On today's episode of the Welcome Home Podcast we're diving into the big  topic: INTEREST RATES! Whether you've been a home owner for awhile or you're looking to buy for the first time, there's a lot of questions and concern you might have about the current housing marketing, cost inflation, and rising interest rates. To put your mind at ease, we go straight to the source and bring in the mortgage expert, Danny Tutt, Branch Manager for Trinity Oaks Mortgage.  From qualifying for a new home loan, to refinancing and best budgeting practices,  Danny offers great advice on how to navigate the current housing market, and also talks about what Trinity Oaks Mortgage is offering to their customers to get them the lowest mortgage rate possible.

S3_Ep11 Up Your IQ on Today's Interest Rates (Danny Tutt).mp3

Intro: [00:00:03] Welcome Home, a podcast brought to you by John Houston Homes. Join hosts, Chelsi Frazier and Whitney Pryor, as they walk you through the exciting adventure of your home buying and building journey.

Whitney Pryor: [00:00:19] Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Welcome Home Podcast. I'm Whitney and I've got Chelsi here with me. Hey, Chelsi!

Chelsi Frazier: [00:00:26] Hey, everybody!

Whitney Pryor: [00:00:27] So, the housing market...

Chelsi Frazier: [00:00:32] Is crazy.

Whitney Pryor: [00:00:32] It is crazy!

Chelsi Frazier: [00:00:33] I don't know another word to describe it.

Whitney Pryor: [00:00:35] I know, we've been saying that for a while, but now we have the addition of interest rates. I think people have a lot of questions in their heads, so why don't you go ahead and let us know who we've got joining us today to give us some answers to those questions.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:00:52] Yeah, I would love to. We actually brought in the person that we always go to and ask all these questions like, what's going on? What are we hearing? What are we doing? We've brought back a previous guest, Danny Tutt. He is a Branch Manager for Trinity Oaks Mortgage. He's actually been in the real estate industry since the 80's and he's been the mortgage industry since the 90's. He's a wealth of knowledge and also just really fun to talk to on all subjects. We talk about everything from Texas Country Music to mortgages to Cheez-Its, your favorite snacks that yall have in common apparently, now we know.

Whitney Pryor: [00:01:31] Now we know!

Chelsi Frazier: [00:01:32] We're excited to welcome you to the show, Danny.

Danny Tutt: [00:01:35] Thank you, it's my pleasure, so let's talk about Cheez-Its today.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:01:39] Apparently it's your favorite snack and Whitney's.

Danny Tutt: [00:01:42] It is. It may be more fun to talk about than interest rates, but obviously the headline is how much interest rates have gone up since the first of the year. It's got a lot of people scared. There's a lot of fear factors in there. It's got a lot of people re-evaluating what they want to do or what they should do. It's a pretty complex situation because some people are having to reset their expectations on what they can buy or what what's in their comfort zone, things like that. We kind of got two different categories. The unfortunate people are the people who rates have kind of knocked them out of the housing market because of qualification purposes. There are some of those or they have to go down in what they can they can afford to buy. Then you have the others that are that are just disappointed because they had their sights set on being able to move up or upgrade their housing situation and now, they're they're not able to get as much as what they thought they were going to get a few months ago. Those are kind of the two categories that you have out there, so there are some people re-evaluating. There's still a huge shortage of houses, though, so there's still plenty of buyers out there for the homes that are available. John Houston, like a lot of other builders, you're not really finishing any houses that don't get sold and taken. From that standpoint, it's not really impacting the new home construction business very much. The demand is still greater than the supply, so that's kind of what what you're seeing. It's an emotional thing because people want to lock their rates in. They don't know if they should lock or should or shouldn't lock and things like that. That's kind of what what you're seeing out there.

Whitney Pryor: [00:03:50] Yeah, I feel like that's what I've heard too, is just people not wanting or knowing if it's the right time to make a decision. They're like, "well, you know, we could see prices drop." They're expecting, I think, a 2008 type recession deal. What are your thoughts on that?

Danny Tutt: [00:04:08] One of the good and the bad of being in the business this long is you're older, that's the bad. The good is, you've seen a lot of these cycles before, so you're not that alarmed. Not to go down history lane too much, but I bought my first house in 1979 and interest rates were 10.5%, that's the good part. I bought another one in like 81' or 82' and they were 15.5%. I bought another one in 84' and they were like 14.5% and then I had one at 11%. I've got these notes written down here, one at 7.5%, and I refinanced that one over probably a 8-10 year period of time, two or three times, and got it down to about 4%. The 3's and 4's are a phenomenon over the last ten years or so. A lot of the people that have only been in the housing market for that period of time don't fully understand just how fortunate we have been, as a whole, to be in that market. In the old days you bought a home, small home, that you lived in a few years and then you bought another one. It was stages that you went through.

Whitney Pryor: [00:05:30] There was a gradual over time.

Danny Tutt: [00:05:31] Yeah, exactly.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:05:32] It was called a starter home and nobody says that anymore.

Danny Tutt: [00:05:36] No, you're exactly right. Over the last few years, the rates and things have been so low where people have been able to bypass that and jump over that period of time. Hey, that's great and that's fantastic that people have been able to do that. For a lot of us that are older, you're like, "I can't believe somebody buying a $400,000 house for their first house or whatever."

Whitney Pryor: [00:06:01] Yea.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:06:02] I've thought that at least 27 times in the past five years.

Danny Tutt: [00:06:05] Right, so that's kind of the deal. The evolution of it all, is just how lucky that we've been in such a good economy since, I guess the crash of 08', when the mortgage business went crazy and started doing really foolish things. After that, since it's come back, it's just been guns blazing for the market and the economy's been great. Now, we got a little blip in the economy and everybody's kind of freaking out, getting paranoid and schizophrenic a little bit on, "should I do this or should I do that?"

Whitney Pryor: [00:06:52] So really, people that are in their 20's and 30's at this point in their life and have either not bought their first home or are in their first home wanting to upgrade or things like that, they need to know that, those interest rates that we've had and the twos and threes here recently in the past, is not something that's normal. Really, are normal is a little is higher than that.

Danny Tutt: [00:07:19] More than likely they'll come back. To me, interest rates are not necessarily permanent, they're somewhat cyclical with the economy. If a person goes in now and they get a rate in the mid 5's, I mean as long as they don't mess up their credit or something like that in the next year or so, if rates adjust or whatever, they're going to come back down and then they will have an opportunity to refinance. That's opportunity. The problem is if they don't buy a house, they get out of the market. If houses keep going up and appreciating like they have done historically, they they lose ground. A person has got to kind of make a decision, do I want to get out of the market or do I want to stay in the market? Those are the people that don't have a home.

Whitney Pryor: [00:08:13] Yeah, by out and in the market, you're saying renting vs. buying?

Danny Tutt: [00:08:17] Correct, exactly.

Whitney Pryor: [00:08:17] You should buy now because if you rent, that price is going to keep creeping up. You're not going to be able to afford a home in 5 years to purchase.

Danny Tutt: [00:08:25] You always hear people say, "well, I'm just going to wait until prices come down." That's a big gamble because the prices of houses have rarely ever come down.

Whitney Pryor: [00:08:35] And we're in a very strong market here in Dallas.

Danny Tutt: [00:08:37] You mentioned something there because it's regional, too. You look at all the different statistics and you're going, well, this is happening and that's happening. Well most of those things you read are National. It's not necessarily in certain areas. I hear people say all the time, "this cannot continue," as far as, prices going up. Well, that's the same thing that people in California were saying probably 30 years ago and it did.

Whitney Pryor: [00:09:06] Million dollar homes.

Danny Tutt: [00:09:07] Yeah, exactly. It did keep happening. It can you know, but it's an adjustment for sure. It's a mindset. People want to buy a house right now. The simple fact is, it's going to cost them a little bit more money or they're going to have to buy a little bit less expensive house if they want the same payment that they had.

Whitney Pryor: [00:09:33] Sure.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:09:34] Or maybe not have that new house and two new cars or. We talked about this before.

Danny Tutt: [00:09:41] You just hit one of my nerves right there, as far a, people talking about, "my house payment's going to cost me X amount," a couple of hundred dollars more a month, yet they've got two car payments that are $500 and $600 each on what's typically a depreciating asset.

Whitney Pryor: [00:10:02] Mhmm, cars never increase in value unless you're in a classic car or something like that.

Danny Tutt: [00:10:07] I mean, you get crazy times like right now, but I mean, if you want a new car right now, you're going to probably pay more than what the MSRP is on it. That's literally some of the decisions people are going to have to make. Do I want to just keep driving this car after I pay it off or do I want to just hold off and not upgrade the housing situation or whatever?

Whitney Pryor: [00:10:31] Yeah.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:10:32] But I want it all Danny!

Danny Tutt: [00:10:33] You can have it all!

Chelsi Frazier: [00:10:36] And a lot of debt to go with it.

Danny Tutt: [00:10:38] A lot of times too, here's something I feel like, people always try to make it what's the most financially or prudent thing to do? That's a great question. For example, if you're y'all's age with young kids or whatever and you want to upgrade your housing or maybe you want to move to a different neighborhood or a different school, your kids are only going to be that age one time. You can put it on hold if you want to, but you can't put that time on hold and go, "okay, well, man, I thought prices were going to come down or rates were going to come down and they didn't. I waited three years and now I did not improve my housing situation. I didn't get that other house that had this this room or this room in it for my kids", or whatever that might be. Those are individual decisions people have to make. You can you can do that, but it's a gamble to a certain degree.

Whitney Pryor: [00:11:50] I think it's not something that you have to look at as a permanent decision, both with the interest rates or refinancing and just making that purchase. That doesn't have to be your forever home. You can get into something that might not have all of the things that you want, but that you can afford for right now and understand that statistically speaking and historically speaking, the home value will appreciate. I think it's somewhere around like 4 % or 5% in the DFW market over time. You can count on it appreciating in value and know that in a few years you might be able to move into an upgraded home or refinance with a lower interest rate. Those things are not permanent just because you're purchasing a home, right?

Danny Tutt: [00:12:37] Yeah, that's a really good point. It's kind of like the stock market, you know, right now the stock market's down or whatever. You can sit back in hindsight and go, "man, I should have jumped out of this thing when the market was way up." Timing stuff, that's really lucky. If you just stay in ,historically, you're going to come out ahead. Some people get lucky. Some people can do great. A lot of people made million dollars on Bitcoin. It's just all a timing thing. You probably got a lot of people who lost some money on it recently, too. I don't know. I don't keep up with it, really. I will say this though, from the mortgage side, if you can qualify for it, you can pay for it.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:13:30] Yea, that company is not going to give you money if they don't think that you can pay it back.

Danny Tutt: [00:13:34] The guidelines are strict enough. They've learned their lesson back in 2007 or 2008, from when they had not so smart lending practices. When they had stated income loans and a bunch of adjustable rate mortgages and things like that. There's some kind of hybrid adjustable rate mortgages which aren't necessarily bad. If you're getting one for purposes of qualifying, then that's the wrong reason to get one. They've even kind of changed that now where you can't even qualify off of the lowest rate on that to protect people against themselves, is really what they're doing. I you qualify by the lending guidelines, you can pay for it. Whether or not you want to do that is another question, but you would be able to to pay for it. They're not throwing money around for people that are not qualified like they were back in the early 2000's, which caused the downfall there for a while. Then we adjusted. That's a thing too, I'm not an economist or anything, but everybody talks about are we in a bubble or whatever? I don't know the answer to that, but if we were to be in one, it wouldn't be for the same reasons of what happened back then because that was created from lending practices that were not very smart. Giving loans to people, investors on stated income loans and all kinds of different things with very little down payment. That didn't work out.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:15:29] Recipe for disaster.

Danny Tutt: [00:15:30] A total recipe for a disaster and that's how it turned out to be, too. Back to rates, I don't think that there's a huge crisis out there, really. I think it is an adjustment when the Fed starts raising their interest rates. Typically what happens is they're trying to head off inflation. If what they are doing works, long term mortgage rates are basically driven by inflation. As inflation comes down, so will long term rates. There's your opportunity to to refinance and get the payment down. We saw it as rates dropped and got into 3's. All the people that had the 5's and 6's are refinancing in their, putting pools in and all kinds of different things because they could.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:16:31] Cash out.

Danny Tutt: [00:16:32] They could and they could upgrade their house, They could do all kinds of things and keep their payment the same as what it was before or close, you know.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:16:43] We saw a lot of houses in our neighborhood getting improvements. Like you said, pool signs in the front yard, paint or pergolas. Over the past few years, we did the same thing. We purchased in 2009. My husband and I were talking about what our first interest rate was, because we re-financed two times right in that time span, most recently just this past year. I just didn't think about that, in this market, buying and not refinancing later until we started talking about this episode, what we were going to go over and I was like, that's actually really sound advice. We even listened to a little podcast, Dave Ramsey talked about it as well. It's obviously not anything new. Our idea that we just came up with in this room, people are talking about it, but I think a lot of people probably don't think about that in that way because I know I didn't.

Danny Tutt: [00:17:33] It's a matter of priority, a lot of it is. I can do this or I can have a house payment that's a couple of hundred bucks more. If you start drilling down to what you could actually save on a daily basis like eating out.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:17:55] All your streaming, that's 200 bucks.

Whitney Pryor: [00:17:56] Cutting down on streaming.

Danny Tutt: [00:17:58] Yeah, for just crazy things that you don't even think about, you know?

Chelsi Frazier: [00:18:03] Yea, if you actually really take a good look at your bank statement and go through it line by line for a month, maybe the past two months, sometimes I think people forget what they signed up for or something that they don't use anymore. Do you have to have premium Spotify or do you want to save $10 a month? Could you deal with commercials for a few years if you want to save that much money?

Danny Tutt: [00:18:26] I get charges that flip up on my phone from Apple for $299. I don't even know what it is. I don't even want to take the time to figure it out, but now I'm starting to look and go, wait a minute, what is this? Did w sign up for this?

Chelsi Frazier: [00:18:44] Because that's half a tank of gas. I mean, half a gallon of gas!

Whitney Pryor: [00:18:48] Yeah!

Danny Tutt: [00:18:48] There's a lot of things people can do. Kroger though, if you buy a gift card, at certain times they give you quadruple points for gas.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:18:57] Oh, I need to do that.

Danny Tutt: [00:18:59] If we know we're going to go to Home Depot or somewhere and spend $100 or whatever, we'll go to Kroger and buy the gift card.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:19:07] That's smart.

Danny Tutt: [00:19:07] Then go to Home Depot and the you get like a dollar off your gas.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:19:13] I love putting in my number.

Danny Tutt: [00:19:16] Yall can erase that part of this!

Chelsi Frazier: [00:19:17] No, I think that's a great tip!

Danny Tutt: [00:19:19] They don't do it all the time, but if we're going here or there. Actually, a guy that my wife works with was telling her about that. I'm like, that's pretty smart, really.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:19:31] Yeah, because if it's at a store you shop at or you're going to or something, then it's a no brainer.

Whitney Pryor: [00:19:38] I think there's all sorts of creative ways people can look at their budget and figure out, okay, interest rate wise, what does that look like on monthly payment when you're going from 3% up to 5% interest rate? What does that look like even?

Danny Tutt: [00:19:56] Obviously, it depends on the loan amount. Our average loan amount at John Houston is probably somewhere around $400,000. I'm going to say every 1/8% is probably about $30 a month, so what would that be? You're talking about a .5%, that's at $120 a month or so. Is that right? Yeah.

Whitney Pryor: [00:20:26] It's really not that much when you look at it, though, a few hundred bucks you're figuring out where you can adjust that in your budget monthly.

Danny Tutt: [00:20:35] Yeah, you're talking about even going up 2%, so even if you go up, I'm trying to do this in my head, what would that be? Well, let's just say a percent and a half, so a .5% is $120. Is that what we just said?

Chelsi Frazier: [00:20:52] Yes.

Danny Tutt: [00:20:53] So 1.5%, you're going to like $360 a month and a percent and a half on a house. I mean, that's not just chump change, really.

Whitney Pryor: [00:21:07] But, there are things you can do in your budget, when you really look at it. How much do you spend on Starbucks? Lets look at that Starbucks first or that Chick-Fil-A.

Danny Tutt: [00:21:18] I always go back to the car situation. For a lot of people, I am like "hey, that's a car payment."

Whitney Pryor: [00:21:26] That's a car payment.

Danny Tutt: [00:21:27] Pay one car off and drive it for a while. So many people work from home now, that you wonder how critical is it that you have two. Obviously, you want something dependable or whatever.

Whitney Pryor: [00:21:41] Yeah, my cousin sold his car because they both work at home. He's like, "there was no point in us both having vehicles."

Chelsi Frazier: [00:21:47] Yeah, or if you don't currently work from home, your company may offer that now and didn't before. If you work from home one or two days a week, would that save you gas money?

Danny Tutt: [00:21:58] There's a lot of ways to make up for that. Like I said, it's probably not permanent, the rate, you have a chance to refinance.

Whitney Pryor: [00:22:09] What we do know will happen, though, is in a few years, with home values appreciating, we know that the sales price of homes will probably only go up. When you look at the cost of that, what are you weighing?

Danny Tutt: [00:22:22] Whether it's getting into the market initially. Like you mentioned while ago, if homes go up 5% a year and obviously the last couple of years, they've gone up way more than that. If they go up 5% a year and you're in a $300,000 house and someone else is in a $450,000, if you're in the lesser expensive one and they both go up 5%, you lost ground because 5% of the higher amount is obviously more. You have to make sure if you're not going to move now, that you're pay increases or things like that. You need to keep pace because otherwise you're going to lose ground. That goal house that you have is getting further away from you unless your income's going up to bridge that gap. That's the thing you have to be careful of is that the spread just keeps getting greater and greater. A lot of people, I say a lot of people, some people sold homes because they thought that we were at a high point. This happened the last couple of years or so. I'm going to sell my house right now because I'm going to make so much money out of it. I think this market is going to come down and then I'm going to go in and buy another house. Well, guess what? It didn't come down, so that person that took themselves out of the market thinking that it was going to come down, they they lost a lot of ground that way.

Whitney Pryor: [00:24:01] Because now they had to pay the higher interest rate and the prices of the homes are not coming down, so their still paying that higher price.

Danny Tutt: [00:24:08] Exactly, so now there's no way to make that up really.

Whitney Pryor: [00:24:16] Just go into a smaller home than what they had.

Danny Tutt: [00:24:18] Yeah, or pay more money and then they cut back on something else. Trying to out guess a market, whether it's the stock market, there's no way to know. You can listen to one analyst say one thing and listen to somebody else. Whatever it is you want to hear, just Google it and somebody will tell you that is going to happen. If you want information that the housing market's going to crash, Google it, somebody will be saying it. If you want information that's going to keep going up, Google that too because somebody's saying that too. Most of the time, both parties are credible people. They have their facts in their minds. They're not just making it up.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:25:09] People that are also unsure whether or not to purchase a house that's in construction or build because of the amount of time it's taking to complete houses, can we talk about how we partner with Trinity Oaks Mortgage with the rate lock and kind of what that means?

Danny Tutt: [00:25:28] Yeah, there are extended rate locks that are out there. How that typically works is, normally when a lender quotes a rate, that's like a 30 or a 60 day rate. They'll tell you this is the rate for that. The longer you go, the longer you want somebody to guarantee you a rate, let's say for 90 days, 120 days or 180 days, it's like paying for insurance. The cost to guarantee you that goes up for the amount of time that that lender is guaranteeing you that rate for. You're not going to get the same rate for 90, 120, 180 days as you would on a 30 day rate, okay? Right now with John Houston, they're doing some things with a 4.875% interest rate, which is a great rate. To be in the 4's right now is absolutely great. They're paying the cost of doing that for the buyer because that has a greater impact on their payment. Ten thousand dollars on a loan amount or a sales price of a house is only going to drop that payment about $50 a month. If you took that same $10,000 and applied that to buy down the interest rate, you're going to drop the payment way more than that. I mean, way more. I can't remember exactly what the number we figured a while ago, but it'll be at least 2 to 1 over what you would get if you just put more money down on it. Those are some of the things that we're doing as far as locking in the rates. People sometimes will say, "well, I want to wait. I think the rates are going to come down or or whatever." They might, but we do float downs with them as well, so if you lock in and the rate comes down, we'll adjust the interest rate prior to closing. Again, it's like an insurance policy. That's a benefit of working with a lender that's owned by the home building company or the Family of Companies as to work together with that kind of stuff. Right now, there's not a lot of pre-owned homes on the market, so it's driving everything to new construction and it's well documented. All the issues people have now with supply chains, the shortage of trades, labor, materials and things like that. The industry as a whole, is having a tough time with predicting build times because there's a surprise around every corner. It's really difficult to try to predict a build or a completion date too far out. Those are just the general challenges, so the locking in the rate is beneficial.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:28:37] It's beneficial for both - the seller and the purchaser.

Danny Tutt: [00:28:41] I'm a pretty conservative person. I would lock in as fast as I could. If the rate comes down, you can float it down. Even after I close, if it comes down, I would refinance. The questions I always tell people to ask themselves, would you rather have your rate locked in and wish you hadn't or not lock your rate in and wish you had? The answer to that, if you can float down, would be why not?

Chelsi Frazier: [00:29:13] It's similar to my favorite saying, "I'd rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."

Danny Tutt: [00:29:18] Exactly, yeah that's true. If you've got a rate that you can live with, then lock it in. Some people are different deals. Some people, the rates are not that important to them. They can sit there, play with it and they're not going to sweat over it.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:29:40] Your risk tolerance.

Danny Tutt: [00:29:41] Absolutely it is. People at different stages in life. You're like, "hey, I rolled the dice and I came up short. My payments $100 a month, big deal." That's what some people would think. I wouldn't think it, but other people would think that. The the other side, it's devastating to them, in their in their minds.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:30:04] Yea, great advice. Any parting words of wisdom? Anything we didn't cover?

Danny Tutt: [00:30:09] I don't know if I've given you any words of wisdom.

Whitney Pryor: [00:30:13] Always words of wisdom.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:30:14] Yes, I could talk to you all day long about all of this.

Danny Tutt: [00:30:18] Here are my parting words and you can decide whether it's wisdom or not. The one thing you know you're doing, if you're renting a house, is you're giving somebody else money. If you can get into the market, whether it's a townhome, whatever it is. Maybe it's not exactly what you want right now, but if you can get into the market and keep pace, get in there. If you want the the nicer house because your family's at a stage and you just think it's time to move up and you've worked hard to do that, go do it. Nobody promised me tomorrow, so if I have the ability to do it and it's to the benefit of my family or upgrade my lifestyle, I'm going to do it. It's a house. It's where, now I'm going back to my sales days here for a second. It's a house. It's where you raise your kids. It's where you sleep. It's where you live. It's not a car that you drive somewhere else. It's your neighbors. You know what I'm saying? It's a whole different thing. It's not clothes or a car or a boat. It's a house. It's where you go to sleep. It's where you eat dinner and it's where you are with your family. If there's one thing you sacrifice, don't not get it because the interest rates are causing the payment to be $100 or more a month, if you can afford it. We've had situations to where we've had people roll in their closing cost into their mortgage, so that would allow them more cash. They go less cash into the house, they have more cash at their disposal, and then they go pay off other debts. They pay a car off or they pay a car down. Let's say you're working with $10,000. You roll that in and you knock out $300 or $400 a month in some kind of consumer debt or an installment debt. Your house payment may be $200 more, but you got rid of $400 and other debt.

Whitney Pryor: [00:32:45] Wow, that's smart!

Danny Tutt: [00:32:46] That's something that we've been doing a lot of right now, adjusting somebody's debt structure. What you really want to look at is how much money you have going out. Don't get so fixated on if my house payment and my two car payments are higher. If I get rid of a car payment and then my combined of those things is less, even though my house payment is higher and I was able to to adjust the other, then you're still better off doing it that way. That's another possibility for people. We do that all the time. Myself and the other loan officers that work for us, that I manage here, are looking at that all the time. You know, 401 k loans are another great example. Most people can borrow against their 401 k. The interest you pay back is to yourself, so you go get the 401 k loan and pay off a car, you know what I'm saying? Then, the money you're paying back is to yourself. It's just another way to be creative and and look at things, so we do that all the time. I always tell people that once you get rid of private mortgage insurance and put 20% down on a house, my personal opinion, is it makes no sense to put more money down on the house until you get rid of all your consumer debt that you're paying interest on.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:34:26] Higher interest.

Danny Tutt: [00:34:27] Higher interest or sometimes even any interest at all on it. Even if you pay a car off with 1.99% interest and you knock out $600 a month on that, you can take that $600 and pay extra principal on your house or there are other things that you can do with it.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:34:50] I think for some people that's overwhelming. Where do you even start? I think if you're even considering it, call Trinity Oaks Mortgage. There's no obligation or consultation fee to apply and see.

Whitney Pryor: [00:35:06] There is no pressure. They're really like friends that know a lot about the industry and are there to help problem solve for you.

Danny Tutt: [00:35:13] Yeah, what we'll do sometimes too is just say, "hey, here's different scenarios. These are these are scenarios that we have. These are possibilities for you." If you want, take these to a financial advisor or a parent or somebody that you know has a vested interest in you. We feel like we do, too, but somebody that you've had a relationship with for a long time, a CPA or whatever, and say, "hey, does this make sense to do that?"

Whitney Pryor: [00:35:42] Well, thank you, Danny, for joining us. It's a wealth of knowledge and we really appreciate it.

Danny Tutt: [00:35:48] Okay. Can I have my Cheez-Its now?

Chelsi Frazier: [00:35:50] Yes.

Whitney Pryor: [00:35:50] Nope, not till we finish officially. Thank you listeners for joining us today on the Welcome Home Podcast. For more information, visit our show notes. I'll link to Trinity Oaks Mortgage, their website where you can go and get more information and get the contact information to reach out to one of their loan officers. Like we said, they're happy to help, happy to look at your profile and see how they can help you get into a home today. For more information, feel free to give us a call as well 866.298.1416 or visit our website at jhoustonhomes.com.

Chelsi Frazier and Whitney Pryor: [00:36:32] Welcome Home.