Every Wednesday at 5pm Pacific we go live, walk through the week's housing data, and then answer whatever you throw at us. This recap comes from our July 2, 2026 session, and the questions ran the full spectrum: seller concessions, PMI math, competing offers, and a couple of sharp rate questions.
Below is every on-topic question from that night, cleaned up, with our answers and pointers to the full guides where we cover each subject in depth. If you want your own question answered, bring it to a Wednesday live.
Stop guessing what you can really afford
Tell Josh and his team your situation, and you'll get the exact price range you qualify for, the loan that gets you the most home for your money, and a step-by-step plan to close. They handle your loan directly, never a referral, and go far beyond a basic pre-approval, so you stop second-guessing, tour with confidence, and write offers sellers take seriously.
Build my Roadmap →Second homes lost their friendly treatment a few years ago. Investment properties are capped at 2% in seller concessions no matter how much you put down, because the agencies want most of the money coming from you. Second homes used to require 10% down but priced like owner-occupied loans; after the loan-level price adjustment changes, Fannie and Freddie now price second homes much closer to investment properties, though investment pricing still runs higher. That is why most of our second-home buyers end up in portfolio programs through credit unions or non-QM lenders, where the pricing is meaningfully better. For the concession caps on every loan type, our guide to how seller credits work lays them out side by side.
We do not know of a public source that gets that granular. Resi Club has the best broadly available new-construction data, and John Burns Research likely tracks it, but behind an expensive paywall. What we can tell you comes from National Association of Home Builders data: the median new home peaked around 2,700 square feet in 2016 and has shrunk to roughly 2,250, with the most recent year closer to 2,100. Builders are reacting to affordability the only way they can, with smaller homes and smaller lots, because the true entry-level house is a small share of what gets built. More expensive homes still sell and carry better margins, so that is what builders keep building.
Tape everything, and record it. Take video and photos of every spot you mark, because when you come back for the follow-up walk the tape will be gone and you will not remember whether each item actually got fixed. A quick phone video gives you a checklist you can verify against. Use the whole roll and do not feel bad about it; punch-list items are far easier to get corrected before closing than after. If you are still weighing a build against a resale, our new construction vs existing home guide covers the rest of the process.
All real estate compensation is negotiable. The listing agent negotiates their pay with the seller as part of the listing agreement. Separately, you and your buyer's agent negotiate what their compensation will be, and there are several ways it can get paid: directly out of your pocket, by asking the seller to cover it as part of your offer, or a split between the two. The final structure depends on the deal you negotiate, so have that conversation with your agent before you start writing offers.
On the loan side we treat them as equivalent: a well-qualified borrower is a well-qualified borrower, and there are no longer FHA non-allowable fees forcing the seller to absorb costs. The appraisal fear is mostly outdated too. VA is actually the most flexible on value, with the tidewater process and a path to reconsideration of value, and HUD has asked for industry comment on modernizing FHA minimum property requirements; chipping paint is the one FHA item that still comes up constantly. Jeb's take from the listing side: three offers are never truly identical once you compare deposits, escrow terms, contingency timelines, and what each buyer asks the seller to pay, and a sloppy, incomplete contract will sink an offer faster than its loan type will. He leans conventional with 20% down for the cushion if an appraisal comes in short, but he has taken VA over conventional when the agent and the communication were stronger. Our FHA vs conventional comparison goes deeper on how the programs actually differ.
Sadly, yes. Jeb's own community charges $1,030 for HOA documents, plus roughly another $180 if you need them rushed. It gets worse: that package does not include everything a buyer's conventional lender will need, so expect another several hundred dollars for the lender questionnaire and related items, doubled for a rush. These are PDFs sitting on a server that could be self-serve downloads, and some of the required documents are pages with nothing on them. Budget for it as a real cost of selling in an HOA community. Our escrow process guide covers where these fees show up in the transaction.
Probably not without paying points, and 6.2% on those terms is already a strong quote. Mortgage News Daily showed 6.65% on the 30-year fixed (as of 7/2/2026), and that benchmark assumes 25% down and a 780 score. With 3% down the pricing is worse, so a 6.2% quote almost certainly has points built in. You can always buy the rate lower with more points, but there is no magic: these loans all sell into the same secondary market, so lenders differ by margin, never by access. Dig into what the quote actually includes, because when we ask people what their quote is built on, they rarely know. Our guide to comparing mortgage offers shows exactly what to look for.
The answer depends almost entirely on how much your PMI costs each month. One mechanical correction first: PMI has no balance of its own, so the lever is paying down principal until your equity supports removal. With home prices likely growing only 2 to 3% a year in our view, a buyer who put 5% down could be waiting many years for appreciation alone to get there. The monthly number drives the decision. That day we quoted 3% down at a 680 score with about $340 a month in mortgage insurance, versus about $120 a month at a 780 score (as of 7/2/2026). At $120, most people have better uses for the money. At $300 or $400, eliminating it is a solid return on the extra principal, weighed against what you would earn investing the same dollars. Our full guide to mortgage insurance covers the drop-off rules.
No. Your conventional mortgage insurance rate is set at closing, and the servicer will not reprice it because your credit improved. The only way to capture the better score is a refinance, and we have done exactly that on the lending side: cases where the rate improvement was minimal but the drop in mortgage insurance made the refinance worth it on its own. If you go that route, run the full math on costs versus savings; our guide to refinancing mistakes shows where people get that math wrong.
You can, but understand what you are choosing. Buyers who want beautiful turnkey homes are competing with everyone else who wants the same thing, and a below-market number on the most in-demand property in the neighborhood is close to certain rejection. In our experience it usually takes losing a few before a buyer either raises their number, lets their agent guide them, or the agent decides to walk away. Set your line in the sand before you write the offer, because a line drawn in the heat of a counter leads you to do things you were unwilling to do a week earlier. And know the emotional trade: if your first offer ever gets accepted, you will wonder whether you overpaid, and if you lose by a couple thousand dollars, you will wish you had stretched. That tension never goes away; the line in the sand is how you manage it. Our first-time home buyer guide walks through the whole offer process.
Not at the moment. Conventional rates were running around 6.5 to 6.625% and FHA near 6% (as of 7/2/2026), so a 6.2% loan has nothing to gain yet. If you have an FHA loan it might start to pencil depending on your balance, but for most people the market needs to move first. The useful step now is knowing your target: the rate at which the savings clear the costs fast enough to matter, so you can act when a window opens instead of watching one close. Our guide on waiting for lower rates covers how to set that trigger without trying to time a bottom.
Yes, that sits within the normal range for most Southern California markets. Average days on market across much of SoCal is running 45 to 70 depending on the source; for Santa Clarita specifically, we pulled Redfin at about 45 days, realtor.com at 44, and Movoto at 69. Our diagnostic: showings but no offers usually points to something about the property, while no showings at all usually points to price, and summer is simply slower on top of both. Two other common drags in that area: homes in high fire-hazard zones, where buyers see insurance quotes of $450 a month and walk, and condos, which are sitting longer because of HOA dues, higher insurance, and Fannie/Freddie warrantability problems. Our single-family vs condo guide explains why condos carry those extra frictions.
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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.
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