Keys & Credit

Buy the House, Date the Rate: Smart Strategies When Everyone Has an Opinion

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Ever had a well-meaning relative nearly derail your home purchase with "expert" advice? That's exactly what Barb "your straight talk lender" and Bill "the no bs realtor" tackle in this candid conversation about the phenomenon they've dubbed "Drunk Uncle Bob."

The duo shares real-world stories of first-time buyers whose perfect homes slipped through their fingers because they listened to outdated or misguided advice from family members. From the classic "wait for interest rates to drop" myth to bizarre reasons for rejecting perfectly good properties (like hearing a dirt bike in a rural area), they expose how these seemingly innocent opinions can have costly consequences.

"Marry the house, date the rate" becomes the episode's rallying cry as Barb and Bill explain how waiting for "perfect" conditions typically backfires. They break down the mathematics of lost equity—showing how a $300,000 home might increase to $330,000 in just six months while buyers wait for marginally better interest rates they could refinance into later anyway. The hosts also address common financial misconceptions, explaining why cash-only lifestyles leave buyers without crucial credit history and how ill-timed car purchases can completely derail mortgage approvals.

What sets this episode apart is the authentic glimpse into how deeply committed real professionals become to their clients' journeys. Bill even admits to occasionally getting emotional when deals fall through—a refreshing departure from the stereotypical salesperson approach. Their message is clear: include family in your homebuying journey, but trust the professionals who navigate these waters daily and are invested in your long-term success. Share this episode with anyone starting their homebuying journey—they'll thank you when they're building equity instead of waiting on the sidelines!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Keys and Credit the no fluff, no nonsense. Real estate and mortgage podcast. This is Barb, your straight talk lender.

Speaker 2:

I am Bill the no bullshit realtor. They call me Noble Bill sometimes. I've heard that before.

Speaker 1:

We're here to give you the honest truth about buying, selling, financing and everything in between.

Speaker 2:

Yep, don't listen to Drunk Uncle Bob. I really like the Drunk Uncle Bob, so don't listen to Drunk Uncle Bob. I really like the Drunk Uncle Bob, so don't listen to Drunk Uncle Bob.

Speaker 1:

Well, what did Drunk?

Speaker 2:

Uncle Bob say. Drunk Uncle Bob comes in and says you know what? Don't listen to your agent, Don't listen to your lender. I did this yesterday, which was to Drunk Uncle Bob four, five, 600 years ago. Right, Was he really here 600 years ago?

Speaker 2:

according to bobby would be, but what we're getting at is first time buyers have so many people telling them what to do absolutely, and we've seen almost every bad idea come across our desk and I guess this would be what not to do what, what have you heard drunk uncle bob say to our clients?

Speaker 1:

so I had one.

Speaker 2:

This was in brook park I had I was doing a tour on one of my listings a buyer called and said they wanted to list it or they wanted to come see it. So I met them out there. They showed up and it was a younger couple with their kids and we walked through the house for about half an hour. Okay, uh, we won't say who showed up, but we'll just call him drunk uncle bob. Okay, shows up and says you don't want to buy this house because I can hear dirt bike down the road. A dirt bike. A dirt bike, was it on acreage? It was on acreage. It's rural. People have dirt bikes, people have side-by-sides four-wheelers, but anyways. So that was his first comment. Some even have horses out there in Brook Park.

Speaker 1:

Right, that drops the value because there's a dirt bike down the road. What and these?

Speaker 2:

kids drunk. Uncle bob must not have boys. I have three boys. I have two girls that are dirtier than most boys and they can work on you know a lot more stuff than most boys can too, because boys these days are kind of nitties.

Speaker 1:

Um, but that is just an example of how a wrong opinion can sway the right house well, I get calls from clients where drunk Uncle Bob would maybe say well, gosh, you're qualified for that much. How could you be qualified for that much? Well, you can be. It's based off your gross income, right. So before taxes, or geez, that interest rate is so high. Well, I'm sorry we're not getting back to the twos and threes.

Speaker 2:

That's yep. That is one I hear all the time. Well, the market's going to crash. From John Coco Bob it's never the kids or the first-time buyers, or sometime it's the second or third-time buyers that have who they assume is a seasoned veteran of buying and selling homes, a flipper, whoever it may be. But they'll come in and say, well, give it some time, the interest rate is going to come down. Well, that is an asinine statement. What do we say? You're not married to your rate If this is the house.

Speaker 1:

Marry the house, date the rate, but love it got to have it If you like it love. It can't live without it there.

Speaker 2:

It is Like it love it can't live without it. You buy it now because this is your house.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

And then what?

Speaker 1:

Well, you can always refinance it in the future.

Speaker 2:

Six months down the road, drunk Uncle Bob didn't tell you you can refinance down to that awesome rate, but if you waited six months, that house is gone.

Speaker 1:

The next person came and bought it because Bill and Barb were right behind them. So buying a house now, if you're able to secure a house, even with maybe elevated costs of homes, prices are just going to go up. So in six months from now, your house that's maybe selling for $300,000,. Six months from now, with inflation, the house is maybe $330,000. So now you are buying it for $30,000 more.

Speaker 2:

And even with that half percentage, or maybe quarter percentage, or maybe no percentage, it's not going to matter.

Speaker 1:

No, it's not going to matter.

Speaker 2:

These are the tips that.

Speaker 2:

I mean, just think of the equity you would have gained in that $30,000 if you would have bought today, versus in December of 2025, versus listening to your confidant, who you know, looks at Zillow once a week, checks out realtorcom and says they know the market, right, right, um, I hear that all the time, all the time. Well, I looked at this house down the road and I know this, and I've been checking this out for the past five weeks, so I know what's going on. Drunk uncle bob, go back to the bar, let the adults do the work. You know that is the market crashers, right, I mean.

Speaker 1:

and the dream crashers yeah really so I mean, if your goal is to buy, why are we going to listen to drunk uncle Bob? I mean. So if you're able to secure that house now and get under contract and your house value goes up, sweet Right. Why not take that growth? Your real estate is your investment tool, right?

Speaker 2:

Every situation, every situation, you're going to prove drunk Uncle Bob wrong Because if you listen to Bob, okay, and you waited, you lost your house. You're paying more. Okay, if you didn't listen to him, you get to rubbing his face in six months. Hey, I just gained 20 grand in equity. The interest rates came down to .001. I refinanced with Barb again because of course Barb's fucking awesome and we're good. Right, if Say, interest rates go up, right, market goes up, interest rate goes up, drunk Uncle Bob's going to be like, well, it's a good thing you bought the house because everything went up. I mean, every situation is different, but most of the time when a third party comes in to any sort of buying transaction and they don't know, I guess, the motivation of whether it's their niece, nephew, their kids, whoever it may be, they just need to stay out of it.

Speaker 1:

All they do is they can share some advice. But really the thing is, if you're able to secure that home now, you're just promoting generational wealth. And if the value went up $20,000 or $30,000, where are you going to make that in the market right now, nowhere in six months to a year I mean that's unless you have a huge portfolio investment like a mother.

Speaker 2:

So another thing too is we earn drunk uncle bob's trust. That's another thing. So don't don't get me wrong. If drunk uncle bob shows up, we treat him with respect, we listen to what he has to say, we throw it in the trash when he leaves. But by the end of the hour or two hour, showing or meeting or buyer's tour or whatever we may be doing drunk uncle bob knows we are not salespeople we are not.

Speaker 1:

We're here to help paycheck.

Speaker 2:

We are there for them.

Speaker 1:

We're here to help and educate and make sure that they're getting the best service they can there has been. There are our best advice on what to do and how to navigate through this market. We have a set of buyers now.

Speaker 2:

We're not going to name names, but we have a set of buyers now that they showed up with an entourage. First time I've ever met them. They didn't know me from the fence post. They got me as a referral from you. They showed up with an entourage of people because they thought I was the guy on the billboard, the sales guy. You should buy this house so I can get a paycheck, no matter what, because you don't matter, just my money matters now, because I mean it takes time to find your right house. Now they show up with just themselves. They don't need their entourage. Drunk Uncle Bob doesn't need to show up because he knows we're in it. We're in it with them.

Speaker 1:

You're in good hands right.

Speaker 2:

We are emotionally in it. When we lose on an offer or a house disappears. Barb and I are flipping the phone off, we're throwing the phone across the room and then we call, call them cool and collected and say, hey, sorry guys, we lost the house this time. Then we hang up the phone and sometimes Barb cries If she's not.

Speaker 1:

I am not that emotional. You're the crier I am a crier.

Speaker 2:

You know, know, sometimes it's very emotional. Don't tell cody that he'll use that against me at the gym, um, but we are taught as salespeople. Okay, I don't know if this is what rate teaches you, but we are taught in our continuing ed and as salespeople to use empathy and not sympathy. I tell them I don't say it out loud, but they know they can all go to hell, right, if you're not in a transaction full-fledged and you're in it with your emotions, what are you? You're a salesperson not a representative.

Speaker 1:

It's not a transaction.

Speaker 2:

It's a relationship. There you go, see, you have all these terms. I got to start keeping up on these terms. It's a relationship. It is a relationship. It is a relationship yeah.

Speaker 1:

But that's where but? It's a lifelong relationship because, like you were mentioning, our clients do come back, right, and if it was a transaction they wouldn't come back.

Speaker 2:

But that's where, Bob you know, he thinks that we are just selling them the first house they see.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely not. It's got to be the right one Yep. But when it comes to outside information, yeah, we take it and we take it into account, and sometimes it's good we have. Well, let's get back to drunk uncle Bob. Drunk uncle Bob might tell a client um, you know what Credit cards are bad? You should just pay for everything with cash.

Speaker 1:

And then they'll come to me and we'll pull their credit and they'll have no credit score and they're like well, but I paid everything with cash Well, right, but you have no credit score. And they're like well, but I paid everything with cash Well, right, but you have no credit score. And you need to have a credit score, because your credit score is really going to tell me about your performance on the money that we're lending you Can you pay money back?

Speaker 1:

Yes, and you have to have credit to be able to lend money to you. So if you have no credit score, you have no credit established. There's no, how am I going? If you can't prove, if we can't prove that you are a good credit risk.

Speaker 2:

How about when drunk Uncle Bob says hey, you're under contract in a house, Go buy a car. Yeah. Right, oh my gosh you want to watch Barb's fangs come out and horns grow. Holy smokes, that's a wonder nightmare.

Speaker 1:

Well, yeah, because now, sure, I'm sorry, you may have hit a deer and I understand you have to get back and forth to work and I understand that maybe to get that car to get back and forth to work you're going to need to take out a loan. But the problem is now your $400 loan payment on your car. We have to factor that into your debt to income ratio, which we're going to talk about that in future episodes.

Speaker 2:

We'll get to that stuff. We'll get to that stuff.

Speaker 1:

We'll get to that. But so, yes, if you're going to buy a car, reach out to Barb if you're pre-approved or your lender and say, hey, guess what, I had to buy a car. Or I have to buy a car so we can figure out okay. Well, if you're going to buy a car, it's got to be at $200 payment, not $400.

Speaker 2:

But that's where, mr Bob, he doesn't know that stuff he's been in the market. For six weeks he's been looking, he knows, but he doesn't know the intricacies, the ins and outs, the little stuff we do besides opening the door, besides taking a credit application right, absolutely Representation. So when Bob comes in and says you should do this, you should do that, sure, maybe you should listen, maybe you shouldn't, but you hired us, the people that do it all the time.

Speaker 1:

All the time. Don't get us wrong. Uncle Bob can be part of the conversation. If he's sober yeah, the drunk guy can go to hell. Well, agreed there.

Speaker 2:

Bill. But, anyway, there we go there, bill.

Speaker 1:

We'd have to repeat the conversation many times if Uncle Bob's drunk. We do take any family members into consideration and their input, yes, and we will surely share with them our wealth of knowledge and how to get the goals of their niece and or nephew that's what I was getting at. So um, we are family tangent bill, a tangent off on a tangent okay.

Speaker 2:

So, uh, we are family realtor and lender to you know, miss energy. Okay to them. Well, when we go look at houses with them, their whole family goes and it is so much fun. It is so much fun Because we're past the. Is Bill going to sell us on something? We don't want. Any of that stuff, we don't. We don't let him make mistakes, all this stuff. Now we get past the Uncle Bob stuff and it's just fun, it is fun it is so much fun.

Speaker 2:

That's another thing too. Just because they're there doesn't mean it's bad. It's just the initial. You know getting past and building the trush, and some people just need to be the boss.

Speaker 1:

You know that's just how it is. Yeah, absolutely Well. And the client maybe feels you know that the advice of Drunk Uncle Bob is the right advice and we're not discrediting his advice.

Speaker 2:

Any Bobs listen to this podcast. We just lost all Bobs. For the future of forever.

Speaker 1:

Funny part is I do have an Uncle Bob, but he's not a drunk oh there you go.

Speaker 2:

Okay, still disclaimers Barb's Uncle Bob is not a drunk. I don't have any Uncle Bobs, so we can just keep using drunk Uncle Bob. But that I mean first-time buyers. That is the biggest hurdle, I think, as an agent or maybe as a lender, to get around is when those people show up, because instead of talking to the new buyers, we'll say kids, instead of talking to the kids that are looking at their first home they're wide-eyed, deer, the headlights, super excited. You are focused on drunk uncle bob. You can't show the kids that the foundation has a bow in the wall. You can't show the kids that the roof has a dent in the middle and it, you know, needs new trusses. I mean, there's so much stuff that we have to find and look for, but we're focused, focused on Drunk Uncle Bob and contradicting what he says, I don't know. You can only say so much about Drunk Uncle Bob, right, I know, just so everybody knows that. Can't see, barb just gave me the slit the throat thing, so this one's done, okay.

Speaker 1:

So thanks for tuning in to Keys and Credit, where the only thing inflated isn't the market, it's your knowledge. If you found this helpful, share it with a friend or leave us a review.

Speaker 2:

It helps more than you think it helps more than you think.

Speaker 1:

See you next week.