and then they document what happens. That's sent back to Silver State Fair Housing Council, where they told that the same units were available.
Roland Daniels 26:07
Right.
Heidi Griffith 26:07
Were they given the same information, the same terms? Were they both encouraged to apply? Because discrimination is rarely as blatant as someone saying, "No, we don't rent to you, kind of people, or we don't sell homes to you in this neighborhood,
Roland Daniels 26:21
right?
Heidi Griffith 26:21
It's usually subtle, and if you're the person it happened to, you might walk away thinking, "Man, that just didn't feel right. Was that right? And that's one of the reasons why testing is so important. Here's something else you may not know: Silver State Fair Housing Council they actually use people from the community as testers. They provide training, and testers receive actually a small stipend for completing tests. So whether you think you've experienced housing discrimination, if you have a question about what your rights are, or you're interested in becoming a tester yourself, please feel free to reach out. We'd be happy to get you in touch with them. Our number is 702-540-0420. So I think today's show really comes down to something simple. Don't make big financial decisions based on one number.
Roland Daniels 27:09
I agree.
Heidi Griffith 27:10
Don't assume you can't buy because you don't have some amount of money you think you're supposed to have saved. Don't assume the lowest rate you see is automatically the least expensive option. And if buying a house is on your radar, find out what a big new monthly payment does to your buying power before you take it on.
Roland Daniels 27:28
Get the actual numbers and how they work together, then make the decision that makes sense for you and your family.
Heidi Griffith 27:35
Yep.
Roland Daniels 27:36
Sometimes the answer is to buy. Sometimes the answer may you may need to wait, and sometimes the smartest thing that we can tell you is, don't touch a thing. But you don't have to figure this out by yourself. That's why Heidi and I are here to look at where you are, what you're trying to accomplish, and help you understand the different options. We'll be back next Sunday morning at 7:30 a.m. right here on KUNV 91.5. Until then, believe in what's possible, even if you've been told that it's out of reach. And remember, stay true to yourself and your mind.
Heidi Griffith 28:17
Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai