Mortgage rates fell to a two-year low last week, moving around 6.08%, previously inches up 6.12% on Thursday. Barbara Corcoran, founder of real estate firm The Corcoran Group and longtime “Shark Tank” investor, says the immediate impact will bring more buyers and sellers to the market, but there's still one big problem. Sellers with low mortgage rates don't want to give up their low percentage.
Corcoran, who sold her real estate company in 2001 to 66 million dollars and now it does about 4.5 million dollars per year from its investments, said that this has helped lead to a general absence of houses for sale.
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“60% of home-owning sellers in America have fees under 3%,” Corcoran said entrepreneur. “So think to yourself, why do you want to sell your home and (have to buy at) a higher rate?
Corcoran says rates will continue to fall (“I'm sure it will come down somewhere in the (5%) range in the next six months or year,” she says), but it's not a deal “when you're sitting in 3%”.
Barbara Corcoran. Photo: Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images
If you're a seller holding a home, Corcoran says there's one question to ask now: “Do I see myself here for the rest of my life?”
“It causes a lot of people to go there, what the hell? Let's jump the fence and continue living in a smaller place,” she said. “It moves them. So the interest rate helps in that way because it's bridging the difference between the two.”
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or June assessment from Zillow showed that the US had 4.5 million homes short of the total population in 2022, up from 4.3 million in 2021.