Every Wednesday, real estate broker Jeb Smith and mortgage advisor Josh Lewis go live to talk housing, mortgage rates and whatever questions the audience throws at them.
This week's show opened with the federal debt crossing $40 trillion and why heavy government borrowing can put upward pressure on longer-term interest rates. From there, we moved into the questions buyers, homeowners and real estate investors were actually trying to solve.
If you missed the live show, here are the most useful questions we answered and what you need to know.
Stop guessing what you can really afford
It starts with a Discovery Call, a straight conversation about your real numbers. Josh and his team show you the price range and loan options that fit, and map out every step to closing. They handle your loan directly, never a referral, so you tour with confidence and write offers sellers take seriously.
The tighter condo rules are good protection for buyers, but they can make some condos much harder to sell.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac changed their condo project-review requirements this year, eliminating the old limited-review shortcut for most larger condo projects. Lenders are now looking more closely at the financial and physical health of the entire development, including reserves, critical repairs, insurance, litigation and other project-level risks.
For a buyer, that's generally a good thing. You have a better chance of finding out that the building is underfunded, has serious deferred maintenance or is headed toward a major assessment before you own part of it.
For a seller, the same scrutiny can hurt.
If your project becomes non-warrantable, the normal Fannie and Freddie financing options may disappear. Fewer buyers can finance the unit, the specialty loans that remain can require higher rates or substantially larger down payments, and some otherwise qualified buyers simply won't be able to purchase it.
If you own a condo you're thinking about selling, learn where your HOA stands before you list. If you're buying one, get the HOA documents as early as possible and actually review them.
That doesn't just mean the CC&Rs and bylaws. Pay particular attention to the budget, reserve study, financial statements, master insurance, meeting minutes, litigation disclosures, special assessments and any structural reports.
And don't casually release your loan contingency before the project has been reviewed. Being a perfect borrower doesn't help much if the building itself doesn't qualify for your financing.
Yes. For a standard mortgage, the practical path is to sell the gold, document the transaction and turn it into verified cash before closing.
Physical gold isn't going onto your Closing Disclosure as the down payment. The lender needs to be able to document the asset and follow the money from what you owned into dollars sitting in an account that can actually be used for the transaction.
The same basic process applies when someone sells another personal asset to raise money for a purchase. Josh has had borrowers sell vehicles and RVs, for example. Depending on the circumstances and size of the proceeds, the lender may need to document ownership, establish the asset's value, document the sale and verify that the money actually landed in your account.
So if you're sitting on gold bars and want to turn them into a down payment, don't sell them for cash to some guy in a parking lot two days before closing and expect underwriting to love the story.
Create a clean paper trail.
Crypto works similarly under standard agency financing. For Fannie Mae, virtual currency being used for down payment, closing costs or reserves has to be converted to U.S. dollars and verified in a regulated financial institution before closing.
There are more creative options in the non-QM world, but for a normal Fannie or Freddie loan, assume you're eventually turning the asset into dollars.
We also got a follow-up question about other countries allowing borrowers to pledge precious metals as collateral without actually selling them.
Don't hold your breath waiting for that to become normal U.S. mortgage financing. Our mortgage system is highly standardized, and using physical precious metals as direct mortgage collateral isn't a mainstream part of it today.
Yes. And for someone who already has retirement savings, borrowing against the 401(k) can be a very efficient way to finance part of the purchase without permanently withdrawing the money.
A 401(k) loan is generally limited to 50% of your vested account balance, up to $50,000, subject to your individual plan's rules.
If you have $500,000 in the account, you don't get to borrow $250,000. You're generally capped at $50,000. But for a buyer purchasing a $300,000, $400,000 or $500,000 home, that can cover a meaningful down payment and closing costs.
The advantage over a withdrawal is significant.
With a loan, you're borrowing the money and repaying the principal plus interest back into your retirement account. A straight early withdrawal from a traditional 401(k) is generally taxable income and, if you're under 59½ and no exception applies, also faces the 10% federal early-distribution tax.
Josh has borrowers use both approaches. He strongly prefers the loan when the numbers and plan rules support it.
Here's another advantage that matters on the mortgage side: when a loan is secured by your own financial assets, Fannie Mae generally does not require that payment to be included as long-term debt in your mortgage debt-to-income ratio.
That doesn't mean the payment doesn't matter to your personal budget. Money is still coming out of every paycheck. We want to make sure the mortgage plus the 401(k) repayment is comfortable before you commit.
If you're planning ahead, there's another strategy worth understanding. Someone who gets a raise or promotion and has additional savings capacity may choose to increase 401(k) contributions while preparing to buy. Subject to IRS contribution limits and the plan's rules, part of those accumulated funds may later be available through a plan loan.
That can effectively give you 100% financing.
The first mortgage finances most of the purchase. The down payment and possibly some closing costs are financed by borrowing from your own retirement account.
It's not free money. You're borrowing part of the purchase funds from yourself and paying them back over time.
But that's very different from permanently cashing out the retirement account.
How much to put down, how much cash to keep in reserves and whether borrowing from retirement improves the overall plan is exactly the kind of thing we want mapped out before you make the move.
Worry less about catching the absolute best day to negotiate and more about finding the right home, then negotiating a strong deal on it.
When we went live, the Census Bureau had just released its initial July new-home sales estimate showing a sharp month-over-month decline. Builders were also carrying substantial completed and unsold inventory in many markets.
That can create negotiating opportunity, especially as you move into the slower fall and winter selling season.
Jeb's experience is that builders with completed inventory may also become more motivated around quarter-end or fiscal-year-end when they want homes closed and off the books. But that's not a universal rule, and builders don't all run on the same fiscal calendar.
If you're considering a specific builder, find out how much finished inventory they have and ask directly what they're willing to do.
The bigger mistake is trying to perfectly time the builder.
Maybe they're offering $20,000 toward closing costs today and $25,000 three months from now. Maybe today's incentive disappears. Maybe rates fall. Maybe they rise. Maybe the specific lot or floor plan you actually want sells while you're waiting to squeeze out another few thousand dollars.
You don't know.
Find the right property in the right neighborhood first. Then negotiate hard.
Large production builders also tend to operate according to planned phases. If they're already scheduled to build the next release in February, walking in during October usually doesn't cause them to break ground tomorrow because you asked nicely.
A small custom builder is different. If they're building a house specifically for you, the timing may be more flexible, but your negotiating power can actually be lower because the builder is pricing labor, materials and profit into a one-off project.
The goal isn't to magically time the market so you can say that you bought at the absolute bottom.
It's to buy the right house on terms you're happy with and then go live your life.
For an established Fannie Mae rental property that's already reported on Schedule E, the tax return generally drives the calculation.
That was the question we were answering on the live show.
If you're refinancing an investment property and the rental income appears on your most recent tax return, the lender generally analyzes the property's actual Schedule E cash flow. Depreciation, mortgage interest, taxes, insurance, HOA expenses and certain other items are handled according to the rental-income worksheet rather than simply taking the gross rent shown on the lease.
That's why handing the underwriter a new lease showing $3,500 a month doesn't automatically erase a tax return showing the property historically performed much worse.
There are exceptions.
If the property hasn't appeared on the tax return yet, was purchased after the most recent filing, was recently placed in service, or falls into another qualifying exception, the lender may be able to use a current lease supported by the appropriate documentation and market rent.
Non-QM loans can work differently too. A DSCR lender may qualify the property primarily from the current rent or market-rent analysis rather than your personal tax-return cash flow.
The second scenario we discussed on air was a departing residence, meaning you're buying a new primary home and converting the house you're leaving into a rental.
Fannie Mae changed that rule effective September 2, 2026, after this live show aired.
Under the current Fannie guideline, a lease agreement is not permitted to establish qualifying rental income for a departing residence.
Instead, the lender determines market rent using documentation such as:
an appraisal that includes market rents;
a Form 1007 Comparable Rent Schedule; or
approved market-analysis tools using comparable rental properties.
The lender generally takes 75% of the market rent, then compares that amount with the departing residence's full PITIA payment.
If the result is positive, someone with less than 12 months of property-management experience can generally use the rent to offset that property's PITIA, but not create additional qualifying income. If it's negative, the shortage counts against the borrower.
Fannie also now requires six months of reserves for the departing residence's PITIA when the borrower has less than 12 months of property-management experience, in addition to any other reserve requirement that may apply.
That's a perfect example of why these live-show articles need to be checked against the current guidelines before we publish them. The explanation was accurate to the rule we were working under during the show. The rule changed days later.
Yes, but the lender universe is small.
This isn't a standard Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan. You're looking for a portfolio lender willing to make a large construction loan, offer the term you're looking for and allow second-home occupancy.
Josh and his team currently works with roughly 110 investors, although that number changes as lenders and programs move in and out of the market.
At the time of this show, only about two or three of those investors had a product that fit this particular combination: jumbo construction financing, a long-term structure and second-home occupancy.
That's why harder-to-place loans require access to more than one lender.
A loan officer working from a menu of five products may tell you no because their lender doesn't offer it.
That doesn't necessarily mean the answer is no.
It may mean you haven't found the lender that does.
This is exactly the kind of scenario we work through on a Roadmap call. If there's a legitimate financing solution in our lender network, the goal is to find it before you change your plans around someone else's limited product menu.
Get your toughest question answered by a lender and an agent, free
Every week we answer real buyer questions live, on the spot. Bring the one that's keeping you up at night, or send it ahead if you can't make it and we'll cover it on air.
We go live every Wednesday at 5pm PT / 8pm ET on YouTube, with the replay on Spotify.