What's going on, everyone? Welcome to Real Talk Real Estate. This is Mortgage Monday. We've got an interesting show for you, when to lock and when not to lock. The age old, should I lock my rate or should I wait? Do I want to roll the dice or do I want to err on the side of certainty? We're going to be going through different scenarios as well as what's going on in the market today to help you make this call. I'll be joined today by my buddy, my partner, and the broker of the one brokerage, Christian Bachelder, who's actually looking incredibly handsome. What did you do to your hair and beard combo? Haven't had a haircut in two months. Is there gel in your hair? Probably something. I don't remember what I put in there. You look like James Dean doing mortgages. I don't think I like this. There we go. I look like Vin Diesel that hasn't seen the sun in... All you got to do is go two months without cutting your hair, David. That's a secret. I wonder what I would look like. I'd probably look like a vacuum cleaner door to or salesman if I tried to do that.

The slick back. Yeah, exactly. The comb over. I don't live my life, the comb over. I live my life one quarter mile at a time, just like Vasil himself. All right. So as we discussed on previous

Mortgage Mondays, the Fed appears to be finally lowering rates.

Now Trump and administration have to figure out what do we do with a very slow economy,

not a lot of jobs and a housing market that's a mess.

Curious to see what they do when it comes to this.

But at least we got some kind of movement in a good direction.

And this begs the question, should people lock rates now before they go up or should people wait thinking that they're

going to continue to go down? Now, to add some nuance to the conversation, it was intimated

in his press release that Jerome Powell gave, the head of the Fed, the rates would continue to drop.

And we released on our last show

that we, that he appears to have said or that the markets have taken into consideration,

more rate drops for the end of 25 and rate drops going into 2026. So help us understand when it

comes to mortgages as the smartest mortgage lender that I know, how should people

go into buying a house and locking their rate? You know what? Actually, before you answer that,

let's start with what is a rate lock? How do they work? Then we'll talk about it if you should do it

or not. Yeah, good question. So let's imagine a scenario. You got into contract, super excited, buying a house, and you're going around and shopping for rates. You get a rate from one lender, and let's say you're shopping for the par rate, which is the rate with no points, right? So no buy down. So you're just getting the average market rate. One lender gives you a six and a half. One lender gives you a six point seven to five. The other lender gives you a 6.6. So you're all right in that

mid to upper six range. Perfect. You kind of have an idea of where it is. When markets are volatile,

whether it's up or down, as they are right now, we're having pretty substantial rate cuts

currently happening. Within that, let's say, normal escrow timeline is 30 days.

That's what most realtors write their contracts for.

You have 30 days to decide and commit to a rate.

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