 Hey, what's up, everybody? I hope you're doing super well. Today, I want to talk about these banks that have failed. What that has done to interest rates, mortgage rates specifically. Also, the CPI report that came out yesterday. And can we please talk about the fact that real estate prices right now have been going up over the last week or two? I want to share all of this with you along with my thoughts and commentary. So, let's get right into it. So, right after the mortgage, right after the banks failed, right, which happened over the last week, the two banks that went down, they got taken over, and it was just really a mess, honestly. And how that whole thing happened, you know, there's been so much content about how this happened and everything else. In a nutshell, it goes like this. When you deposit money in a bank, the bank hangs on to about 10%, 10%, 15% of that. They invest the rest. And when everybody comes in and wants their money all at once, they don't have the money, the reserves get too low, and that's when everything starts to really take a tumble, which is exactly what mortgage rates did in the wake of these bank failures. On Monday, we saw interest rates go down 13 basis points. This is for the 30-year fixed. Now, that was very interesting to see that happen. And I believe that what we're going to see because you can't see the data right now, but what we're going to see if we look back on that one day where interest rates came down 13 basis points is that we'll see a surge in mortgage applications. I believe that we'll also see a surge in pending deals. I bet you anything, there were more contracts written on that day than have been in a minute. So, it'll be very interesting to see that data come out. You really won't see the day-to-day pending sell data, but we will see the mortgage application data and kind of what happened during that brief moment. Now, the very next day, the CPI report came out, and it was pretty good. It was decent. Core inflation was still up month over month, but down year over year, and the overall inflation was down for the eighth straight month. And so, this is a good sign. And we knew that it was going to be rocky. We didn't expect these CPI reports to come out and just be great reports. Everything's coming down. No, we didn't feel that way. It's going to take some time for this to really settle out and get to a better place. And that's why we have our eyes set on May 10th. Mark that down on your calendar as the day that the CPI report comes out that we feel like we're going to see some really incredibly positive numbers that should be a really good inflection point for the 30-year fixed, where we start to see that start to soften. That's what we're hoping for anyway. Nobody knows. I'm not saying I'm predicting what's going to happen here. I'm just saying that all roads kind of lead to the same place with this, because we know that the 30-year fixed is more so tied to inflation in the 10-year treasury than it is the Fed's fund rate. And I hate to have to say this over and over again, but I still get comments all the time when I'm talking on Instagram about all the optimism that I have about the market. And people say, oh yeah, we'll just wait till the Fed raises rates another 100 basis points or 150 basis points. Or they're going to raise it 50 basis points next week. And every time I reply and say, okay, well, I'm glad that the 30-year fixed isn't directly tied and correlated to the Fed fund rate. That it's more correlated to the 10-year treasury and the inflation based on what an investor can get on their return when they buy mortgages on the second market. That's what drives the 30-year fixed. And so when you really boil all this down, it's very interesting place to be. I'll share with you here the CPI numbers that came in at 6%. This was overall inflation. Okay. And when you come down, you'll see that the high was 9.1% in June. So it's come down 3.1% since we peaked out in June. So it's steadily been coming down for, like I said, eight months in a row. And the core inflation was up a half a percent month over month, right? And it was up 0.4% from month over month previously. And that's up from it was going up about 0.1% or 0.2% per month. So this is an increase and this is something to really watch. This could be one of many, many, many things that's causing this. And it's something that we're going to watch. But as you can see, core prices, core inflation, it has more to do with food and energy items. They better reflect long-term trends. So this is definitely something to watch. But like I said, we knew and expected there to be a little bit mixed reports. A little bit rocky. It's not going to be all just smooth and great as we continue to work on this situation. But the great thing is that mortgage rates came down in the wake of the bank situation. But then the very next day, here they go. They went back up more than they were previous to the banking collapse. So here we are at 6.75 as of the time that I'm recording this video. And we're just going to see fluctuations, right? And what's very interesting is that I'm traveling three times a month right now to speak to real estate agents all over the country. And last week I was in Chicago. And the first thing I ask most any audience I talk to right now during this market is, are you guys getting multiple offers? And everybody raised their hand and said, yep, there's nothing for sale. We're getting multiple offers. So there's so much pinned up demand. And even with interest rates in this 6.75, this 6.5 to 7 range, we're still getting multiple offers. And the mortgage rates being higher is actually causing inventory to come down. Because the higher it goes, the more app that owners who are sitting on 4.5 or 3.5% interest rates right now in their current mortgage are less likely to sell and try to upgrade or do whatever. They're not going to sell. They're going to continue to sit on those mortgage. I'm sitting on 3.15 on my house right now. Of course, we bought this. This is our drink. We don't plan on selling this thing or moving for 20 years. But I think a lot of people are in the same boat. Another thing that higher interest rates are causing in terms of inventory is less building. The builders are going out and they're doing that. There are a lot of them. 75% are doing mortgage buy downs for the buyers so they can get lower interest rates. But they're 30% down on construction right now. Now, we've seen a slight uptick in that as builder confidence has continued to grow moving into the new year here. So we'll see how that plays out. But demand is still there and demand is very strong. I see videos all over the place about vacant houses and builders in trouble. And it's going to get a lot worse and all this stuff. How? I don't see it. I just don't see it at all. I did a reaction video to a video from a guy who feels like it's just... I mean, he must think this thing is just really going to crash and burn. One of his arguments was that there's 14 million vacant homes right now. And if only 5% list their houses, then that's going to flood the market. No, it's not. It's going to get us back to not even normal. If we had 700,000 more homes on the market right now, all in the same day, mind you, that would be 5% that decided on the same day to all sell all of a sudden, which would never happen. It would be something that happened over time. But even if we had 700 more,000 homes, that still wouldn't keep up with the demand. Even if all of a sudden we went from the 700 we have now to 1.5 or 1.4, that's still not enough to keep up with demand. It's like they're just grabbing for any straw they can about this market. Now, I'm on the other side. I'm thinking optimistically. And I want to talk to you about prices and how they're going up right now. And what do the bears have to say about that? I know what they're going to say. They're going to say false rally. It's a false rally. It's just, you know, these things take time. It's a lag. And, you know, hell is coming. It's on the way. And that's fine if it's a false rally. And I'm okay just to make it clear that if things do crash and burn, I will absolutely crush it. And that's what I want for you as well. I want you to see the positive sides of this. If, in fact, that starts to happen, don't see it at all. I'm going to help you through that scenario. But nevertheless, let's dive into the prices for just a second. This is national prices. Okay, so you have to look locally. You can't just look nationally. You've got to look locally. So this won't be the trend of your market. You have to, and you can actually go here to Redfin and pull up your market right here. You can pull up, you know, your market and look exactly and see what your market's doing. But this blue line is prices, the medium home prices in the U.S. And this is Redfin data. And this shows that we were a little bit higher year over year. And then we intersected the black line, which meant that we went negative year over year. But look at the trend. I'm going to, I'm going to zoom in for you just a little bit, because I really want you to see this trend right here. Okay, let's see. Uh-oh. I think I messed up. Hold on one second. Let me get it back right here. Let me do that. Refresh it one good time. Let's go to medium. Okay, here we go. All right. This blue line, okay, you can see that we went down and we bottomed out at $345. And now we're trending up and we're at $353. So we were at $345. Now we're at $353. Ladies and gentlemen, prices, average medium, medium sell price in America, according to Redfin data, has went up. And this is going back. Let's see. That's January 9th to February. So this is February. Let's see. This is 16th to the 12th. So from the 12th, from February, so for the last 30 days, prices have been trending up. Not down. They've been trending up. So false rally, maybe. I don't see it. I think there's a possibility that we've hit a bottom in the markets, not saying that we have for sure. Fannie Mae thinks we're going to continue to go down 4% lower this year, 2% lower next year. But we're going to have 2023 is going to go down as the third largest year in history of the U.S. in terms of volume of real estate bought and sold, the third highest ever. We're going to have somewhere between 4.5 to 5 million transactions, which is completely normal markets. You know, we had 6 million in 2021. Abnormal. We had 5 million last year. Getting back to normal is still a little crazy. 4.5 to 5 is exactly where we were for a decade. So we're getting back to a normal market. I, you know, are we having somewhat of a false rally right this second? I don't know that. I think that there's so much demand and so little supply that I don't think it's going to keep going up, if anything. But I don't know what's going to happen. Nobody knows what's going to happen. That's the cool thing, but I can tell you what is happening. Prices are going up right now. So I know that's happening. So it's all very interesting. We're going to keep an eye on it. I've got my popcorn. I'm enjoying the show. Let me know if there's anything in the world I can do for you. I'm going to put another video right here for you to watch. And I'll see you on the next video. Keep building and keep selling.