The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Scott Morris & Mike Buczynski Joined Keith & Jerry Live On "Real Talk With Keith Smith!"

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

Scott Morris of Envoy Mortgage and Mike Buczynski of First Heritage Mortgage, LLC. joined Keith Smith & Jerry Miller live on “Real Talk With Keith Smith” powered by YES Realty Partners and Yonna Smith! “Real Talk” airs every Friday from 10:15 am – 11 am on The I Love CVille Network! “Real Talk With Keith Smith” is presented by El Mariachi Mexican Bar & Grill, Fincham & Associates, Inc., Free Enterprise Forum, Intrastate Service Co, Mejicali, Tailored Closet, Premier Garage, Budget Blinds and YES Realty Partners.

It's been a minute since I've tried it. All right. Yeah. It's good. Just. It's going to be just late. We'll talk about it later. Yeah, yeah.

Just realize it's like I come in. And then what you want to do is you want to get close. It never. It never fails. Good Friday morning, guys. My name is Jerry Miller, and thank you kindly for joining us on Real Talk with Keith Smith. It's a pleasure to connect with you guys through the I Love Seville Network on a show presented by Yes, Relative Partners. Keith and Jonas Smith's brokerage has been alive, active in helping buyers and sellers get to this closing line that we call real estate since 1987.

That is 39 years, going on 40 years for Keith and Jonas Smith at yes, royalty partners, trusted, honest, communicative. They do what they say they're going to do. They pick up the phone. Well, isn't that a weird thing? They pick up the phone and are willing to talk on the phone. in this text message world. The trick is to get Smith to shut up. That's the trick.

No, I mean, you pick up the phone, that's huge. Judah Wickauer, and I've done it with multiple deals with you. I've seen it first hand. Juno Wickauer is behind the camera. He is the Elmer's glue of the team. Some people's production may not show up in a box score, but they are the glue guys on the team that you need to get to victory late, and that epitomizes Judah Wickhauer.

He does all the stuff that's necessary to help us win a ball game. I sincerely mean that, Judah. if you can go to the studio camera and welcome the star of our show Keith Smith who as he was walking into the studio was linked and compared to a movie star I'm sure that made Keith Smith's day it did but I was wondering which one because it could be a complete well we should ask Mike Buchensky about that

be a wide thing I don't know if I want to put Mike on the spot you know it could be there's a lot of high-end silver foxes out there so let me think about it maybe a George Clooney over there Are we going to go with a George Clooney, Mike Buchetsky? I want to speak for you. It's fun. When I was a younger man.

This guy from Field of Dreams. Kevin Costner. So my young, when I was a younger man, God rest of soul, my hustle, my mother-law used to call me her Kevin Kostner. But anyway, today is about two awesome mortgage folks. We're going to talk about the market. I did a little post this morning. You know, we've been talking on the show for years about when is inventory going to start to show up. And I think we can say it is.

Inventory is starting to show up. I just did a quick year over year this week versus the same week last year. We're up 73% in listings versus the same week before. But we are tracking pretty much one-to-one. As ones come on, ones go off, right? But before we get into all of that, I'm going to introduce the man to my right, and then we're going to introduce the man to his right, and then we'll kind of kick off a little bit. So, Scott, you give a quick intro, and Mike, you go up next. Hey, I'm Scott Morris.

I'm with On Boy Mortgage. I grew up in Central Virginia. I've come on the show pretty frequently. I've talked to you guys on and off for years. And you're a sponsor, so thank you. No, thank you. I've got three little kids. five little kids with my partner and I've just out here doing life man doing life so before you go to

mic I just want to do a quick update so I did this post early this morning about four hours ago three hours ago the new just jumped from 126 to 333 and the pending just jumped from 121 to 124 so that means agents are starting to put things in Mike introduce yourself my friend sure I'm Mike Buchinsky I've been I work for first heritage mortgage I've been living in this area for about gosh almost almost 20 years now I've been doing lending for about 26 and they've got two kids or basketball crazy at the house so we they're they both just they both just won their state championships and their respected field.

Nice. I'm really proud of that. So yeah, so I'm just here to talk about whatever you'd like to talk about. There's a couple charitable things that I really feel strong about. I'd like to talk about a little bit. Because I think that's important. We all get wrapped up in

real estate and what we do, but the stuff we do outside of our profession, you know, I sit on a couple of boards and commissions and focus on affordable housing or housing affordability. I want talk about what you're doing. Yeah, so when I was first, when we were here originally, and I was in Charlottesville every day, I teamed up with a bunch of friends several years ago and we started a nonprofit called Aceville Gives. So we ran that for three or four years

and ended up giving away, I mean over the years probably close to $100,000 some thousand dollars. I remember Michael Guthrie's organization, I cannot remember the name, but they Abundant life? Abundant life. I think Guthrie is watching right now. They got it one year. So we would have the community vote and see who you wanted the money to go to, and then we'd have a big ceremony.

Anyway, when I left, because as all this happened, the initial board kind of runs out of steam. They get tired and sometimes new folks just don't fill in. And it went on for a little bit. But after that, I really hadn't been involved with a lot of philanthropic type stuff because I was mainly focused on where we were living now and growing the business and kids coaching my kids and all of that.

So through my kids' school, Blue Ridge Christian School out in the Shenandoah Valley, we just got back from a trip to the Dominican Republic. So it was basically the Spanish class at my kids' school. They organized it and went to the Dominican. and we were in Santa Domingo and then we were in the really poorest sections of Santa Domingo. So, Dominican Republic has beautiful areas with wealth in it,

but there are really areas that would only be described as third world that I could think of. No running water, no dirt, dirt streets, no electricity. Nobody knows where they're getting their next meal, things like that. So that's who we went and ministered to and we would go, we teamed up with a organization called Joshua Expeditions. Joshua Expeditions helped us in the school coordinated to get the Dominican, and we teamed up with the local ministry called Pani Palabra,

and it means the bread and the word. So we would go to local orphanages, local schools, things like that, and spread basically the word of Christ, and try to explain to these kids who happen. heard the word how to, you know, how they can accept Jesus Christ's War and saver, things like that. And then one was really interesting is Dominican Republic is a, it's a shortstop mecca for MLB. Like, like they're just churning out like high-end major league ball baseball players. So we got to go visit one of their baseball prodigy type schools. Again, it's a field.

in the middle of nowhere with just nothing. There's like dead dogs in the street and things like that. So we went, ministered to them. My daughter Eva actually got up and gave a testimony completely in Spanish for like two minutes. I did not know she could speak Spanish that well, so that was really

exciting. Amazing how they surprised you. And the cool thing after that was right after she did that, the guy who runs at Oscar, who runs Pani Palabra, spoke to some of the ways, said if you want to accept Christ right now, raise your hand. And a couple of the boys did. So, like, mission accomplished, it was great. We came back, really fired up. But the reason I wanted to come on here and talk about it is they run their entire operation over

there on $1,500 U.S. That's it. No, a month. And the, like, the mom is a doctor. So she has her little doctor's office, but it's equivalent to you and I having a doctor's office like our medicine cabinet. Like, they have nothing. They have no supplies. So they're trying to care for people that otherwise can't get the options. And I asked him, what can we do? And he's like, we just need funding. Please, we just need funding. So, and I was like,

we're going to work on this. We're going to try to help. The big thing that hit me, though, was we went to a nursing home in the Dominican Republic. So you know nursing homes around here have challenges. This is a third world country nursing home. They have nothing. They had no running water, no running toilets.

It's men and women were living in the same sections together. But the thing that inspired me the most was it's all volunteer run. Nobody was purposely neglected. They were constantly trying to cater to them, help them, you know, feed them, everything like that. But there's just so much good we can do there. And the last thing I'll say is there's two images I can't get out of my head. One was in the nursing home. There was a guy who, when I walked in, who's probably his 50s, he had no arms and no legs.

And that's his life for the rest of his life. On a cot there, no arms and no legs, solely hoping that people like us who live in the most abundant place on the world will help donate to little organizations like potty palabra so that they can go and help give him a little bowl of mush. Like that's sort of comes down to. Like we all talk about loving our neighbor or being good people and we're all caught up and making money for ourselves and things like that. Man, if everybody listening to this donated five bucks, you're literally changing lives of people in the Dominican who have zero hope. So Mike, tell them how they can do that. So there's a couple ways to do it. You can go right to their Facebook page website, Pani Palabra, and I'm sure we can figure out a way to.

share that and donate there they have a US bank account and they have PayPal and I can get all that information for anyone that's interested but the the main point to take away from this is that there are people all over in these countries that we just don't think about it that are struggling day-to-day like they didn't know they like we gave them a bottle of water it was like a big deal there's and this was the last point I was going to make. There was a young boy at the baseball field who, there's levels of poor or levels of poverty over there.

So the baseball players were like the top guys, and then there's a whole group of kids that were poor, but wanted to be associated with. And then there was this kid who had no shoes, ripped clothes, dirty, I think he was homeless, obviously malnourished. And the kids that were the higher poor were picking on him because he was poor. And he's crying.

And we asked him what was wrong. He's like, I have no one. I literally have no one. I don't, like, I don't have a mom. I have no one. So I cannot get that kid's head out of my,

he's burned into my brain. So I'm going everywhere I can to try to share that, this message. What I'm personally doing through our company is for every loan that I do, because I don't know another way to do it other than the business that I do. every loan I do that someone mentions this that I know it's going to that we're going to donate funds to us because with 10 loans or six loans or whatever

if I work them out that right I can fund them 1,500 a month so hopefully some people feel called to to try to help and assist in this if you would like to please reach out to me DM me or call me and I can get you the information but we can do a lot of good in this world for really a small amount of money Thanks for let me share that. Oh, yeah, of course.

I don't talk about this often, but when we go down to the Caribbean, we do a lot of that. Very different structure, but we give ourselves and we've been doing it for 15 years, and we do it a couple times a year. But I'll tell a quick little story. In December, I had my seven-year-old grandson come down, and they visit us for Christmas and all that stuff. And he's a soccer player, and we connect with, we very, very concerned. connected to the local folks down there. So anyway, he wanted to play soccer. So I took him to a soccer field, to your point,

to play with some of the local kids. He showed up in his American soccer gear, his shoes, is all the stuff. These people had no shoes. They had a ball that they had to pump up by hand because it was kept on deflating to go through that in a field that was full of glass, full of all this kind of great stuff.

And they're running around on the thing. But what was very different to the story you told, they were abundantly kind to my grandson, abundantly kind. And, you know, clearly these kids were like at this level and he was there and they made sure he scored. They made sure he did. So the point I'm trying to make was, and if you're out there, you can donate, but if you have an opportunity to travel and take and see how the other side lives, this was super impactful for him. He constantly talks about that, that because in his world, up in Connecticut, everybody's like him. No, not everybody's like him.

So if you can't donate and if you can go and physically help, that's a good thing. You got my chills up because I didn't really don't talk much about that stuff, but that was a great opportunity. So thank you. No, it's touching. And it's the one thing that you mentioned to that, and then we'll go back to real estate, I guess, is. well that's how you pay the bill

to take care of people is so yes they have nothing right and by all accounts if someone here if I one day woke up tomorrow and had nothing and my kids had nothing we would kind of feel

bummed out I've never met a group of people in my life that had more gratitude and more kindness and more faith than the Lord than the folks over there in the Dominican came that we ministered to.

It was incredible. They were going into debt feeding us at the end of the day. I knew they were, and they were laying out spreads for us so that we would have the energy to go through the next day. You can see the same thing in this country, by the way, because I was out west speaking, and you see the same thing on reservations and stuff like that. Yeah, but it's just, what it goes to prove is that there's,

attaining whatever you have to attain physically or monetarily that's great. I don't think that ever gets you to the level of happiness that these folks have and I think we all can get there but I think it starts with being involved and helping

and we need to we really need help they really need help so the last request is please consider helping or if you have in real estate offices or things like that, consider allowing me to share this message with you some more and see if we can work some things out for donations. Valuable perspective. Scott, you know about valuable perspective.

I mean, firsthand. Well, firsthand from my personal experience and like, you know, wellness. Yeah. Especially. But, you know, I've been in places in the world where, like in parts of northern Iraq where you'll see, like, people live, up and down in the Euphrates. The human experience, we don't understand. I'm not going to get in my whole full of American speech,

but have no appreciation for the way that a huge majority of the world lives. It's just most people don't. And then there's a whole other thing there about why U.S. sports are terrible because it costs, I've got friends who spend ten, tens of thousands of dollars a year in travel ball and soccer as opposed to

this place that cranks out world class athletes with nothing. Right. Right. And that's also a matter of this is the ticket. And when this is the ticket out you're going to do... Versus the only way that you get exposure is coming from a place of privilege. Right. Yeah. That's what it is.

Or you end up in the gangs down there and there's... And you know, to your point, Scott, I feel I try to navigate this because I think everyone on this panel is done well by their family and we have to thread this needle of providing for our kids and wanting our kids to have a life that's better than say necessarily how we grew up but doing it's like you know they're not spoiled they're not you know have everything they want entitled entitled that's a better word entitled I struggle with that every day

dude and it gets much harder when you become a grandfather sure right it's way harder when you hang, you got four grandkids, and you just want to spoil the heck out of them. And that's the reason I told the story about, well, yes, I'll spoil you.

And one of the things, and we're not talking about real estate. But this is good. But this is good stuff. But what we intend to give our grandchildren is trips. Yeah. Take them to places of the world or this country. That, hey, these folks,

you have it this way. These folks do not have it as well as you, do just to see how the other side lives. You know, we're all in real estate. We're all trying to provide for our families. But what I wanted, you know, in the intro to this, most people do not know, and I don't know if there's a stat for it, but people in our industry, how much we give back, it's a huge number.

I mean, if you go to volunteer events, wherever they may be, you're going to bump into somebody in the real estate space, right? You know, a real estate agent or a loan officer or whatever, you know, we tend to give back as a group. So again, if you can help out Mike and his folks, go ahead, DM them, and we can kind of take it from there. I've gotten a little chills so far today from this conversation. Hey, it's, my goal is to elicit an emotional response,

because like you were saying, it's we have the choice to deny our kids, for example, things of privilege. These folks don't. They are born into denial, basically, born into suppression of basic human rights in ways, how to live. I can't speak, I think I can speak for most of us at this panel. Most of us started off with either nothing or very close to nothing. 100%. Right.

And one of the great things about this country is that you can do that. You can go from nothing to something. In northern Iraq, no. In the Dominican Republic, no. The places that I visited, I was behind the Iron Curtain for a half a decade, no. Really? Yeah, when I was attached to the U.S. embassies behind the Iron Curtain. So you got four people who started a business from nothing?

100%. Yeah, three times. On this panel here. Four people who started. Oh, three times. Each move, I had to start over. So, yeah. Mine was three times because I lost money.

Yeah. Yeah, the virus just, you know. Family. Family, family. Scott Morris, open that in question. Today's market. What are you seeing? Apps that are coming into your desk.

I mean, one of the best indicators is people that are reaching out to you saying, where do I stand with financing with you? What are you seeing with the market? We've seen, like Keith spoke about in the beginning, there's a lot of inventory, and it's made a more selective buyer. So I've seen, whereas, a year and a half ago, two years ago, a buyer would make an offer, a seller would refuse to counter or give virtually nothing and the buyer would just roll over.

And now you're seeing them go, you know what, maybe this just isn't the one for me and going to look at something else, which is like this return to normalization that has been desperately needed for so long. That's the best thing and the best way for me to describe kind of what we're seeing and where we're seeing it. I'd love to see this Iran thing come to an end. We were trending in the right direction as far as rates for a while there. We've kind of spiked back up a little bit.

Looks like the DOJ has closed its investigation to Powell. So I don't know if that's going to be a direct reflection. I think right now the headline really is what goes on in Iran. But as far as inventory and action, what we're seeing with more inventory, it's giving buyers more options to say no, be more solicitor. more selective and it feels more normal. Mike? What do you think?

Yeah, that's pretty much nail on the head. We were poised. I had so many people poised to refinance and then we bombed Iran. And you just saw, there's a company called, maybe you do the Barry Hibibibb, MBS Highway. So he has a thing called Chinese candlesticks. And it's basically green good, red bat, and goes up and down. And we were trending perfectly. And then we bombed around.

It was just the bottom drop. But that's only on the refite side. That's rates. Yeah. Right. But how about the purchase side? Purchase market is, again, it's all kind of cyclical in a way where it comes to interest rate. So there was a lot of people who were, let's go, we're excited for the spring market,

and we're going to do this. And then rates jumped a little bit on them. And they pulled back, but they've come back since. What I have seen is to Scott's point is we're making offers, people are getting homes that before they would roll over, like you said, and, you know, waive everything. Now they're leaving for homeowners, home inspection contingencies, things like that. So they're putting more things in contracts to have outs,

whereas before they wouldn't, and sellers are accepting them, because I think the stat was there's something along the lines of, it's over 20%, I know that. of sellers versus buyers now. Like the market's shifted to where there are more sellers and buyers and buyers are kind of in the upper hand. But the problem is the home prices have gone up 100% and mortgage rates have gone up 150%. So the market's kind of until one of those gives and the really only thing that can give is rate. Yeah.

But it hasn't slowed down though. The tempo of the market is I watched this. I mean, we're at 134 now and 125 as this is moving live as we're looking at it. I keep a picture of this week over week. I've been doing it for eight years. I just took a look at what this was in 2019 for the same week. It was only 90 homes that came on the market, and it was only 90 that went off. So in the eyes of the wonderful K-shaped economy we're inside of,

What's very interesting is your... The dry humor for Scott is the best. 1.1, even a million dollars, let's call it a million, we'll just say it. A million dollars in up can be hyper-competitive still. And $800,000 and down has seen some softening. Just those are the people who have become more rate-sensitive. And then your million-dollar-plus buyer is not as rate-sensitive. And that has kept a very healthy and multi-offer,

it's a tail of two cities. I can't believe we're saying this because I literally had the same conversation with the buyer on the way in who's in this one. I keep an earpiece in your truck. Did I really? Thanks, buddy. And they've known each other for how long? 120 years. 30 years?

Is it 30 years? So he used to work to me. He tells the story once a quarter, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I used to. I was actually on the phone with one of the other partners in crime this morning. that used to work for another a former employee yeah when I was when I was building oh this story's hilarious so Mike is the one person that has not heard this story we

should tell this story this is a good story there's one person in the world that doesn't know the story this is a good story when I got out of the Marine Corps I came back and his one of Keith's brothers two of Keith's brothers good friends of mine especially at the time and we were all framing houses together for Keith who was building houses like Monticello and so we were like the most dysfunctional framing through you've ever seen in your life. Don't smile, it's very true.

We had a nice headphones like that. Our slogan was, it looked so nice because we did it twice. Didn't care. And didn't care. What are you going to do? Fire us? You're, you know, we're all you got, buddy.

The only way I could tempt them was, is every Friday, I used to drive around to the job site. This is when you could do this back in the day with a cooler full of beer on Fridays. And I just would threaten not to bring the beer on Friday. And it's amazing. To a bunch of guys who had like four at lunch before the roof on the roof. Right, right.

I think I know why the work was shoddy. Yeah. No, it wasn't shoddy. It wasn't shoddy. It wasn't shoddy at all. It's just a guy who's trying to make money out of it. Go, okay, we got to do this again. And anyway.

Comments coming in here from the viewers enlisted. So Michael Guthrie is watching. And he's been in this game of real estate a very long time. as well. Is there really more inventory, he asked? The number of new listings for the first three and a half months of 2026 is the same as 2025. Interest rates

are impacting sellers listing their homes as well. So what's to touch that? Yeah, so that may be so, Michael. I'm just looking at a week over week. And I know this week versus the same week last year, we're substantially up. And it feels like the tempo, and you guys can tell us, right? On the purchase side,

is the tempo a little hire a little faster this time than it was last year? I'm seeing a big tick up in investment opportunity, investment buyers, mainly because, I mean, everybody talked about it, but the debt servicing loan component, people, I think investors and agents have finally got on board that that, the fact that the rates of those are higher really offsets the hassle or the potential deniability of these different investment programs. So I'm doing a lot of investment programs for people with death surfacing loan qualifications. And then to Scott's point, it's true, there's higher-end homes are moving faster.

I mean, like even in Crozet, Craig's building $1.5 million homes, they're all, I'm pretty sure they're all sold. But it's that buyer that had the $200,000-some thousand house that now wants to go to the $500,000 house. That's the move. That rate bump from, you know, a couple years ago that, you know, that payment was $2,000,000. it's many things aren't affordable for them. I talked about this, like, show after show. You've got any salary position, teacher, fire, nurse, that can't just double their income overnight, who purchased at the top of their income level at $300,000, cannot then go and buy it $500,000

with rates that are 2 to 3% higher. Yeah, I mean, let's just, let's, the honest truth is stuff has gotten expensive. And it's a challenge for the middle class American to purchase that when the home prices go up 100%, but they're getting a 4% rates. It just doesn't, the math does it math? I think it's $114,000 that you need to make to afford the median price home in the United States. I saw something as $2.25 to have a family of four. You have to make $2.25 a year. Your salary.

Yeah. Median family household income. Median family household income for 2024 was 125,900. The 2025 number is about to be released in a couple of weeks. So the 2024 number of median family household income, Charlottesville metro area, $125,900. And that's the 25 number is going to go up. So that's HUD, right? That's the world you guys live in.

Yeah. Right? That's the HUD number, which kind of dictates the loan programs and so forth. But they even got to get with the program, like this whole income limitation on grant programs and different specialty programs that they cut people off. So that drives me crazy. Because someone doesn't have any money saved up and they want to buy a house, but they make $1,000 over some arbitrary limit line in the sand you draw is bullshit.

So that drives me crazy. Yes. And there needs to be, as Michael was in attendance, so thank you for attendance. And so thank you for attending Michael Tom Tom on Wednesday. You know, we need to figure out how to turn red tape into green tape. These regulatory all the way up and down the thing is crazy. I can't give any specific details, but I chair the Land Trust. We're helping a buyer.

We've got money to give to that buyer, but I can't give more than 3% to that buyer to meet the loan program. We have money that we can pay for the buyer's down payment, and we can also pay for the buyer's closing costs, right? And this buyer is at the 60% AMI. It's exactly who we want to help. It's exactly what all the programs are set up to do it. But I can't because I can't give them that money, right? I only can give them 3% on the loan product,

and it's causing us to figure out a different way to do it. Well, it's that whole desire to have skin in the game for the home bar, And that's great when they could afford to have skin in the game. But now that that is in a way unaffordable, open up more opportunities, reduce regulation, allow sellers or third-party contributors to give 6% and don't make it arbitrary off of different down payment requirements. I'm totally with you.

I mean, another one that drives me crazy, and then, Scott, jump in on anything you want is the capital gains thresholds. The $250,000 for a single person and the $500,000 for a married couple hasn't been up to. and forever and home values have appreciated significantly. The $250,000 and the $500,000 threshold

should be upticked as well. That would drive additional inventory. Why would they? They've got it set up to make bank. Well, it's just it seems like, right, what's the phrase you use, retake? I mean, it just seems archaic. Yeah. It seems archaic. It hasn't. What's the last time that's been uptake?

This is what the federal government does, right? I've been through this drill, right? What got us into the 2007 problem? And I tell this story all the time. I was sitting in my office over at Nahor Village. We were doing another development. A commercial lender that I used to use walked in the door and heard I was doing another $10 million development and said, Keith, we're going to lend you $10 million and we're going to pay you a point over prime to borrow the money. And I looked at him and I said, you know, I'm just a jarhead. I ain't that smart.

So let me get this right. You're going to lend me $10 million. You're going to pay me to borrow money from you. I told them in very colorful words to get out of of my office and I went home to Yona. He said, you know what's at the family? I said, we're in trouble. So that was because the regulators weren't watching them. Then all of a sudden, an implosion happened and if you were the good lord himself, you weren't going to get alone

in 2008, right? So the government does this on his regulatory swings. I think if it can loosen things up, we can produce more at the affordable level, but it's just got to allow it to happen. Ray Cadet out watching the program.

who's been in real estate since the 80s. Rob Neal's watching the program. He's a heavy hitter in real estate. Viewers and listeners, put your comments in the feed. I'll relay I'm live on air. Your wife's watching the program. She's a fantastic realtor. Mike Buchensky, Sarah Hill Buchensky,

and she highlights that in the Valley, inventory that's priced under 400K is still extremely active. Listings will come on the market on a Thursday, and by Monday, the agents are reviewing multiple offers scenarios. Yeah, and maybe that's, that's, because I'm in a different kind of economic world right now. I still work with a bunch of folks over here, but I'm growing our Shenandoah Valley Ranch.

Here's a great example. So even over there, specifically, how much USDA are you doing right now? None. Because this is a prime example of a product that was created that is now unusable, because the borrowers, in an area that is filled the map. Every house checks the box. You should be able to finance USDA loans. But the people who want to buy them,

either income out of the threshold that's allowable, or due to the price of the home and how limited their income is in a program that they should qualify for, they don't meet the debt to income threshold. So it's either one of the two. You don't, you know, we were doing $250,000, homes inside Lake Monticello's USDA all over Culpepper because it's a it's a, it could do townhouses. It's amazing. It's a great product. It helps a lot of people. But now, due to

where prices are, either people make too much money to qualify for the program itself or they don't make enough money because of the price of the home and they exceed the debt-to-income commercial. Guidelines need to catch up to what was done to the market. Well, that's what I'm saying. So that's more important. When we speak towards affordability, that's more important than you know, who's people not getting money from not being able to meet the $250,000, or not being able to. Capital gain structure. Yeah, not be able to take, like, bite the pill on the capital gain structure.

It's more about how do we get people who should qualify for this product that does exist for the specific thing that we built, that now the market's moved, and how do we get the product to work again? So those, not part of the world, much like sellers in today's environment, tend to react a lot slower than buyers, right? The buyers are generally more in tune to what the market is doing for the sellers because we can constantly have these conversations. Well, I think my house is worth this because they're using 22 numbers, not 2025 or 26 number of current numbers. You want to jump in? No, no, I agree.

to your point, Scott, and I think what my point I was trying to make is that we have guidelines in place for these different loan programs that give folks these great opportunities to do 100% financing, U.S.A. whatever. Those guidelines haven't caught up to the shit store that hit the market. And so what I think needs to happen is some other outside investors are coming in and offering these products now through what's called non-QM. and basically they're saying we're not going to worry about income limitations. So for the people that don't understand what non-QM is, I want to explain that real quick. Qualified mortgage.

And basically it's just something that doesn't fit inside the conventional Fannie Freddie like white glove type scenario. You know, bank statement loans, things like that that don't have the traditional underwriting requirements to them. Or they're more flexible.

But for something like a USDA loan, why can't they just remove the income requirements for a USDA loan and just limit it to first and second time buyers. No investment property, something like that. That would open that product back up. Because like Scott was saying, there's all these folks

that, guess what, they don't have, everything's gotten more expensive. They don't have the money for a down payment anymore, but they can more than enough afford it. Their income allows them to do. Income and afford it. They're not over their skis on stuff, but they just need help. So that's where I'm at with this land trust

transaction, right? There's all those things check in. the place. It's exactly who we want to help that just don't have the cash. Right. And that's what we need, we need either these government type programs to loosen up or we need more investors. It's not necessarily money too, by the way. That's what I was talking about in Tom Tom. If you can get the red tape to clean up a little bit, we can kind of always get around the money so that you know these homes that we're trying to help. They're appraised values around 400 grand, we're selling it for 250. So the value was there, the

buyer can perform. We just need to get the rules to catch up. Yeah, the red tape you got is USDA says you can't make more than this dollar amount and that's really hard to find that sweet spot of client that's a two-

earning household income and they want to buy a house but they can't now because you've pulled the rug out from them with this arbitrary rule. So not that I ever want to push back on Michael Guthrie but I want to add some numbers because you guys were talking I was taking some look at it. So one of struggles with with active or understanding the actives that come on and Paragon the way

it's set up once it goes from active to pending you can't see it in active any longer that said I belong to a realtor.com that does that right I can go back and look at how many actives were in January of last year and this year so the first three months of this year there was 839 this is in in Almar County only new active listings that hit the market it doesn't talk about how they went pending or sailed. These are just units that hit the market. Same time last year was 5-01. So we are up.

Well, not just that. Just look at the map. Like, you know, if you're on the apps, like, I'm big on the apps. That's a better way of it. Just, like, it went from like this sparse pepperoni pizza to, like, the max pepperoni pizza. There's red dots everywhere. There's also...

Chaccaroni. There's... Chaccaroni is great. Shaccaroni. How many is it? Papa John's that he owns? He owns Papa John's that he owns. He did. He brought him back after... Boy, you got our nice little thing. After the pitch man got in some trouble, and we'll leave that at that. I'll highlight the viewers and listeners that are watching the show.

Andy Zemant is on the program here. Dr. John Shave, pro-Ranada owners watching the program. Linda Estep has given you some props. Sam Accord. Isaiah Bradshaw. Sybil Mahanas. Sybil Mahanes. The first real estate agent I had coffee with when we moved here 20 years ago.

We have folks from Long and Foster, Real Estate 3, Nest. watching the program right now. One of the agents at Lauren Woodruff is watching the program right now. We have a couple of home builders that are watching the program right now. Folks from Stanley Martin watching the show right now. The fabulous Jonas Smith watching the program. Chief Mike Kachis watching the program. I would love to know from these folks watching.

We all talk and we say what we think. Open end to question, what's the ideal situation or outcome that they think would help spur home buying or home sales in this area? Like I know what I think. I think the obvious answer is and I don't want to speak for the large majority but it's also an answer that I think

appeals to the large majority because they don't have to get super nuanced or sophistication. Sophisticated is the drop in rates. If you drop in rates, that's going to spur inventory because it's going to get sellers that are sitting on two, three, and four percent mortgages to get off their golden hair cups. I read a list. It has to get into the five. I want to push back

for that. I read a stat yesterday. that nationwide only 40%, it used to be 60 to 80%, has, I think, a 4 or less, if I remember. That's right. That's right. I read the same thing. So that is starting the cycle its way through the market. But that started happening in large part because rates did drop into the high fives and early sixes.

Where are we at now with the rate on the 30-year with a well-qualified score? Mid-sixes. Mid-sixths? Okay. And how's jumbo? What's jumbo at us? Slightly higher? A little better, typically.

Yeah, Lumber is actually in the lower five, I'm sorry, lower six. Lower sixes? Okay. You've got a lot of business there. So, I'll figure it out. Yeah, low five, come on. Historically cheap money. We're just good to 15-year, and you'll pay a little bit.

Buy some points. 12-1 buy down. Yeah. So you just went up as our chemistry is working. I get the question, I understand it, and we have a great audience, and we have great folks that chime in and ask lots of questions. But hacks on your end, right? You know, we're starting to see, and I've been saying this for a while,

the micro markets matter, right? Your side of the hill in certain areas matters. On this side of the hill matters. Pricing is now mattering. I can't believe between a million and million five in this marketplace is super competitive, right? Dude, we live, I'll tell the story. We live in Ivy and we are on, and must happen once a month. some of the most established real estate agents out there that are selling,

I'm talking, north of $10 million in real estate a year, are soliciting us about listing our house. Yeah. Like, literally. And the million to a million seven. Yeah, when you start getting north to a million five. That move, it moves. Here's to the point you're just making, right?

So, yeah, everybody says rates, right? So think of this way. Let's say that you're buying a million dollar house, and rates today are 6.5%, right? You don't want to buy it because you want rates to go lower. Well, you wait a year and a half, two years. Rates are now 4.5%, right? What happens to the value of that house?

What a builder is going to do? But you and I, this table is different. It's new. I have to choose my words, careful. What's the word, what I'm trying to say here is plugged in, understands what's going. I know, but let me. It's not just that, though.

There's sentiment behind it. well. So for example, last year when the tariff thing kicked off, we went through a little phase where your higher-end client kind of pro-clected a little bit and they got away from the market but you're lower and part of the market plowed forward. I think there's a little bit of that now with what we're seeing in Iran, but I mean, it's more than just rates. It's more than just rates. So can I – Hold on. Let me just finish that thought because where I was gone with this was, it

It's just the economic vibe of it, right? So, follow me on this. So rates go to four and a half, right? Now that house is $1 million. It's $1.2, 1.3, right? So builders are now going to increase pricing, right? And guess what else? Now everybody else who's selling a home has another 20% to put down,

so it's going to make competition even harder. What's the best time to buy a house? The best time to buy a house was yesterday. The second best time to buy a house is right now. So to my point, everybody who's waiting for rates to drop, like that's a really hard I got to push back a little bit on this I don't know when that's going to happen

I don't think a lot of people waiting for rates to low if they are I'm saying if that is the reason that was to Jerry's point if that was his point I was coming on that point I think you're seeing that and I mean buyers and I've been saying this forever

the buyer pool was at the deep end of the Olympic 10 meter diving thing and the inventory was the kitty pool okay the kitty pool starting to get a little bit bigger I don't think it's bigger enough, but we still got this huge depth of buyers that are well-heeled. 33% of still cash, looked at it this morning in our marketplace, that are okay with that interest rate, that are okay with doing an interest rate and saying, you know what, I'll refinance.

I mean, those are starting to have the conversation because they want to be in the house because of the five Ds, right? Let's see if I can do this here. First, it's diapers. Oh, okay. Death. No. Divorce. Just think of diamonds or first.

Diamonds. Diamonds. Diamonds. You got me. Is it divorce there? Divorce is third. Yeah. Divorce.

What's that? Downsizing and diapers or death. Death, yeah, the five days. So people. Fun. Yeah. People, think about the people in your buyer pool and they probably fit in one of those five Ds, right? They're either just getting married.

That's everybody in the world right there. I know that. We all die. We all were born So to your point about builders, though I think... I just got shot down. To your point about builders, though, when

right now they're focused on more gross per unit, should rates fall, you might see a slight tick up in price, but they're going to nullify that with incentives because they're going to be trying to squeeze more volume through

units. You're talking about builders. Yeah, because they're trying to get the people to that move up buyer. Because then they can Stanley Martin does that. They can also finance more. So if rates fall, you're actually more in danger of new construction trying to lean in. You're going to see that already. Capture the buyer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's 100%. No, but through volume of units, right now they're trying to squeeze as much out through individual unit as possible. 100%. And that shift happened about 18 months ago where they really got focused there. And you've got new builders moving into the market that are offering financing. of their own in-house. We talked about that with a... Well,

you know, your company is owned by Stanley Martin or Portmanly owned. There's back and forth. Just to clarify, I wasn't saying rate is the reason. I was commenting that if that question I posed of what would move the market and you said rates, I'm like, if that's really what they're rating on. I just think that's

a large population of the problem. That's a problem. Nguyence folks would say. Yeah, but that's the problem is that I don't think that's true. They're not nuanced. So I can tell you from first-hand knowledge, to your point, Stanley Martens of the world, the big production builders of the world, saw this coming years before we did. Right, because we know this, right? Because Stanley Mark and out in Fulvanna County doing a colonial circle, they put a product out there that is hitting this perfect price point. Town homes are 300, single-family detaches, about 4-450.

Look what Stanley's doing in green. I'm about to say. So Stanley's doing this. in green. Everybody's doing this in green. They're hitting that price point. And I can tell you, and I'm a recovering developer. So when you start seeing numbers, units close and transit, might pay attention. Colonial Circle, 200 units. They'll be out of a single family detached the end of this year, probably the end of the first quarter, their townhomes. That's a two-year sellout period, which is unheard of. How genius does Stanley Martin look right now with what they're doing in Green

County ahead of AstraZeneca setting up its headquarters 30 months from now in 600 people moving to the area at a starting salary of $125,000. That are working right there. Some Green County folks are not going to like this, but you've got about 2,000. 2,000 units, called 2,000 units. Right. Getting ready to hit them. And those are going to sell.

They projected that their numbers would increase by 30% this year. And they're... What was that metric? Stanley Martin. Locally? No, nationally. Okay. So, but locally, I mean...

It's because they did a switch. And they're providing what the market wants at the price point to market. So we're having this whole conversation about interest rates and all this stuff. And my perspective, the market is upticking and the market is going where the inventory is. Yeah, yeah. And where the inventory is for the buyer, right? So where the million to million five inventory is, that's where the buyer's going, right? Where the three to 400,000, where the inventory is, that's the...

they're going. We're going to look at some Green County numbers next Friday, and I'll just give you a little preview of it. New construction is selling substantially more than existing, smaller square footage, and turning around. So what you're going to see in Green County is these new constructions start increasing in value in the existing, I think, I'll start dropping. But I may be wrong. I don't buy that. Well, that's what the numbers are showing in a moment. So how many, so green is a little a little more developed than Madison, but like how many

resale units on average come to market each month? You can figure that out. I can while you guys are talking, but I'm actually working on that for next Friday. But if you guys can talk, I can tell you. Well, I mean, one thing that we and I try to emphasize this on every show,

I don't think the market is prepared. I think it's going to be great for you guys. I don't think the market is prepared. What they, what Weldon Cooper is projecting, to be five to six thousand people moving to this area the next 24 to 36 months. I was on the floor. Where the hell are 5,000 people going to live? What are they going to buy?

I was on the phone this morning with the national apartment builder asking me for some land because to fit that exact need to produce. Where are five or six thousand people going to live in central Virginia? And they're prepared to invest the money to do the build as a stop gap knowing that. Yeah, yeah. At least play probably. Well, no, they're just, they're going to be long-term rentals, but they're going to work into their business model that, okay, this is great, this $200,000 a year person, it's just going to take this luxury apartment right now while they're waiting for the new... Huff section to catch up on their inventory.

Which I didn't ever thought was a reality, but it was an interesting conversation. It almost looks like it's turning into like a mirror of Northern Virginia for all the suburbs out and like they're just going to keep moving further and further out of Shards. and 29 is going to just be, you know, the beltway, basically. Yeah. It's bananas. I just, I don't know, like you said, I don't know where they're going to live. And I don't know to get why no one else besides what we're doing here is talking about this. I mean, active listings at any given time on the car footprint is how many units?

I'm trying to get to be. Is it like 800 units? Well, the perfect. I mean, Sarah's watching the pro. Here's the reason why nobody wants to talk about it. Because there's no answers. Why is no one talking? Do you know.

I do. Prozai is bananas. Did you go out there like 10, 15 years ago? Yeah. Okay. It's insane. There's no infrastructure. Oh.

For the amount of people that are. You don't even have to go out to Crozay for that. So just look at the time it would traditionally take to drive from like Ruckersville to the downtown mall at three or four o'clock in the afternoon or vice versa. I would hate to do that drive. It is a, like, or is that an hour? It's probably 40 minutes sometimes. It's in the morning. It's just 29,

originally the business owners didn't want to bypass because I thought that it would direct people away from, away from business. And now it's like, now you've got all this traffic jammed in that just area, the entire way through. How long did it take you to get from Culpepper to downtown Charleston this morning?

I leave a little later. It takes me about 45 minutes door to door. And how much did it use to take before COVID? Well, it depends on when I leave. It can take me an hour and 15 minutes versus the 45 if I leave. At rush hour. Yeah. This is to everybody.

Is there a point that that becomes a diminishing return? A hundred percent. Where people are just like, I don't need to be moving there anymore. 100 percent. Northern Virginia and Fredericksburg. What is the tipping point? I couldn't give you the tipping point. I mean, you could probably answer that.

I don't know. I mean, along with that also comes higher taxes. Like so like. I don't go north of Barrett. Road, dude. I refuse to go north of Barrett's Road. Dude, I'm growing my own food. I'm prepping. He's got a bunker. He's got a bunker. I'm

digging a bunker. I legitimately say I do not go north of Barrett's Road. I refuse to do it. We moved from Glenmore to Ivy because my wife was spending three hours in the car every day with our sons. If she's going to spend three hours in the car every day with our kids, we might as well live in Fairfax.

Yeah. We might as well chase the paper in northern Virginia. Yeah. She said it was miserable. Now she's in the car 25 minutes a day. Yeah. I mean, you don't want to spend your time at home. You don't want to spend it in the car. Here's one from Andy, from Andy Zeeben here.

She says, suggestion is, and you're going to get you're going to have to help me with the acronyms here. Suggestion is FTHB with at least a 3% self-funded down payment, get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, not deduction for DP up to a max of 5% and or $25,000, regardless of income level. That's the first sentence. What is the first time home buyer, 3% down, getting a dollar for down payment. Okay, okay.

Here's his second. He continues. He says, this is a pay-up and invest and get the tax credit back at filing. You'll see people move regardless of rates. And if you're a first-time home buyer, the home you're buying, the seller gets $150,000 increase to cap gains for choosing their offer.

Mike Buchetzki and Scott Morris, what do you guys say? I agree with that. I mean, that's basically, you're basically saying, so somebody who's putting down 10 is going to get back 10 in their tax return, and then it's going to motivate the seller adding the increase of $150,000 to their $250,000. So I assume that's where he's going with it. So that would give them a $400,000. $400 for the single, $6.50 for the couple. I mean, Andy Zamey, keep pumping questions here if you want.

He's actually cracking the numbers for green, I believe. I'm doing it right now. and literally real time here. This question comes in for someone who's in real estate that's asking for anonymity. So say you get 6,000 additional people here, what does the panels predicts that's going to happen to the luxury market, the move-up market,

the first-time home buyer market, and how does the real estate agent prepare themselves for what's to come? Well, there's a bunch of variables to that. What percentage of that 5,000 fits into each one of those categories? I would say the large portion of the 5,000 that are moving here are not in that first-time homebuyer category. They're either in move-up category and or luxury.

I'm going to use 600 people. Then you'll have 600 people, AtroZeneca, 125K starting salary. So that also says, let's say if there's people are, if a thousand of those people want to go into Crozay, that means 1,000 people need to leave Crozay, right? Because you're not producing it down. You're not producing more property out there. So what I think is if these people want to come in,

they're going to end up being pushed further and further out. I think the people that are going to come in are going to target Ivy and Crozay first because of the schools, then when Ivy and Crozzee are tapped out, then they're going to target proximity next, which is going to be Hollymead Forest Lakes because of proximity to work. Do you know how many physicians and people that I talk to who are moving from like New York or California and they go, I thought it was going to be cheaper? No, they go, I thought it was going to be cheaper.

Yeah, it was. It was. That's what I'm saying. So what they're doing now is everybody all of a sudden is just popping right over that mountain, that Alba Mar County into after end of those. and it's just going to start scoot. So it's just going to move out. So one year of the impact of one year of new construction on Greene County,

single family detached only, beginning of the year until today, 2026, the resale median sales price, this is sold, was $394, the median sales price for new construction was $436. Same period in 2025. It was almost identical. New construction was 435, existing was 436. So new construction has impacted the value. And what's happening is, you know, the existing is dropped.

Now, this requires a lot more work for me to crunch. Is it that or is it that we're seeing just a smaller amount of 400 X properties come to market as opposed to like your single family rancher. There's a lot of the inventory was built in the 1980s at 1,200,000 square feet, 3-2,000 split level. Like you've got a lot of dated type of So to your point, in that footprint.

In that footprint. In 2025, it was a 16-16-existing 16 new construction sold. This year, there was 43 new construction sold versus 28 existing. So new construction in Green County is going to be the engine and it's going to be driving. Think of Green County as a big Lake Monticello, right? Right?

So when there was a lot of, I'm sorry, brother. Sorry to do that. But when there was a lot of lots left and a lot of homes that get built, right? What hurt, the existing stock hurt? Why would I buy an existing home when I can buy a brand new home, get everything that I want for at or above the price? Are you thinking these people buying that new home are going to be first-time buyers? They are not. I can tell you a lot of them are my clients.

They are not. They are first-time homebuyers is 40 years old right now. And that's going to be, that's upticking. That's not downticking VH. That's according to NAR. Only 21% of all last year's sales was first-time home buyers.

These are boomers. Yeah, the boomers, the corner to the market. So then they're not worrying about price. They have cash from their own sale. There's a certain product type that they want. The builders are providing. First floor master, first floor primary suite. New construction.

But to the point, these people aren't worried about it because they're walking in with cash. Yeah, so that's, so all these new homes that are in that 400 price point, people that do need a loan, they're up against competition. They can't be. Right. 30% I looked at it quickly, but still holding about 33% of our sales. And we could spend an entire week on the social dynamic. the sociology of boomers buying real estate. It's a big problem.

Public school enrollment dropping. Public school enrollment is what drives federal and state funding for the schools. So if the enrollment drops, the public schools are funded less, which deteriorate. And on top of that, the folks that do come in that have kids are so flush with powder that they're private schooling kids, which further drives the public school diminish enrollment. This whole Welding Cooper thing, the Welding Cooper stuff is fascinating.

They're talking public school enrollment in the region across the board dropping. Nelson County, Jesse Rutherford was on the show last week. 15% drop in Nelson County public school population. Alamarles at 4. They're basically saying we don't have the money to run our schools in Nelson County. Well, no.

I do need to add context on the 15%, which is important. that's since COVID, right? So it's dropped 15%. But what that also tells me is that those people coming that are not enrolling their kids in the public schools or saying to the public schools, we don't like the product you're offering.

That's true. And they're also saying they're also extremely wealthy. So there's another, and it's a small percentage, but it's a caveat to it as well. So if you are a high talent, high school athlete, and you are at Fluvana,

Louisa, you're at Orange, you're going to go to Woodbury or Stab or one of these schools on a scholarship from the private school. They want you in their program and they're pulling what used to be high talent, like low, you could have a county high school that had high, high caliber athletes. They are now getting pulled and sent to private schools for better exposure, which goes back to my like American, like, sports thing, but that's a piece of the problem that is affecting the school system. That's what, like, the Blue Ridge School

out there. 100% bro. Yes. We're mom and the guy from Duke, they're just I'm hoping to get a call from one of them for Noah. So, give me up. We got a nice little point guard on our house if you all need somebody. There we got. So, thank you gentlemen. We're substantially over time.

Oh, this is how this rolls, Mike. We have a lot of fun. And before you know it, it's, we're over an hour into this. These guys got an afternoon show to do, and we got some work to get to. But thank you for the, if you want to give a quick little pitch again for your nonprofit or what you're finding. And I know I talked a lot. I was just excited to be here.

But appreciate all you guys. Let me on. It's P.A. P.N.Y. P-A-P-Labra. It means bread in the word. You can find them on WhatsApp app. You can find them on Instagram. You can find them on Facebook. They just need donations.

They're doing really good work. They're doing God's work. They're taking care of a lot of people that can't take care of themselves. And again, they operate on $1,500 a month. That funds everything. And that money literally, I've seen it with my own eyes, will save lives. So if you can, you feel moved to help. Please reach out to me or just do it directly.

I'm just lucky to be here. Thanks, everybody. Yeah. That's a boomer say. I'm not lucky I just woke up this moment. That's right. Looking like Kim Kahn. Thank you.

It was fine. Thanks, guys. Scott, you're great. Mike, you're great. The comments, I've, thank you. A dozen comments and questions we didn't get to on the show today, viewers and listeners. The show just flies by. Keith Smith, some final thoughts.

Yeah, you know, I think the takeaway from this is we have two competing loan officers sitting at a table, talking about the market and how it get better. If that doesn't tell you how the market is and how we work, work collaboratively, nothing does, right? You know, so, you know, get out there and, you know, buy a house, contact these folks.

Maybe I can help you and pay my bills. There's enough out there for everybody. Oh, my gosh. I want all the success in the world for this guy, and I have a concern. I don't think even either of them cares about the competition right there. There's so much pie out there. No, but with today's world... Keith did bring me a nice Marine Corps pen today. I did bring enough. And a coffee.

And a coffee. I got a little... A little tight. There we go. But in today's world, right? You know, this is kind of an important thing to get out. Last week, we had three people from different political persuasions, elected officials, some with these, some with ours, and some independence, some others.

And we got along, and we all had a little sip or something at the end of the show. So I just wanted to get that out. Keith Smith, Scott Morris, Mike Buchensky. This is Real Talk with Keith Smith. It's archive wherever you get your social media and podcasting content. This show legitimately airs on 27 different social media and podcasting platforms. The I Love Seville show is up in one hour and five minutes. Props to Judah behind the camera.

And thank you for the viewers and listeners for watching and listening to the show. Solo. Nicely down, viewers. Nicely down, guys. He's got to get a picture here.