The Sell for 1 Percent team breaks down the latest Columbus real estate numbers, noting that inventory has officially crossed 5,000 active listings for the first time this year. While mortgage rates have settled into the 6.5% to 6.75% range, the most interesting local trend is that even though showings are slightly off pace—the buyers who are out there are incredibly serious, leading to more pending sales than this time last year. For Franklin County homeowners, this means that while you might see fewer initial showings, the offers you do get are from motivated buyers ready to pull the trigger.
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Full Transcript
Hey there, everyone. Jaime with Sell for 1 Percent Realtors, joined as usual by the gang. Hello, Jaime.
Head broker Dave Barlow and Jaysen Barlow, and we have Rich Cercone with Highlands Mortgage. You have that, oh boy, now I lost the name. The late-night TV host with the big red hair.
What was his name, Rich? Conan O’Brien. Conan O’Brien. You got Conan O’Brien hair going.
The big pompadour. You tell dad a good one. Very good.
So funny I forgot to laugh. I know you’re not talking about me. No, not myself.
Yeah, they say that the kid’s hair comes from the mother’s father. So their mother’s father still has a full head of hair. How do you know that? My mother’s father is bald, as am I and all my cousins.
We didn’t notice that you were bald until you just mentioned it. We had never really noticed that. Was your grandpa on your mom’s side, was he bald? Actually, I break the mold.
I’ve heard what you’ve said before. But in reality, my grandfather on my mother’s side had a full head of hair, and my father’s family is the one with no hair. Because dad thinks it’s the truth, but it’s not all the time.
No, I’ve heard what Dave is saying. And I was very optimistic when I was younger, because my grandpa on my mom’s side had hair. I thought, well, I’m covered.
I’m good. And, you know, oops, oops. Every time I looked in the mirror.
I think you guys have fallen for what we would like to call a wives’ tale. I don’t know. I think the odds are pretty high.
It’s a spy-op from the federal government. Speaking of spy-ops, let’s talk about interest rates. There you go.
It is May 28, 2026. And Rich, yes, sir, what do you got for us in the way of interest rates? Well, the 10-year Treasury bills have modulated quite a bit. We were pushing 470, I think, the last time we talked.
High 460s. And we’re down to 445 just a few minutes ago on the 10-year Treasury. So we’re seeing a little bit of relief.
I don’t really know why. We’re still seeing inflation numbers. We’ve still got bombs flying over there in the Middle East.
We still have high-priced gasoline. But the 10-year Treasury has come down a little bit. We’ve seen a little bit of – well, we stopped the bleeding of interest rates.
I don’t mean that we’ve come down in some major way. But at this point, we are at maybe 6.5 to 6.75 range, where we were more high 6s last time we spoke. So we’re somewhere in that range depending on where you fall with your credit scores and your loan-to-value and all of that.
So, I mean, we’re hanging in there. We’re hanging in there in that mid-6 range-ish. That’s cool.
That’s not a bad rate historically. That’s not a bad rate. I remember when people found it hard to believe that I could give them a rate under 7%.
I remember when I thought a rate under 8% was good. And as Dave and I both remember, we remember double-digit interest rates when we were young. My mom and dad would have been very happy with a sub-15 interest rate.
You guys are talking about back when you had hair. I was pretty thin back then too. And it was a long time ago.
Let me tell you. Like at the advent of society. You were saying prior to us getting on air here that you’re busy.
I am. I am very busy. Part of it has been the transition to the new company makes things go a little bit more clunky and needing to figure out new processes, new ways of doing things.
I’m dealing with two computers, two email systems, and we haven’t integrated yet. It’s a little bit of that, but I do have a lot of people that are interested in buying right now. I don’t know whether that’s anecdotal, but I am seeing a lot of interest.
Of course, we’re at that time of year where we should see things like that. It is not anecdotal. New pendings are up in the Columbus area.
We have more pending transactions and sales than we did this time last year. Mortgage applications are up across the country. What you’re seeing, that’s happening across the board.
The one thing here in the Columbus area is that the prices on these charts that I’m tracking, the prices are down lower than where they were the same time last year. Showings are also off pace a little bit. It reminds me of what we tell people in the winter.
Hey, there’s not as many buyers looking, but the ones who are looking are very serious. We’re seeing that a little earlier than we normally do. One thing that’s interesting last year was June.
Last year, it was kind of a low for June. We didn’t have as many homes selling in June last year. Then December was a nine-month high for closings.
A lot of that is economy and interest rate driven. We’ll see the same thing happens this year. We should have a pretty strong end of the year as long as we have peace in the Middle East.
You’ve got midterms coming in November. You would think that everything would kind of shore up before then. Rich, I thought that’s why the 10-note Treasuries were selling back down, was kind of the promise of peace and that this is going to come to a head here.
We don’t want that for the summertime. Everybody is taking trips and vacations. We don’t want $5 gas and all this uncertainty.
The job market is doing really well. Things look to be on the mend here. The buyers that are looking for the sellers that are getting out there, the buyers are very serious.
Not as many of them as we typically see this time of year, but they’re all pulling the trigger. We’ve got tons of homes going into contract. Jay Marinski, what are you seeing? I would dovetail off Jaysen and say that the buyers that are out there looking right now are very serious.
They’re people very motivated to buy. I don’t have too much to add to that. I think that was a good synopsis.
Thank you, Jay. You’re welcome, Jaime. We’re keeping track of it.
We are over 5,000 listings now in the Columbus Metro. 5,026 as of this afternoon. On Thursday, May the 28th.
A good time to be a seller, a good time to be a buyer. People are giving up their 3% interest rates. That was one thing, the golden handcuffs.
No one’s ever going to sell. We’re seeing people that make a decent living that they’re selling. Things are not as doomy and gloomy as you might believe if you watch the news all the time.
Things are pretty good out here. Or if you watch Jaysen and his podcast. He’s pretty doomy and gloomy, but he seems to have a little sparkle in his eye today.
What’s going on over there? This is the only podcast I do. I get doomy and gloomy listening to you talk about your hair for 10 minutes. It wasn’t 10 minutes.
It was about a minute and a half. The perfect short. Very good.
I don’t know about you, Dave, but my grandkids are fascinated by the fact that I have no hair. We have long discussions about it, what happened to it. It’s all grown on the sides.
For the listening audience, when Jaime was little, he asked, Dad, why did all your hair fall off your head and get stuck to your back? That’s one of my favorite all-time stories. There you go. I guess what I’m seeing as far as consumer confidence, gas prices, all that bit.
I am seeing gas prices move back down. I don’t know if last week was that Memorial Day weekend that the gas companies decided. There’s going to be a lot of traveling this weekend, so let’s gouge the people.
Pump gas prices way up. That’s kind of the feeling I’m getting. We’re seeing oil prices come down.
I’m seeing gas prices in my area at around $4.65 a gallon. I am hearing that oil drum prices are getting back down to around $90. As Jay mentioned a little bit earlier, if there is some path to peace here, that hopefully in the next month or so, we’ll see gas prices back down into the $3s.
People are starting to walk with a little bit of a skip in their pace and get things back to normal. It sounds like the listings that I’m putting on seem to be getting decent traction. I’m putting them in the contract within a couple or three days.
The buyers, and I don’t have very many of them, but it doesn’t seem like interest rate is a concern for them. It seems like buyers, and Jaime, you work more with buyers. It seems like the buyers, to me, or at least my buyers, are just super finicky.
Very picky about what they’re going to spend their money on. I’m guessing that has to do with pricing, interest rates, what they’re going to pay on a monthly basis. Monthly payment.
Yeah. For me, I can pretty much walk in and say, yep, no, let’s go. Definitely interest rate driven because it’s about monthly payments.
That’s what they care about. Yeah, it’s like the old cars. That all changed about 20 years ago.
They weren’t giving you the sticker price on the car. They’re giving you your monthly payment. It could be the same thing going on with mortgage rates.
It doesn’t matter if the house is 500 grand. What matters is that the monthly payment is less than 2,000 a month. If I can get that, then I’m happy.
Your favorite consumer report, the Michigan Consumer Sentiment, reached all-time lows last week. I think that’s why you’re going to see the White House change their tact here with Iran. They do not want to head into the summer with gas prices up and people down.
That’s not a recipe for success. I heard a very interesting conversation about that report, Young Jaysen, that it’s very skewed. Imagine that.
The people that they are polling, it’s very heavily skewed to the opposite side of the tracks, so to speak. I don’t believe all that. I think that you’re getting that opinion from a totally skewed perspective that is for the administration.
No. I tried to say somewhat neutral there, but it’s just interesting. I’ve not dug into it, but that was the conversation that was going on.
If you ask all the negatives if they’re positive, then you’re probably not going to get a positive answer. Anyways, it’s just kind of interesting. For 21 years, you have pointed to that consumer index as a place to look to see how the population is feeling, but now that it’s reached all-time lows, suddenly it is no good.
No longer good. We’ve got four people sitting right here. Do you think the economy is terrible? I live in my own little bubble.
I’m just saying, but it’s four different people here. I think that people feel $5 gas, and you can go to the grocery store and feel what that bill is. I do think that probably the average person does not think the economy is that great.
Well, we can, I guess, get into a long discussion about that. That’s not what the feeling was three years ago when it was a whole lot worse than it is now. I’m looking at that chart.
It was pretty good up until COVID, and then three years ago, it was an all-time low. All I can tell you is that from my own perspective, that I don’t think it’s time to jump off the cliff. Let me share my screen here.
I don’t see lots of people committing Harry Caray. I think that most people, other than gas and things like that, feel like it’s moving along in the right spot. Can I share my screen? No.
You want me to wrap this up because you don’t like facts coming. Let’s wrap this up. Please share it.
Better wrap it up, Jaime. We’ll be back next week with more interesting conversations. I’m getting a pulse of where the market is.
It seems there are some disagreements out there. Let me start my own weekly show. We’ll get you guys an update next week.
That’s based it all on. More information from here, sell for 1%. Appreciate you joining us, Rich.
Thank you, sir. Thank you for having me. I’m going to work on my comb over for next week’s show.
I’m just going to wear my toboggan.