How to Buy a House in 2026!

22:55But if you are a young person who is trying to evaluate, eh, should I buy an existing home that probably already has problems? or a new build, as long as it's a reputable builder. You need to do your research on the builder and understand and get some recommendations from them. Call those families who have actually built with them. Those are all big, big deals. But just making sure you understand that you can get a deal. And a lot of times, you can make the house and customize it the way you want. And it's a pretty interesting proposition. So those are gonna be some of the things that you can look at.

23:25Next is, will it need work? Will it need renovation? So my favorite way, in the first house we bought, we bought a house that needed cosmetic renovation. This is a way, and I've talked about this in our previous episode on how to buy a house. I think the last time I did an episode on this was in 2020 or 2021. But if you go back and look, I talk about this. I used to look for houses that needed cosmetic upgrades. And so the house we bought, for example, the kitchen was painted purple. The kitchen was painted purple. Now, is that a trend in 2026? I don't know, but it was painted the purple back when that was not a trend.

24:00The bathrooms had pink tile, which I hear is a trend now in 2026. But back then it was not. The bathrooms had old fashioned pink tile from the 70s. The living room was carpeted. The master bedroom was old. All the doors were original doors from the 80s. This house was actually built in the 80s. So the original doors from the 80s, the tile was pink from the 80s. And so we had to renovate bathrooms. We had to renovate kitchens. We had to renovate floors, all these different things. But guess what? I didn't care. because the house was such a good deal because most buyers did not see the potential of this home.

24:34And I realized, okay, I'm gonna run the numbers on this. I'm gonna figure out, okay, how much do these renovations cost? Well, luckily I had a good idea of what renovations cost because I was flipping and buying rental properties. And so I had an understanding of at least what would happen here. And so I would go to Home Depot, I would go to Lowe's, I would go to floor and decor and figure out what all the costs for the materials would be. Then I called up some different contractors and I said, what's the labor gonna cost for you to install this stuff? And so we figured it all out. And I realized this house is a grand slam of a deal.

25:02And I would do that over and over with a bunch of different houses to figure out which ones are the best deal. Finally settled on the house. And before we moved in, what we did was we renovated that home and to make it our own. That way we don't have dust all over the place when we are in the house. We can just get in and move in. So this is one of those tips that I think if you have an eye for design or you have an eye for what you want, you absolutely can buy a house and renovate it cosmetically. Now, if it needs a new roof, honestly, just so you understand, roofs aren't that big of a deal. You can have a roofing contractor come in, take it off, and finish it in two days.

25:36And you can actually negotiate the price based on a roof needing to be done. And there's a lot of things that we could talk about when it comes to negotiation. But this is just thinking through, is that a deal breaker for you if the house needs renovation? Or are you willing to take on that project? Now, the house needs to be a deal if you're going to need to do all this work to it. Okay? So that's the big thing. And then what are your deal breakers? Write down all your deal breakers when you have this conversation so that you know, okay, well, if it doesn't have a home office, are we actually going to buy this house?

26:01Yes or no. Because you work from home, maybe it's a no. And so that's one of those areas where you want to make sure that you look at this. Or maybe you want to have more kids. And so you want to make sure you have enough bedrooms for each of your kids and each individual kid. You want to have a bedroom. That's a big deal breaker. Or maybe you want a pool. Or maybe you want to have a nice big backyard so your dogs can play. or maybe you want to make sure that you are in a walkable community so that you can walk around town, go get your groceries. If you need them really quick, walk back. So there's all these different deal breakers that could pertain to your personal goals.

26:31And so making sure you understand what those are is very, very important. Now, if you overestimate some of these deal breakers and you're trying to build out the perfect house, I just want you to know right now, you're not going to find the perfect house ever. You're going to find houses that you like, but you're not going to find the perfect house. And so you want to make sure that you are not overly aggressive when it comes to this. So you've got your plan in place. You're pre-approved. You've got your finances in order. You've run total cost of ownership up front in terms of understanding, at least in your market, what total cost of ownership could be.

27:01We're going to run it for each and every single house we make an offer on to, but we just want to make sure that we understand how this works. Next, what is step five? Now it's time to begin looking at houses, and we're going to talk about that next. starting something new is uncomfortable i remember when i first started building this podcast and business there were so many what ifs what if no one listens what if this doesn't work and what if i'm wasting my time but pushing through was one of the best decisions i have ever made and having the right tools makes a huge difference that's where shopify comes in shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses and handles 10 of all e-commerce in the u.s Whether you're just getting started or scaling something big, it gives you everything you need all in one place.

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31:49There's a reason for why we want to make sure that we do our homework on all these different things first. Because if you bring this stuff to an agent that you're talking to, then all of a sudden, most of the homework is done. And so then you can have a conversation, an educated conversation with agents, whether you have a buyer's agent, which we'll talk about in a second, or whether you go out and decide, no, I'm going to go and look for some homes on my own. So here's a couple of options where you can start. Is if you don't have an agent that you want to work with currently, you can start going to things like open houses.

32:17And you can start to attend those open houses and walk through some of these houses just to see what the price of these homes are, but also to see what the condition of these homes are. Now, typically, open houses are run on renovated homes, but you can look for bank-owned open houses, for example, which these are houses that have been foreclosed on. You can go find some deals out there and see if they actually are a deal. I haven't seen a lot of bank-owned deals like they used to have back in the day, but this is still something where if you look at those bank-owned open houses, you can see what a renovated home looks like, what a home that needs renovations look like.

32:48And then you can see either if there's a flipped home or some other home that's on the market in your area, you can go walk through those as well. But I highly recommend walking through a bunch of open houses, meeting agents, having conversations with them, and talking through just the market in general. This is gonna help you become a more educated buyer, but also gonna help you overall see if there's an agent that you want to have in your corner. Now, if you have someone you trust, who you want to be your buyer's agent, someone you've known for a long time, who you know is educated, who you know understands finance, but also understands the market, that is a great way to go.

33:20Right now, and I just talked to someone who is a home buying expert about this. I just had a conversation with them. They have a very large home buying podcast. And I just had a conversation with them. They said, hey, there's about 1.2 million agents right now across the country. And really, there should only be about 300 ,000 of them. There's a lot of them that cycle through. And in fact, 87 % of agents quit every single year and a new influx of agents come in. And really there are a lot of them that just are not educated enough on the market to understand what they need to be doing. And so this is one of those areas where I want you to make sure you have someone in your corner who can help you get creative.

33:56Because we're gonna get creative when it comes to offers. We're gonna get creative when the way that we think about buying houses. And so you need someone who is flexible and willing to get creative with you. So this is one of those areas that I just want you to think through. Hey, first, if you wanna start looking at houses, you can start to go to open houses and meeting some agents. if you don't have someone in your corner. Now, if you do have someone that you know that you wanna work with, then go for it. More power to you. You can work with whoever you wanna work with. Just make sure they understand your parameters.

34:22And when you have that plan in place of how you wanna buy a house, you have that plan and you hand it to them and you have a conversation with them about this, okay? So one of the questions that I had, and I went and dove into the data on this was, well, let's think about incentives here for a second. What if you didn't hire a buyer's agent and you went to go look at different listings and each time you wanted to go look at a listing, you actually called the seller's agent. Would they be more incentivized to help you get a deal because they get both sides of the commission, meaning they're gonna get the buyer's commission and the seller's commission?

34:53Would that be an area where they'd be more incentivized? And I looked at the data. The data did not show, at least all the data that I went through, did not show that you got a better deal when you did this. Now, psychology would tell me that you would get a better deal, but the data shows that you would not. And so this is something that I think you can either test out and see if there's an area where if you go and call the seller's agent, you're going to get a deal. But all the data shows that buyer's agents actually are going to help you get a deal as well. And so this is something where at least the buyer's agent is in your corner.

35:27They are working for you. And one of those areas where if you want to hire a buyer's agent, more power to you. Now, step six is if you find a house you like, then we need to assess a couple of different things. Let's say, for example, you find a house that you want to go out and put an offer in. Well, before you do that, this is where you run total cost of ownership again. So you want to understand the true cost and assess first the renovations, how much are going to be in renovations. Are there any renovations? Where is this a flipped or done for you house? Then that might be a different situation.

35:55But start by looking through all the renovations, making a list of what you think needs to be done in the home, and then going out and making sure you price that. If no renovations are needed or you just understand that we're going to do this over time. and this is going to be one of those things that we do over time, you still need to price that into your numbers. Two is understand the property taxes for that house. So go to the local property appraiser, wherever that house is located. Usually it's on the county website, at least in my area it is. And so you go look at that specific county and you can look up what the taxes are, but you can also look up a bunch of other information as well.

36:26So you should get that entire sheet of all the information on the property, look at the assessed value, look at any of the permits that have been pulled on that property, all those different things, and make sure you understand those pieces. Then I want you to get insurance quotes early. So the best way to get insurance quotes when it comes to your housing is to find an independent insurance broker who can get insurance quotes from a bunch of different carriers. And so this is going to help you get the best deal overall. And every single year, they can check all the different carriers to find the best deal for you.

36:55And then I want you to estimate the ongoing maintenance and utilities. So here's the thing is when you look at a house, each house is going to have different ongoing maintenance and utilities. The size is going to matter, but in addition, the layouts of the house is going to matter. What do I mean by that? If one house has a pool and another house doesn't have a pool, that pool is going to have a lot of maintenance costs, at least over$100 of maintenance costs between the chemicals, between either the time that you're putting in or hiring somebody to do it, those types of things. Or if a house has a massive backyard, well, you know, either your time spent maintaining that yard and or you hiring somebody out is going to be a costly endeavor.

37:32Or if there's a lot of landscaping that needs to be done, or there's a lot of trees that need to be cut, or there's a lot of different areas outside. Those are just some of the exterior things. Interior. The larger the house, the more it's going to cost to cool, the more it's going to cost to heat. How old are the windows and doors? Because if it's an older house and the windows and doors are older, it's going to cost you more to also cool or heat. What's the insulation look like? All those different things are really important. Now, your inspector is going to give you a lot of this information as well as we get there.

38:00But this is something that you need to make sure that you are estimating some of those ongoing maintenance. Also looking for some of the things that you may have to replace over the course of the next decade, because a decade creeps up a lot faster than you think it does, especially when you're living in a house. And so you want to make sure that you are looking at all those various costs. And so really, really important before you make the offer to assess those renovations, assess the taxes, assess the insurance, and assess the ongoing costs. Those are the four areas I want you to look at. And if there are more that you want to make sure you're assessing, make sure you add those in as well.

38:32All right. So now it's time to make the offer. You've gone through all of this information and you want to make an offer on a house. Well, there's a lot of creative ways to make offers on houses. We're not going to go through all of those today. That would be three podcast episodes if I went through all the creative financing things that you could talk through. But if you want an episode on that, please let me know. But this is going to be one of those things where I want to talk through first, the number one thing that you need to make sure is in your offer. Number one, every single time, no matter what, and I'm not going to argue with you about this, is you need to have an inspection contingency.

39:07Every single person needs to make sure that they have an inspection contingency. Do not waive your right to an inspection. There have been so many people out there who have waived their right to an inspection and found something after they purchased the house because they made an emotional decision to buy the house so they could guarantee that they got it. And after the fact, found all kinds of issues inside the home. This is a very costly mistake. And I'm talking tens of thousands and in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on how costly this mistake can be. So always, always, always make sure that you have an inspection period.

39:42A lot of times it's seven days. Sometimes you can make it 14 days. The longer you can make it, the better. But overall, if it's a competitive market, you're going to have to reduce your inspection period if you're trying to get that house and being competitive. Two is obviously a financing contingency. Every standard document has these when it comes to real estate documents, but just making sure whatever state you're in, the standard contract will always have this stuff in there. It's going to have the clear closing timeline in terms of how long it's going to take before you can close. A lot of times you have to have conversations with your lender to make sure that they understand what your closing timeline is.

40:15It's just like 30 to 45 days. It's typically around that time frame. Sometimes it's 60, sometimes it's 75. But really, you just want to make sure that you understand all of this stuff with your lender. The earnest money terms are also the amount of money that you put in in earnest money in order for the seller to know, hey, I'm putting some down here. I'm putting some skin in the game. So you know that I really want this house. If you back out within the inspection contingency period, then you get that money back. But if you back out after the inspection contingency period, then that's going to be an area where they get the money.

40:45So if you put five grand in and you back out after you have that inspection period, then that is going to be one of those areas where they're going to get to keep that money. So making sure you have all that stuff in place is really, really important. Now, as long as your realtor is using the standard document for your state, usually it's going to cover all the other stuff, the clear exit language, making sure they have the walkthrough provisions, making sure you have the seller credit language. If you want to have seller credits. All those different things are going to be really, really important.

41:13So just making sure you have some of those stuff in your offer is important. Now let's go to step eight, which is negotiation tactics and added benefits that you can add in. Okay. So first of all, obviously the purchase price is the biggest deal overall. Making sure that you get to a purchase price that makes sense for you is most important. Let's say a house is listed for$400 ,000. But if you go anything above$370 ,000, you are going into the red zone. The red zone is anything above 30 % of your overall monthly costs of housing, that's going to be the red zone. You don't want to be in that red zone.

41:44You want to make sure you stay in the green zone, which is below 30%. And so that's very, very important to make sure when you buy a house. So you're going to offer 370. If the house is 400, you offer 370, you're not going to cent above, or you can even offer a little bit less and make sure that you were looking at this. You can even offer a little bit less, and that will help ensure that you stay within those ranges. Now, one of my favorite things as a negotiation tactic, especially if you want to get total cost of ownership down and making sure that you stay in the green zone, is that you can get a seller credit.

42:15Now, a seller credit can be used to temporarily or permanently reduce a buyer's mortgage interest rate in order to lower monthly paydowns. So if you do a rate buydown, this is called a rate buydown. If you get the seller to do a rate buydown, it can reduce your interest rate dramatically. So you can pay money up front in cash in a lump sum or something that is going to buy down your rate and reduce your overall interest rate. This is subject to, you know, lenders have limits and all those different things. There are a lot of nuances to this. But if you're interested in this, I would highly recommend you doing some research on rate buy downs to see if that could work for you.

42:49Because that is a great negotiation tactic to throw in, especially in a heated back and forth debate. And if there's not a lot of offers on the table, and this house has been sitting on the market for a while, which is a great way to search for houses, by the way, when houses have been sitting on the market for a very long period of time, because in some instances, that seller is motivated. Now, some sellers are just stubborn. They just want to keep it up on the market as a really high price, but some of them can be very motivated, especially if they got to move or they have circumstances that make them motivated.

43:16There are other sellers credits that you could put on there as well. So funds that are provided by the seller to pay for your closing costs. You can have funds applied towards prepaid expenses or repairs. All those different things are something I would love for you to look at. Now, prepaid expenses and repairs are something I have done a number of times. So my first house that I told you about, there were things like the AC was about to go. The AC was about 13 years old. And in fact, I actually got five extra years out of that AC, but because it was about to go, I made the seller give me a$5 ,000 credit, which is what AC units cost back then, but give me a$5 ,000 credit for that AC because they knew it was about to go.

43:53And I knew it was about to go. I got an additional five years out of that AC, but they reduced my purchase price by$5 ,000 because that AC was about to go. They gave me an additional$2 ,000 credit after I found some other things in the inspection report. So there are things like that that you wanna make sure that you are looking through and thinking about. Also, appraisal gap provisions. So let me give you an example of this. I brought my first house for$169 ,000. And at that point in time, this was a three bedroom, two bathroom house. It was a 1200 square foot house, just a great starter home, had a pool, some cool stuff going on.

44:28When I sold it, I sold it for$340 ,000. I got the offer at 340. I accepted it. And all of a sudden, the appraiser came to the house. It was this lovely lady, so nice, was complimenting the house the entire time as she was walking through the house. And she was in her little notebook and she was going through and appraising the house. And I was like, oh yeah, this is definitely gonna appraise at 340. The way she was talking about the house, the way she loved the renovations we've done, all the things that we have done since we purchased the house. And she was really, really excited about it. And guess what?

44:59She came back and appraised it at 325. And so guess what? I either had two options. I could either sell the house at 325 and or make the buyer come up with a cash difference. Did I want to deal with having to put the house back on the market if the buyer backed out? No, because I was already building a house. And so I wanted to just get the deal done so that I knew that in fact, this house was going to sell at a specific amount. And so when we did this, we ended up just having to sell the house at that 325 mark, where as you could have some of these gap provisions in place, to make sure that when you sell, you get this credit back.

45:35So these are one of those areas where you're gonna see as you go through the closing process, this can be very, very important overall. So another one that we have is earnest money deposit. So you can look at your earnest money deposit and if you put down less because you don't wanna put less down, then that is something where you can start to negotiate that. Or you could put more down, but reduce the purchase price. There's two options there that are going to incentivize a seller. So if a seller is really incentivized because they got burned a bunch of times by different folks who backed out of the house, then you could put down more.

46:08So you'd have to know what their incentives are, but you could put down more and that's gonna create a situation where they may be interested in ensuring that they reduce the purchase price. Also, if you can close quickly, that is another area where this can help you tremendously in terms of getting a deal on a house. There are sellers out there who need to, A, maybe they already purchased their other home, And so they want to make sure that you can close quickly and so that they can go move to their new home. That is going to be one where that closing flexibility is really, really important. Or maybe they are trying to close in their house so they have enough funds to move to the next house.

46:45Well, if you have flexibility there and you allow them to stay in the home for longer periods of time until they buy their next house, that is also another selling point where you can get either the purchase price reduced and or you can do something called a rent back. So what happens is after you purchase the house, you rent the house back to them until they actually close on their future house. This is another just strategic way to A, you're going to earn some extra funds, but B, it's going to help you overall reduce that purchase price. Now, when you do rent back agreements, you can also do things like every single dollar that they rent it back for you.

47:20The amount of months they rent it back, that reduces that overall purchase price. That is also something you could do. Now, eight is inspection-based negotiations. These are negotiations that you do based on what the inspection report comes back, and you should always, always, always do this. So when you get your inspection report back, every single time you need to negotiate the price of every repair off of that home. Unless they are clearly stating in the MLS listing that this repair is here and we are not negotiating this, then you need to negotiate every single repair on that list. They may take part of it, they may take all of it, but you need to make sure you were always, always, always negotiating that.

47:55Also, if there are renovations you want to do in the home because the home is outdated, you can ask for seller credits. There are those credits that you can ask for. I just gave you the example. When we bought our first house, we negotiated a $5 ,000 credit from the seller because the AC was old. You could do this with cosmetic things as well if you want to. And so it's up to them to say yes or no, but it is not your job to say no. And so it is not your agent's job to say no. You need to make the offer the way that you want it crafted and make sure that your agent sends in that offer. Now, you can also have different contingencies like an inspection contingency, financing contingencies, making sure you have that appraisal contingency.

48:32All of those are going to be in your contract, but you just need to make sure that all of those are there. Now, another thing that you can do is do some personal property inclusions. Now, things like a refrigerator, things that are not fixed to the property, those can be taken with the seller. If the seller wants it, they can take it with them. and so you can start to negotiate things like that. You can negotiate furniture if you like the furniture in the property. You can negotiate all kinds of different things just like that. That's creative ways to get more value out of the home when you're making those offers.

49:01Now, that's how you can craft offer with a bunch of creative things. There's a lot more than that that you can even do. I would recommend doing your research on each and every single one of those and if you want us to do a full episode on that, please let me know. Now, next, I wanna talk about the inspection period. So around 80 to 88 % of buyers choose to have a professional home inspection. And typically, if your agent is telling you to forego inspection, you need a new agent. That is not a situation that you ever wanna get yourself into is foregoing inspection. 86 % of people who actually go out and get an inspection, they identify problems in the home.

49:34I have never gotten an inspection and not found problems inside of the home. And I've done this dozens and dozens of times. So this is one of those things that you need to make sure that you are always, always, always getting an inspection. What does an inspector cost? It's gonna vary by area, but it's gonna be hundreds of dollars. And if you have a larger house, it's gonna be thousands of dollars. But this is one of those things where you absolutely need to make sure you take care of it. Guess what? You need to factor in the inspector into your total cost of ownership. This is gonna be a very, very important thing.

50:04Now, one industry report found that over 1 million needed repairs across 50 ,000 homes surveyed with the average repair cost of$10 ,000 where issues were identified. This is from actually getting an inspection. So it could save you over$10 ,000. This is one of those things where you're gonna get some of those seller credits if you try to actually set this up correctly. Two is that in a survey of first-time buyers, 17 % who skipped the inspection reported doing so. And among those buyers, 66 % had unexpected expenses, averaging about$5 ,356. This is an investment that pays a dividend. This is an investment that pays a return.

50:45You need to make sure that you get that inspection every single time. And roughly 20 to 25 % of transactions actually fall apart during the inspection period because there's way more uncovered than they originally thought. There are things in the house because it's got the brand new paint, because it's got the lipstick on it, there are things in the house that you cannot see. and you need to make sure that you get that inspector in place, that is going to be one of the most important things that you do overall. Again, this is a requirement. I am not giving you the option for this. You are required to get an inspection if you're going to buy a house.

51:18Because if you don't, if you skip the inspection, you're just gambling on the unknown. You're just rolling the dice with thousands of dollars and possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars. So we want to make sure that we are doing this correctly. Now, let's say you get through the inspection period and that is all done and you are good to go. you are moving forward. You've done your negotiation. The buyer and you agree on a purchase price. Well, then what happens next? It's the walkthrough. And we're going to talk about that in a second. So one of the final stages next is to go through your walkthrough.

51:49Now, your walkthrough is a very important step that some people skip. I don't recommend you skipping it whatsoever. This is usually when the seller moves out of the home and you schedule a time for you to walk through the property. Now, I recommend doing this a couple of days before closing. What a lot of people do is they'll do this the day of closing. And if they find an issue, then you have to push that closing back. What I would recommend is the day that the seller leaves, you have this maybe one day ahead of time, maybe it's two days ahead of time, but you can do a walk through the property to make sure everything looks exactly how it did when you were looking at the property originally.

52:23Because sometimes I have heard horror stories where people have gone through a walkthrough or they've skipped the walkthrough, they take control of the house and all of a sudden it is trashed. So you want to make sure that you do this walkthrough. So it's typically 24 to 72 hours beforehand. And when you do this, you just want to walk through and make sure you look at your inspection report, make sure everything kind of looks exactly as it does, at least on the inside of the home. And you also want to make sure that if there are repairs done to the home and you agree on some of these repairs after the inspection report and they do those repairs for you, you want to make sure those repairs were actually done.

52:55You also want to confirm that any of the fixtures or the appliances are all there that are supposed to be there. It also will verify that everything is functioning correctly, make sure the AC is working, make sure the heat is working, all those different things, and putting together a checklist so that you know when you do this walkthrough, I want you to kind of comb through as put your inspector hat on and kind of comb through your list and make sure that you know every single thing is done correctly. Now, if there's some minor small things, if it's not a deal breaker, no big deal. But for you specifically, I want you to make sure that you do that walkthrough.

53:25It is just the last important step so that you do not have any of this stuff happen. Now, if there is a problem, you're going to delay closing until this is resolved. Because if that problem exists, you need to make sure that you are disciplined here and you delay that closing and get that problem fixed, especially if it's a costly one. Or you can negotiate a credit off the final purchase price once again, and then you'll fix that problem so that you can get to closing. Now, step 11 is to go to closing. So when you go to closing, it's a very simple process. A lot of times you close separately from the seller.

53:55My first time we closed on a house was the only time ever that I closed in front of the seller where we were both at the closing table together. It was interesting, but it was a great actual process because you got to meet them and ask them questions about the house. But usually you're closing separately and you go to the title company's office or they just send you the documents and you sign them online, depending on what you want to do. If it's your first time, I would recommend going into the office, asking questions, making sure you understand all these documents before you actually sign each one.

54:22It's very important to make sure that you know kind of what you're signing. So those last couple of steps, once you get to the inspection period and you're moving forward, typically the walkthrough is very standard unless there's something way off cuff. It's usually okay. Then you go to closing and that's it. Now, last step, step 12. I want to talk through some of the things that you need to make sure that you were doing after you close on a house. Now that you're a homeowner, congratulations, but we need to talk through some of the things you need to make sure you're doing. So just like at the beginning, we need to maintain that six-month emergency fund.

54:54This is no questions asked. When you own a home, a lot more expenses are gonna pop up. Houses cost a lot of money. You're gonna realize that real quick if you haven't already. And so you need to make sure you have that six-month emergency fund, whereas if you lost a job or if anything were to ever happen, that would ensure that everything is covered. Number two, always have a plan on how you're going to pay the mortgage if you lose your job. So the emergency fund should be the big plan for that. But if you don't have a plan in place, make sure you have one. Three, if you can't make ends meet, if you realize, oh boy, I bit off way more house than I can chew and I cannot make these ends meet or we are really on a fine line here and we're living paycheck to paycheck, sell the house, do not delay.

55:34I'm going to tell you that right now. Don't even try to question this. No, I'm going to go get a third job or a fourth job. You're making your life miserable. and instead it's an illiquid asset. So it's going to take some time, but I would recommend not delaying selling the house and then just restarting this whole process over again because this is one of those things where too many people get themselves into a situation where they are going to go financially backwards and go into debt because they bought a house and they bought it wrong. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're like, oh man, I bought this wrong.

56:01I completely messed up the way I bought a house. I would sell it and start over. That's a lot easier said than done, but it is what really needs to happen. Next is to have a repair fund. So having a separate fund that helps with home repairs, especially the ones that pop up randomly, is very helpful. So I actually like separating this out even for my emergency funds. At times, your emergency fund can be your repair fund, but I like to separate it out and have a separate fund. And when that fund gets to be big enough where you just have it in place, you're really gonna need a lot of different maintenance and repairs that are gonna happen pretty often.

56:32Like every seven years, you gotta paint a house. Every 20 plus years, you gotta replace the roof. If you've got to place your AC or heater every decade or so, there's just a lot of things that pop up all the time. And so having a separate repair fund where you're sending maybe$100,$200,$300 every single month to that specific savings bucket is really, really important. Also, having a renovation fund is a very important fund to have. A renovation fund is going to help you when you want to install new lighting in the house, when you want to go get that kitchen redone, or you want to make sure you renovate that bathroom or you want to get some brand new light fixtures at front.

57:07Small or big, the renovation fund is going to be very, very helpful for you when you want to upgrade the house. Maybe you want to paint a room. Maybe you just want to do something small like put some new landscaping in. All those different things are very, very helpful. And I like to have them separated out in different savings buckets. That's the way I like to think about it. And then also making sure you evaluate your insurance yearly to get those deals. You got to make sure that you have that independent insurance broker. you evaluate your insurance costs yearly, and you actually push them to reduce your insurance costs overall.

57:38Those are gonna be some big steps that I definitely want you to take as you think through this. Now, there are a bunch of nuances we could add to this episode, like insurance details or details on some other loans, but we just wanna make sure that you have these steps that you need to take and understand where your finances need to be when it comes to buying a house in 2026. Listen, I know affordability is at an all-time low, and it is very difficult out there. So if it is too difficult and you don't have the funds yet, be patient. I want to recommend every single person out there to be patient.

58:08And since affordability is at an all-time low, if you're trying to figure out how to get your finances together and you're stressed and you feel the anxiety or you feel the weight of, I don't know what to do next, my goal is to provide you clarity. My goal is to release that stress. And overall, that's what we do in Master Money Academy. If you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders or you feel like you don't know what that next step is, I'm gonna show you how to do that in Master Money Academy. What we do is we give you the framework for financial freedom. We give you the framework so that you can have your most valuable asset of all back, which is time.

58:43And that's exactly what we show you how to do step by step. So I've got a special deal for podcast listeners and I'm gonna link it up down below so that you can check out Master Money Academy. And my goal is that once you're in there, I know you're absolutely gonna love it. You're gonna love what we do inside Master Money Academy when we give you those steps. I coach you every single week in there. I am there answering your questions, whether it's buying a house or whether it's doing something else. So I invite every single one of you to join Master Money Academy and I can't wait to see you inside.

59:13Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you on the next episode. Hey marketers, listen up. Before this, there was this, our voice. It's how we shared knowledge, built communities. Well, guess what? Voice is back. That's why Spotify Advertising has published a new report, The Sound On Era, because audio moves culture forward. And if your brand wants to be heard, you need a sound on strategy. Go to ads.spotify.com to download The Sound On Era and turn up the volume on your business.