You’ll get an exact mortgage rate prediction from the President of the lending company that’s provided investors with more financial freedom than anyone in the nation.  Learn how to best access your equity, yet keep your low mortgage rate first loan untouched. In this Get Rich Education podcast episode, host Keith Weinhold and guest Caeli Ridge, President of Ridge Lending Group, delve into the direction of mortgage rates.  They highlight the importance of understanding today’s environment and discuss refinancing opportunities in the current market.  Caeli outlines various loan products available to investors and predicts over 50% of appraisals now come in high, indicating strong future valuations.  She also forecasts higher mortgage rates to persist, with a possible Fed Funds Rate reduction by June and a 6.125% rate for 30-year fixed mortgages, non-OO, with 25% down, by the end of 2024.  The episode emphasizes education and strategic planning in real estate investment. I get my own loans at Ridge. You can too at RidgeLendingGroup.com Timestamps: The impact of inflation on real estate investing (00:00:00) Discusses leveraging properties to increase wealth, the relationship between mortgage rates and real estate, and the impact of inflation on property values. Understanding the importance of mortgage rates (00:03:52) Explores the neutral relationship real estate investors have with mortgage rates, the impact of mortgage rates on home affordability, and the significance of current mortgage rates. Historical perspective on home price affordability (00:06:18) Provides insights into the historical trends in home affordability, comparing past and current median home prices and the impact of inflation on home values. The power of leverage in borrowing (00:10:14) Illustrates the impact of inflation on loan principal balances and monthly mortgage payments, emphasizing the benefits of optimizing borrowing. Mortgage rate prediction and refinancing trends (00:16:57) Discusses the future direction of mortgage rates, refinancing trends, and the importance of considering interest rates in the context of overall investment strategies. Explanation of high points charged on investment property loans (00:23:12) Provides an explanation for the high points charged on investment property loans, related to the servicing of mortgage-backed securities and the absence of prepayment penalties. Accessing Equity with HELOC and HE Loan (00:24:21) Discussion on accessing equity using keylock and HE loan, including LTV ratios and interest rate comparisons. Trade-offs Between HELOC and HE Loan (00:25:27) Comparison of trade-offs between keylock and HE loan, including flexibility and interest payment structures. Considerations for Second Mortgages (00:26:36) Exploration of the benefits of having a second mortgage as an option and the potential drawbacks related to minimum draw requirements. Blended Mortgage Rates (00:27:56) Explanation of how to calculate blended mortgage rates based on the balances and interest rates of first and second mortgages. Appetite for Adjustable Rate Mortgages (00:28:44) Assessment of the current environment for adjustable rate mortgages and comparison with fixed-rate mortgages. Obstacles for New and Repeat Investors (00:29:45) Common obstacles faced by new and repeat real estate investors, including understanding investment goals and managing debt-to-income ratios. Forecast for Mortgage Rates (00:33:45) Prediction for future mortgage rates based on inflation indicators and the potential impact of the Fed's decisions. Loan Types Offered by Ridge Lending Group (00:35:54) Overview of the various loan types offered by Ridge Lending Group, including Fannie and Freddie loans, non-QM loans, and commercial loans. Resources and Tools for Investors (00:38:03) Information about free resources and tools available on the Ridge Lending Group website, including simulators and educational content. Conclusion and Recommendation (00:39:38) Summary of the discussion with Caeli Ridge and a recommendation to explore the services offered by Ridge Lending Group for real estate financing needs. Resources mentioned: Show Page: GetRichEducation.com/489 Ridge Lending Group: RidgeLendingGroup.com Call 855-74-RIDGE For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I’d be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  Top Properties & Providers: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE’ to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith’s personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold (00:00:00) - Welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. A new take on how to profit from inflation. The best strategies for accessing equity from your property while leaving your low rate loan in place. A surprising trend with real estate appraisals. Then the president of one of the most prominent national mortgage companies joins me to give a firm mortgage rate prediction today on get rich education. If you like the Get Rich Education podcast, you're going to love our Don't Quit Your Daydream newsletter. No, a eye here I write every word of the letter myself. It wires your mind for wealth. It helps you make money in your sleep and updates you on vital real estate investing trends. It's free sign up egg get rich education.com/letter. It's real content that makes a real difference in your life. Spice with a dash of humor rather than living below your means, learn how to grow your means right now. You can also easily get the letter by texting GRE to 66866. Text GRE to 66866.   Speaker 2 (00:01:11) - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world.   Speaker 2 (00:01:18) - This is Get Rich Education.   Keith Weinhold (00:01:27) - Welcome to Gary from Oak Park Heights, Minneapolis, to Crown Heights, Brooklyn in New York City and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and this is Get Rich education. When you have that epiphany, that leverage creates wealth, it can be enough to make you want to be the town iconoclast. Walk around, beat your chest, and boldly proclaim that financially free beats debt free. You might remember that I helped drive that point home a few weeks ago when I talked about the old fourplex owner, Patrick, who owned his fourplex next to mine years ago. He wanted to pay his down and I wanted to leverage mine up. I told you then that rushing to pay off one property by making extra payments on the principal is like drilling a deep hole into one property. And the deeper you drill, the more likely that hole is to cave in. Your return goes down and now you've got more of your prosperity tied up in just one property, just one neighborhood and just one market.   Keith Weinhold (00:02:34) - The most sure fire way to wealth, and exactly what wealthy people do, is optimize and almost maximize the number of properties that you own. And as long as you buy right as they inevitably inflate, just keep borrowing against them. And that way you never have to pay capital gains tax either. And that goes beyond just real estate. That's assets of many types. You'll want to own more assets. The way to do that is with more loans. And paradoxically, that is why the richest people have the most debt. As you watch your debt column grow, watch your column grow even faster. And as we're talking about mortgages and the direction of interest rates today, us as real estate investors, you and I, we have a somewhat neutral relationship with mortgage rates. Yeah, it's often a neutral relationship. Now, prospective homebuyers, they often want mortgage rates to be low. Sellers often want rates to be low two so that they'll have more home bidders, legacy landlords, ones that own a bunch of property and they're not buying anymore.   Keith Weinhold (00:03:52) - They often want mortgage rates to be high because it hurts first time homebuyer affordability, and then it keeps the rents high and it keeps the occupancy high. And then you and I see we both own real estate. We also look to opportunistically put more in our portfolio. Well then we want rates to be high in a sense and low in a sense too. So you might have relative neutrality, feeling aloof about it all because you're thinking about it from both sides. But in any case, we can always predict the future. But the one thing that you know for sure is what you have now. A lot of people don't optimize their potential for what they have now. Instead, they speculate about the future. Now, one thing a lot of people have now is so many Americans are still loving their 3% and 4% mortgage rates they locked in 2 or 3 years ago, and they're refusing to give it up. However, over the past two years, when the number of real estate listings were at historic lows, a lot of life changing events have occurred in the past two years 7 million newborn babies with a need for a larger sized home and a desire to get out of the starter home.   Keith Weinhold (00:05:11) - Also in the last two years, 3 million marriages, including some of those marriages, are among older couples who now need to sell a home that can help solve the market. And then, of course, most home sellers. They also become home buyers. Next, they need another place to live. So home sellers, they often don't add a net one to the supply. We had a million and a half divorces, 7 million Americans turning 65 years old that might want to trade down during the retirement years and also during the last two years. Consider that there were 4 million deaths and 50 million job changes, some of those inconsequential, while others with fundamentally changed commuting patterns. So the point here is that life moves on. For some, though still a minority, but a growing minority, it is time to give up the three and 4% mortgage rate. Still not enough of them, but for better or worse, that is what it's going to take to move this market and put some available supply out there.   Keith Weinhold (00:06:18) - Now, today we have apparently finally just come off this period where home price of. Affordability had hit 40 year lows for 40 years for decades. Again, with low affordability, you dislike that if you're a home buyer or seller, you might feel neutral about low affordability as a landlord or a real estate investor because it makes your new purchases less affordable. But it keeps your renters as renters when you buy that income property. From an affordability standpoint, the very best time to buy was 2013. Yep, 2013 is when prices hadn't fully recovered from the GFC and mortgage rates had fallen dramatically. Now, to open up that range in years, from an affordability standpoint, it was just a sensational time to buy a home or property from 2009 to 2021, just historically extraordinary, that sensational affordability level during that decade or so, 2009 to 2021, that added to the exceptional rise in home values over end since that time. But yeah, a few months ago, affordability reached its worst level in 40 years and it has since improved.   Keith Weinhold (00:07:43) - I mean, 40 year lows in affordability reach then in 1984 and what happened in 1984, that is when Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale for his second presidential term. Steve Jobs launched the Macintosh personal computer. John Schnatter opened the first Papa John's store in Indiana. LeBron James was born in 1984, and on television running were The Cosby Show and The Dukes of Hazzard. Hey, if you were alive then and you watch those shows, um, I know you wouldn't confess to watching Charles in Charge back then, and you'll never get back those socially redeeming hours that you spent watching Punky Brewster, and you would not admit to doing that either. What is this show, the Jeffersons still on TV in 1984? Look into that. Yeah. You know, that was kind of a real estate ish show. The deluxe apartment in the sky. Yes. It was on then. Yeah. Sherman Hemsley, Isabel Sanford Q that up.   Speaker UU (00:08:55) - Where we're moving on now? All up to this island, to a deluxe apartment in the sky.   Keith Weinhold (00:09:06) - Yeah, they even had the episode where the landlord came over and threatened not to renew their lease. I'll tell you. Has there ever been a television show in history where the landlord was depicted as a good guy? I mean, a landlord in television, they're always cast is a money hungry bad guy that won't fix anything, or is just trying to unscrupulously kick out the tenant, a slack jawed slumlord, every single time. I never really understood that show's theme music, either Beans or Burden on the grill or something. Let's get back to mortgage loans. Understand this. It might be in a way that, okay, you've never thought about it before. It's the power of leverage in borrowing. Now, you probably won't hold any 30 year fixed rate loan all 30 years in reality, but they'll make this effect clear. Let's just act like you have done this on a property. Now the median home price is near 400 K today. But what was it not 40 years ago, but in this case 30 years ago? All right.   Keith Weinhold (00:10:14) - So 1994, per the Fred numbers, which are sourced from the census and HUD, it was 130 K. Yes, a 130 K median priced home in 1994. So then if you put a 20% down payment on that property, you'd have a loan principal balance of 104 K. Now imagine it was an interest only loan somehow, and you still just owed a 104 K balance on that home today, whose median price is up to 400 K. Well, that 104 K. That just seems like a little math that you could almost swat away. I mean, this is how inflation makes the numbers of yesteryear feel tiny. But now if you're 104 K loan were an amortizing loan and the principal were being paid down to hopefully all principal pay down made by the tenant. During all those years, mortgage rates were 9% back then. So if you were making the final payment today on what's now still a median priced home, today your mortgage payment would just be 837 bucks a month. It feels like nothing. Inflation benefited you both ways on the total principal balance and the monthly payment.   Keith Weinhold (00:11:35) - Just feeling lighter and lighter and lighter in inflation adjusted terms now. And if your mortgage rate were 6% on that property, your payment would only be 623 bucks. You might have refinanced to something like that. I mean, 623 bucks. That is lower than the average new car payment today of 726. But if you had not gotten that loan back in 1994 and instead would have paid all cash for the 130 K property, were you 130 K all cash that was put into the property back then? Well, that would have had the purchasing power of today's approximately 400 K reflected in the price of today's median priced home. But to take it back ten years further to 1984, the George Jefferson year, the median home price was 80 K and your loan would be 60 4k. I mean, these numbers feel like little toys or almost lunch money or something. So this is the power of optimizing your borrowing and perhaps but not quite maximizing your borrowing power because that does risk over leverage. That is the inflation profiting benefit that you're feeling right there.   Keith Weinhold (00:12:59) - Coming up in just a few minutes, the president of one of the most prominent national mortgage companies for investor loans will be here with me. We're going to talk about mortgage rates some more, the overall temperature of the mortgage market. And I expect that she'll give a firm mortgage rate prediction for where we're going to be at year end, because she's done that with us before. They see so many investor loans in there at their lending companies. They've really got a great pulse on the market. We have set up the makeshift gray studio again for yet another week. Here is this week I'm in Nevada, where I will be the best man at my brother's wedding. I have been on the road a lot lately. That's what a geography guy like me does. Gotta get out and see the world. Life is meant to be lived, not postpone. Before we discuss both general and some intermediate Murray's concepts shortly. If you happen to be new to real estate investing. And you just like to listen to that one episode that tells you, step by step, how to get started and how to build your credit score and make an offer on a property, and best navigate the inspection process and the property appraisal inside the management agreement and more.   Keith Weinhold (00:14:15) - You can find that on get Rich Education podcast episode 368. It's simply called How to Buy Your First Rental Property. More next. I'm Keith Reinhold, you're listening to get Rich education. You know, I'll just tell you, for the most passive part of my real estate investing, personally, I put my own dollars with Freedom Family Investments because their funds pay me a stream of regular cash flow in returns are better than a bank savings account up to 12%. Their minimums are as low as 25 K. You don't even need to be accredited for some of them. It's all backed by real estate and that kind of love. How the tax benefit of doing this can offset capital gains and your W-2 jobs income. And they've always given me exactly their stated return paid on time. So it's steady income, no surprises while I'm sleeping or just doing the things I love. For a little insider tip, I've invested in their power fund to get going on that text family to 66866. Oh, and this isn't a solicitation.   Keith Weinhold (00:15:24) - If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to six, 686, six. Role under the specific expert with income property, you need Ridge Lending Group and MLS for 256. In gray history, from beginners to veterans, they provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four plex's. Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Charlie Ridge. Personally, though, even customized plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com. Ridge lending group.com.   Speaker 3 (00:16:12) - Hi, this is Tom Hopkins, and I can't tell you how smart you are to be with get rich education and make these ideas you.   Keith Weinhold (00:16:32) - What is the future direction of mortgage rates? How do you qualify for more mortgage loans at the best terms with the lowest interest rates, and Americans have at near record equity levels in their properties? So what's the best way to access that equity yet? Keep your low rate mortgage in place. We're answering all of that today with a company president that's created more financial freedom through real estate than any other lender in the entire nation.   Keith Weinhold (00:16:57) - That is, the top tier and eponymous ridge lending group is time for a big welcome back to Charlie Ridge. Keith, you flatter me. Thank you very much.   Caeli Ridge (00:17:07) - I'm very happy to be here, sir. Good to see you.   Keith Weinhold (00:17:09) - Well, you help us here because debt and loan are our favored four letter words around here at gray. Can you help us efficiently optimize them both, Charlie? Interest rates have just been on so many people's minds. Shortly after, they had their all time low in January of 2021, and they since rose and then have settled down. Charlie, I've been trying to think through myself why people seem to put this over emphasis on the interest rate now. It's surely important. It is your cost of money. But the way I've thought that people overemphasize the rate is because maybe people love to discuss the direction of interest rates, even more so than real estate prices in rents is because prices and rents nearly always go up in interest rates can go up and down. So therefore it's maybe more interesting for people to talk about.   Keith Weinhold (00:17:57) - I also think about how rates sort of tap into that human fear of loss by paying interest, trumping the triumph of gain through cash flow or appreciation. And then maybe as well, it's because higher mortgage rates, they mean higher rates of all types which permeate into all of one's life's debt. So these are my thoughts about why people maybe put an over emphasis on mortgage interest rates. What are your thoughts?   Caeli Ridge (00:18:23) - I'm sure there's probably something to that. And you're right, Keith. Interest rates are always the hot topic. Everybody wants to talk about interest rates. I think that overall though, it is a lack of education and there's a psychology to it. You and I have talked about interest rates at nauseam over the years, and I do understand, but I think you and I agree, because we live in this space and we're constantly looking at the math. They are probably third or fourth on the list of priorities. When you're deciding on if this investment is valid. For fitting into my goal box, I think it's more about getting information out there and informing the masses about interest rates, and doing that math to make sure that they're not just pigeonholing themselves into keeping a 3% interest rate, or not expanding their portfolio because they're afraid of giving up what they have and not really realizing the power of the equity, the tax deduction, the rent increases.   Caeli Ridge (00:19:15) - All of those variables are often ignored when people start talking about interest rates, until you start to have that reasonable, rational conversation that helps them identify what the math is. Because the math won't lie, right? The math will not lie.   Keith Weinhold (00:19:29) - Yeah, that's right. Things more important than interest rate with an investment property might be the price you're paying for that property, or the level of rent that's there, or even maybe knowing you already have a good property manager that you trust in that market where that property is. But of course, rates matter somewhat. Now we're going to get a future looking prediction from you later. But your last mortgage rate prediction, Charlie, you may not remember the details of it. It was made here on the show in November of 2022. That's when rates were 7%. Back at that time, you said that rates should keep climbing but at a slower pace, and that happened. And you predicted the peak by spring of 2023 of 7.625%. What happened is in October of 2023, they hit 7.8% per Freddie Mac.   Keith Weinhold (00:20:17) - So you almost completely nailed it because most everyone believes that that was the peak for this cycle. And if so, you're within a few months in just 2/10 of 1% of identifying the peak.   Caeli Ridge (00:20:32) - Thank you Keith. I appreciate that acknowledgement. I get it right a lot. My crystal ball has been broken several times over, especially the last couple of years, so I'll want to acknowledge that too. I pay attention to the fed and as a good friend of mine is always saying, don't fight the fed if you are listening to what they're saying, actually listening to the words that are coming out of their mouths, it's not too terribly hard to kind of predict where we're going to be in certain milestones of any given year. So I do have a good prediction for this year. We'll share later. As you said, rates are not completely irrelevant. I just want to impress upon your listeners that they really should be looking at the investment holistically, and not just laser focused on that interest rate. There's more to it.   Keith Weinhold (00:21:15) - That was excellent. You have more audacity than me when it comes to predicting interest rates. It's a business I typically stay out of, so I'm going to outsource that to you later. I'll predict things like real estate prices, but I think rates are notoriously difficult. And what's happened with rates now that they have come off their peak substantially from back in October of 2023. What's happened with the refinance business, is that something that's picked up again there?   Caeli Ridge (00:21:39) - Yeah, we're starting to see a bit more. I would say that last year refi numbers were down right for obvious reasons. But we are seeing some more business in the refinance department. I think depending on the individual and largely the strategy of the investment, the long term versus the mid-term versus the short term, we're seeing a little bit more on the refi side for the short term rentals than we are in the long term. But overall, yes, I would agree that they're starting to pick up. I may mention to Keith it might be useful for the listeners.   Caeli Ridge (00:22:06) - So while I agree, we've seen that interest rates started on their descent, which was great news, everybody was excited to see that. We're still finding that the points that are being secured or paid on, especially investment property loans, are still on the high end of the spectrum. And for those that aren't aware of the why behind that, how might be important. Just to mention that when we talk about mortgage backed securities, the overall servicing of these mortgage backed securities that are bought and sold and traded on on the secondary markets, they're pretty smart in forecasting when rates are high, what happens to those mortgages? When they come back down, they start to refinance, right? They start to pay off. And the servicing rights of these loans take 2 to 3 years before they're even profitable. So the servicers and the secondary markets know that they have to charge those extra points to hedge their losses, because when the loans that they're paying for and servicing today are going to pay off in six months or 12 months, they're going to be at a loss.   Caeli Ridge (00:23:01) - If it takes them 24 to 36 months to be profitable. That's why investors are seeing especially investors are seeing extra points being charged on the loans that they're securing today.   Keith Weinhold (00:23:12) - Oh, that's a great explanation. And really, this is because there's no prepayment penalty associated with residential mortgage loans in the United States typically. So therefore, the person that's on the back end of these loans, the investor there needs to be sure that they're compensated somehow when one goes ahead and maybe refinances out of their loan at a presumably lower interest rate, maybe in as little as 12 months or so.   Caeli Ridge (00:23:39) - Yes, sir. Exactly right. Yeah. And prepayment penalties on conventional. There are no prepayment penalties on conventional. Just to clarify on a non QM product which of course we have to, you know, debt service coverage ratio products etc. on non-owner occupied those typically will have prepayment penalties. But the Fannie Freddie stuff, the GSE stuff no prepay ever.   Keith Weinhold (00:23:57) - Now the rates have come down presumably off their peak in this cycle. You know, I think a lot of people wonder about all right now, what's a prudent way for me to harvest my equity since we have near-record equity levels in property and yet keep my low rate mortgage in place? I think a lot of people don't even understand that you can do that and take a second mortgage to access some of that dead equity.   Keith Weinhold (00:24:20) - What are your thoughts?   Caeli Ridge (00:24:21) - I love a keylock in general. We do now have one of our newer product lines is a second lien lock. We have two options there. Both of them cap at 70% LTV. That's combined loan to value. So all you need to do to figure out what you're going to have access to is take the value that you think the property would appraise for times 70% from that number, subtract the first lien balance, and that will give you what your line on a key lock. Secondly, and position you lock would be. And I love it.   Keith Weinhold (00:24:49) - All right. So therefore if one has 50% equity in a property they could access 20% more up to that 70% CLTV. That combined loan to value ratio between your first mortgage and your second mortgage, which might take the form of a keylock a home equity line of credit.   Caeli Ridge (00:25:07) - Perfectly said. We also have second lien he loans worth mention. He loan is really exactly the same thing as your first lien mortgage. It's a fixed rate.   Caeli Ridge (00:25:15) - Second it's just in second lean position 30 year fixed. Those go to 85% CLTV. So you get quite a bit more leverage. But the rates are going to be on the 1,213% range.   Keith Weinhold (00:25:27) - That's interesting. Tell us about some more of the trade offs between the key lock, where we typically have a fixed rate period in a floating period afterwards, and the he loan some more of those trade offs as we devise our strategy.   Caeli Ridge (00:25:41) - Yeah. The key lock is variable right. The interest rate can change. As you said. The reason I prefer the He lock, if the numbers made sense, is that you're only paying interest on monies that you're using at that point in time. So if you had $100,000 key lock and you're only using 20,000 of it for whatever investment purposes or whatever, then you're paying interest just on the 20 that he loan is exactly as you would expect. You're getting all of that money at once, and you will be paying interest on all of it, whether or not you're using it.   Caeli Ridge (00:26:10) - There's less flexibility on a key loan. While it does provide extra leverage, I do generally prefer that he lock.   Keith Weinhold (00:26:18) - Now, sometimes a question that I've asked myself in the past, Charlie, when I was new as an investor, is sort of why wouldn't I take a second mortgage? He lock or he loan? Because I don't necessarily have to draw against it, but it might be good for me to have it as an option just to be sure that it's there.   Caeli Ridge (00:26:36) - Absolutely. Especially the key lock, because like I said, I will not pay interest on anything you're not using. And to have it when the time comes, right. If you want to be prepared, which I think is huge. We both agree there. The one thing I would mention about that though, is oftentimes on the helocs there will be a minimum draw at closing. You can put it right back after closing, but chances are there's going to be a 50,000 or 100,000 minimum draw, depending on what the line limit is.   Caeli Ridge (00:27:01) - Maybe 75% of the entire limit is what the minimum draw would be. But again, you can put it right back after closing. So maybe you pay 30 days of interest on that before you're able to to stick it back in the lock. Otherwise, it's one of my favorite strategies for investors and having access to those funds when the time comes.   Keith Weinhold (00:27:20) - That's an interesting piece there. So you as an investor is you're devising your strategy as you're looking at the equity position in your own home as well as your rental properties. Maybe you're looking at a low rate of, say, you have a 4% mortgage loan, but you've had a bloated equity position, and you go ahead and you take out a second mortgage in any of the forms of Charlie is talking about. And that second mortgage has, say, a 10% interest rate. Well, you don't simply take the 4% on your first loan and your 10% on the second and average it and say, well, now I'm paying 7%. Of course, you have to wait those averages.   Keith Weinhold (00:27:56) - It's pretty likely that you have a higher mortgage balance on your first loan than your second loan. So depending on their balances, therefore, if your first mortgage has a 4% interest rate and your second mortgage has a 10% interest rate, you're blended rate might be something like five and a half.   Caeli Ridge (00:28:10) - Exactly right. And there's all kinds of tools and calculators online. If somebody wanted to check that out you can find them very easily. Just the weighted average of mortgage rates. And you can plug in your numbers. It'll tell you exactly if you're using this amount or this amount or whatever it is, what your weighted average would be.   Keith Weinhold (00:28:27) - Yeah, definitely important for you as an investor checking your arbitrage and your cash flow. Certainly, Charlie, I wonder now that we are in an environment finally where rates have actually fallen, how is the appetite for arms adjustable rate mortgages looked in there?   Caeli Ridge (00:28:44) - We're still on what's called an inverted yield from the 0809 housing and lending kind of debacle, we found ourselves in a place where adjustable rate mortgage or arm's actually priced in interest rate higher than a 30 year fixed, creating that inverted yield.   Caeli Ridge (00:28:58) - We have yet to see the correction of that. So we're still kind of in that place where depending on the characteristics of the transaction, the arm might be a higher interest rate. Maybe it's about the same as the 30 year fixed. If there is a scenario where the arm is lower, it might be an eighth or a quarter of a percentage point. So it's unlikely that we would recommend an arm over a fixed. There'd be have to be some very specific circumstances. If it's only a quarter point improvement to rate for a five year arm versus a 30 year fixed.   Keith Weinhold (00:29:26) - Charlie, you deal with so many investors in there, both newer investors and veteran real estate investors. So when we talk first about the new investors, are there any just sort of common obstacles to overcome that you see in there for people that are looking to get their first investment property?   Caeli Ridge (00:29:45) - I think they're why a lot of times we'll have investors come to us and really not even understand more than they just don't want their money in the stock market anymore, and they want to find another venue or another vehicle in which to create their investment freedom, their financial freedom through.   Caeli Ridge (00:29:59) - So I would say for brand new investors, really start to ask that question, what is your why? What is it that you want to get out of this? Do you want total replacement income of your ordinary income today? Do you love what you do for work and you just want supplemental income? How much does that income need to be? Does it need to be what you're making today? Can it be a little bit less? Does it need to be more based on what you expect your lifestyle to be? So lots of different questions to be asking yourself. So I would say that commonly just really understanding at least a baseline. And then we can start connecting some dots together and planting seeds that I talk about a baseline of, of what it is that you're hoping to accomplish through real estate.   Keith Weinhold (00:30:37) - So that's what you often see with the beginning investor. How about that repeat investor. Their obstacles to overcome that are common in there on expanding one's portfolio. Maybe that's a debt to income ratio threshold that one reaches and you need to strategize with them there.   Caeli Ridge (00:30:54) - Yeah, the debt to income ratio problem ultimately when you get there is probably a good problem to have, right when you're having to have conversations that way. I think that the obstacles to overcome is making sure that you have a good support team, and I think that would start with your lender, someone that has a multitude of loan products that aren't just one size fits all. I would say that we check that box very well, but strategizing. One of my favorite conversations with my clients is having those strategy one on one calls about their debt to income ratio and figuring out from a scheduling perspective, how can we maximize their deductions, because that's one of the beautiful things about real estate investing, right? Is that schedule E so maximizing over there without it taking you over certain thresholds to continue to qualify, there can be a weighted scale there as well. And those are the conversations that we have with our clients usually earlier in the year. But we're always looking at our client's draft tax returns. That's important.   Caeli Ridge (00:31:47) - Before you ring that bell, get us copies of your draft tax returns so that we can run the math, and we'll even show them how the pluses and minuses work. It's pretty interesting to most people. And then come up with a solution that says, okay, if you want to do this for 2024, here are our recommendations X, Y, or Z. And then they can make the informed decision that fits what their goals are for the year.   Keith Weinhold (00:32:08) - Yeah, these are the scenarios that a mortgage loan company that specializes in income property loans can help you with your future planning. How can you set yourself up considering your personal situation, your tax deductions, how much income do you want to show, and all those sorts of things to give you more runway to add income properties to your portfolio. And you do see so many scenarios in there and so many investors. Sometimes when you're here, I like to ask you to get a temperature of the appraisal market. What percent of appraisals are you seeing coming high on and what percent are coming in low? Approximately.   Caeli Ridge (00:32:43) - We're probably over 50% on the high, but not by any large margin. I'll see 10,015 thousand regularly over what we had expected in the actual value. Pretty commonly, just right on the money, right on the mark. I think it's real market specific, to be sure. I don't see that the short values come in all that much. If it is, generally it's probably because the investor is brand new, didn't unfortunately talk to us in advance. They were doing the BR method and they didn't get the right comps or have the right advice about what that RV might end up being. So they got trapped in a situation where they learned the hard way.   Keith Weinhold (00:33:21) - Interesting. I don't know that I remember that from the past, where more than 50% of appraisals have come in high. That pretends well for future valuations, at least here in the near term. All right, Charlie, well, we talked about your record with mortgage rate predictions here and how good that track record was. Why don't you let us know where you think mortgage rates are going to be by the end of 2024.   Caeli Ridge (00:33:45) - I do think that the rates are going to be higher for longer. Don't fight the fed, remember? Listen to what they have to say. I would preface this by saying that all of the indicators for inflation, except for one of them, have been hot to the side. That does not help us with interest rates. The employment jobs report, you've got the CPI, all these different metrics have come in hot where they're higher than what we would want to see them for that inflationary measure, where the feds have been extremely clear that they want to hit that 2% mark, where that number came from, I don't know. That's another conversation. There's only been one metric that actually worked to the rate environment to get it lowered, which is the PCE, the personal consumption expenditure. For those that aren't familiar with that acronym, I think they're going to be higher for longer. There's been a lot of headlines out there saying that I'm getting to a rate. I promise. I'm just going to to preface this first, that March might be the first reduction in the fed funds rate, which, by the way, remember, is not the same as a long term 30 year fixed mortgage rate.   Caeli Ridge (00:34:42) - There are links to them, but they are different. I don't think that's going to happen. I think that if we're going to see rates come down, the first fed funds rate reduction, probably sometime in June, is where I may put my predictions. And then by the end of the year, the interest rate, I'm going to put at 6.125 for 30 year fixed mortgages and non-owner occupied purchase with 25% down. That's my prediction.   Keith Weinhold (00:35:09) - You are on the record though, and it's so interesting, at least with what the fed does with rates generally. It's like an entire world where good news is bad news, right? If you've got great job growth and great GDP, well, that's bad news because they're probably going to keep rates high since those things tend to keep inflation high. It's like, what if you want the lowest mortgage rate, everyone in the world would be unemployed except you. You know, it's just so funny. I'm glad you said that. Yeah.   Caeli Ridge (00:35:36) - The worse the economy is, the better the rates are.   Keith Weinhold (00:35:38) - Yeah. That's right. You offer so many products in there, mostly to investors, but you have other ones that it's not just for buy and hold type of investors. It's for those that are doing better strategies like you mentioned in other strategies. Well, you tell us about all the loan types that you offer in there.   Caeli Ridge (00:35:54) - Yeah, we do have quite a few. Thank you for asking. So we start with the Fannie Freddie's. We call these the golden tickets. Everybody. Highest leverage, lowest interest rate. A lot of times the newer investors will start by exhausting those. There are ten per qualified individual. If you're a married couple, you can have up to 20, as you and I have talked about in the past, Keith. Beyond that, we've got something called Non-cumulative. QM stands for Qualified Mortgage. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the definition of what a qualified mortgage is. So everything outside of that box of underwriting is now non QM. And non QM in and of itself is extremely diverse, not just for investors, for anybody, but within that subset of product you've got debt service coverage ratio where there is no personal income documentation.   Caeli Ridge (00:36:33) - It's all about the properties rents divided by the payment. We have bank statement loans in there. We've got asset depletion. So if you've got $1 million in an exchange, a stock exchange account, there's a formula that we can use to utilize that as income. Beyond that, we have short term bridge loans for those that are fixed and flipping or fixed and holding where you need cash for the purchase and the renovation or rehab. So we have second lien helocs. Those are newer to our product line. So I'm pretty excited about those. We touched on that. We have commercial loans for commercial property, commercial loans for residential if it were applicable. And then of course the all in one, which is a first lien Helocs still my favorite, but we've spent lots of time talking about that. So that's probably a good overview or at least abbreviated checklist of products we have.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:16) - And I've got investor loans in there myself or new purchases I've done investor loans in there myself or Refinancings. I mean, you're who I go to for my own loans and you're in nearly all 50 states, right? And these are the states where the property is not where the investor resides.   Caeli Ridge (00:37:34) - Yes, sir. Exactly right. We are in 48 states. We are not in New York or North Dakota. Otherwise we're going to be funding everywhere that they're looking to purchase, refi, sell, etc..   Keith Weinhold (00:37:45) - We'll let our audience know where they can learn more, because I know you offer a lot of good free tools, like something we didn't get a chance to talk about a first lien helocs all in one loan. Like for example, you have a simulator there when an investor can just go ahead and run through that. So we're one find all of those resources.   Caeli Ridge (00:38:03) - So check out our website. There's a lot of good information on there. Lots of video content free education. The simulator link will be on there. If you wanted to check out the comparison between what you have now, your 3% interest rate, or your 2.5% interest rate compared to this all in one. I'll tell you guys that I've run that scenario all the time, and people are very surprised when they see that this adjustable rate first line is beating the pants off of a 2.25% rate.   Caeli Ridge (00:38:26) - So check that out. Our community is in the website we meet every other Tuesday. It's called live with Charlie. That's Ridge Lending group. Com. Email us info at Ridge Lending Group. Com and then you can call us of course toll free at (855) 747-4343. The easy way to remember is 85574 Ridge.   Keith Weinhold (00:38:45) - Charlie Ridge. Informative as always. And brazen. With the mortgage rate predictions. You can learn more about how they can help you at Ridge Lending group.com. It's been great having you back on the show Charlie.   Caeli Ridge (00:38:58) - Thank you Keith.   Keith Weinhold (00:39:06) - Oh, yeah, there's such experienced pros in there. And as you can see, they offer nearly every loan type. In fact, there were so many that I almost asked her, do you even loan lunch money to elementary school kids? Uh, because, uh, because they've seemingly got a loan type for most every real estate investment scenario that there is primary residence loans as well. Helpful people over there at Ridge. In fact, I even visited their headquarters office and I was hosted by Charlie there one day.   Keith Weinhold (00:39:38) - See what they can do for you in there. They are real strategists in helping you grow your real estate portfolio, going beyond just what a typical retail mortgage company does. It helps people with primary residences. You can join their free community events too, and they've really expanded their educational offerings to a giant degree the past couple of years. Financially free beats debt free, and she helps bring it to life and make it real. So big thanks to Charlie Ridge at Ridge Lending Group. Until next week, I'm your host, Keith Wangled. Don't quit your day dream.   Speaker 5 (00:40:17) - Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get Rich education LLC exclusively.   Speaker 6 (00:40:45) - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com.