Don’t Fall For Those 4% Mortgage Mailers

The Sell for 1 Percent team reports that Central Ohio’s housing inventory has climbed to over 6,000 listings, representing an almost two-month supply. Mortgage expert Rich Cercone cautions homeowners about junk mail offering unbelievably low rates — explaining that there are no legitimate rates in the fours right now and those ads are better used as fireplace kindling. For Franklin County home sellers, with median days on market now at 42, this seasonal slowdown means pricing correctly is key to moving quickly before the market picks up again after Labor Day.

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Full Transcript

Hello there, everybody. Jaime with Sell for 1 Percent Realtors. As usual, by the gang, head broker Dave Barlow, agent Jaysen Barlow, and Rich Cercone at Highlands Mortgage.

Here to give you guys an update. Hey, Jaime. Did you introduce me or did you leave me out? He introduced you, but you were talking over top of him.

Oh, sorry. Sorry. I was still trying to get him.

Now you’re picking on Jaime, too, by the way. You guys have renamed him as Jameson. I’ll take whatever nickname.

That’s Irish. That’s the whiskey. Yeah.

Yeah, I think Jaime would prefer to be known as Jamerinsky. Polish, huh? Yeah. Well, what would the Italian version be there, Rich? Jamerio.

Jamerio. I like that. Jamerio.

My phone, because he spells it. He didn’t spell it. His mother and I, J-A-I-M-E, when I say, hey, Siri, call Jaime.

Now it’s going to call Jaime. So I got to stop this real quick. It always comes back and says, calling Jaime.

Yeah, I was going to say it would be Jaime, actually. Oh, boy. Didn’t even think about that.

All right, James, go ahead. Sorry. No, I mean, I think I’ve said what I needed to say here, August 27th, 2026.

Going to go through interest rates, Rich with Highlands Mortgage. I imagine there isn’t much of an update in the mortgage industry world at the moment. I think we’re kind of seeing the same from our last previous weeks with both the sell and buy side.

This might be a pretty quick market update. Then why even do it? Then why even be here? You kind of nailed it, Jaime. I disagree wholeheartedly.

Things are constantly changing. And also, not everybody views it every single week. We have new viewers joining us daily.

Around the globe. This is being broadcast worldwide. All right, Rich.

Sorry. So what’s new? Jaime, I think you and I need to start our own podcast. These two are rebels.

These two troublemakers. Yeah. Do we want to start over or do you want me to just go into my speech? No.

What is this? Do you want to start over? Proceed. This is live. There’s only one take.

We’re streaming live. This is it. Take your best shot.

Well, Jaime nailed it. There’s really pretty much status quo in the interest rate market. Ten-year treasuries in the mid-460s.

Sometimes touching 470. And the talk is that at some point in the next two, three, four Fed meetings, we will see a rate increase or two. And with that kind of a condition, we’re not going to see lower mortgage rates.

And one thing, if I could just take a second and say something to all the folks out there, there are a lot of people receiving letters from, I don’t know who, I don’t want to throw any particular lenders under the bus, but they’re receiving letters with offers, with rates. I got one yesterday saying, Hey, I got an offer for a rate in the fours. If you get something like that and you have a fireplace, it’s a good thing to start your fire with.

But there are no rates in the fours. There might be some banks that have an adjustable rate in the high fives, maybe. That would be like a five or seven-year arm.

And typically you’re going to pay points. So you’re going to have a higher cost of financing, which you have to juxtapose with, is this the right thing to do? Because this upfront cost is going to be a breakeven period of 36 months, 48 months. Do I think rates will go down at some point in the next three, four or five years where I could just refinance instead for less costs? So be wary of come on advertisements like that.

I just want to throw that out there before I turn it over to you guys. So I’ve said my thing and let’s turn it over to head broker, Dave Barlow to lead the ship here now. Well, thank you very much, Rich, for that special welcome.

Hold on one second, Dave. One thing, Rich, I’ve heard people say is, unless something is broken with the economy, like historically we don’t get below 5.75%. It’s not set up that way.

So rates typically will not come below that five and three quarters unless something else is going on externally. Correct. Something bad has to happen for that to be the case.

COVID was the best example where rates dropped egregiously overnight because of the concern for the economy. 2008 led to the lower interest rates. So yeah, that is correct.

And as I’ve said before, and I got accused of being a conspiracy theorist, it really has a lot to do with the stock market. Wall Street drives everything. And as long as the stock market’s healthy, the Fed is going to yawn at any other economic thing.

The stock market’s going up. Everything’s fine. The bailout comes when the stock market needs bailed out.

That’s pretty much what I’ve seen for almost 30 years now. Well, we’ve kind of talked about this in the past too, Rich, that when the stock market’s doing good, people are pulling their money out of bonds because they can get a better return in the stock market. If you’re getting 4.6% or 4.7% in a 10-year treasury bond, but you’re making 15% in the stock market, where are you going to put your money? And vice versa, when the stock market starts to have one of those lulls, and it’s going to happen, nothing ever goes up forever, then people start pulling their money out of the stock market and putting it into safe haven of the bond market.

And then that’s when you’re going to see interest rates come down. So it’s ebbs and flows. I mean, we like to have everything.

I want to have the $1 McDonald’s sandwich back. That was like the world’s greatest thing. You’d be out on the road and you could swing into a McDonald’s and get a McCheeseburger for a buck.

McCheeseburger? A McChicken. You can tell that he doesn’t go there that often. Oh, no, you get the McChicken.

I just love giving you a hard time. Jane told me on one of these videos, Jane said you give your dad an awful hard time. I’m used to it.

39 years of crap, waiting for it to make the turn, Rich. Waiting for it to make the turn. Yeah, but then you say things like McCheeseburger.

I can’t just let that slide. Jaime’s face recoiled in horror. Maybe somebody at McDonald’s is listening to this and will come up with a new Yeah, they’re not.

That’ll be $65, sir. I mean, it’s insane. It used to be you can get a double cheeseburger for a dollar.

Then it became a McDouble. You get one less piece of cheese. And now it’s $3.

That’s still not bad. Still not bad. I mean, I’ve seen the yo-yo here in the last four or five days on gas prices.

It was like $4.19 when I filled up my car on Monday. And then on Tuesday, it dropped to $3.75. And then this morning, it’s back up to $4.09.

It’s like, mmm. This is like up, down, up, down, up, down. Sorry, Dad.

Go ahead. No. You get this ebbs and flows.

It’s all over the place right now. And what we would like to have is some stability. Have something that cheeseburgers don’t ebb and flow.

Have things that you can count on, like Jaysen giving me crap. You can count on that. Cheeseburgers just ebb.

They don’t flow. They just keep ebbing and ebbing. They don’t flow.

It depends. Sometimes they flow. The debate online I’ve seen people have is that burritos are now $20.

And then you get people all up in arms. And you get the tone deaf. Well, you know, you can make them at home.

You can cut your meat with beans. And it’s like, shouldn’t it be $20 for a burrito? It’s crazy. It’s a crazy conversation.

Could be worse. You could be out in California. It’s $40.

Gas is $10 a gallon. So it could be worse. Although I don’t think we have it too bad.

I think there’s a big generational divide in the country. More so than we probably have ever seen because of how it was when you were coming up in your prime, in your 20s and 30s, and how it is now for this generation. I think there’s a big generational divide.

Used to have the same conversation with my dad. I remember when gas was a nickel. It’s like, wow.

And, you know, he quit smoking cigarettes when they went to 25 cents a pack. Because he figured, you know, he was smoking, you know, half a pack a day. Then, you know, save that 8, 10 bucks a month.

He could afford to buy the car that he wanted. And that’s when he decided to quit smoking. All right.

Well, tell us what’s going on in the world of real estate now. In the world of real estate in central Ohio, we are over 6,000 listings. 6,071, almost a two-month supply.

Still a seller’s market. Though things are noticeably cooling down and prices are really kind of plateauing. We did not go over medium price for 2024.

We were up where 2025 was. And so, like I said, prices, you know, aren’t continuing to climb at crazy rates. But time on market, median days on market is 42.

Average is 72 days on market. And that’s in Franklin County is where these stats are coming from. Medium price of new listings in Franklin County is 350.

And then the medium price of all the listings, not just kind of new ones, but existing inventory is 340. So, things are really, you know, what I tell my sellers is they’re not as bad as what the headlines will lead you to believe. You know, and the 42 is up.

A couple weeks ago, we were at 35. And August typically slows down this time of year because the families are focused on getting back into school and getting back into routines. And then we’ll see the market kind of pick up and surge, you know, once we get past Labor Day.

We got a Buckeye game coming up, Labor Day holiday in, what, nine days, ten days for both those things. And then we’ll see the market kind of pick back up and a push before the holidays. So, right now is when it normally kind of slows down.

So, all that’s kind of to be expected. Really not a bad market. You know, when you come on and you’re priced well, you move pretty quick.

Buyers have some selection to choose from. I’ll let Jaime talk about the buyer side. But for the home sellers, really not a bad time to be a seller in Central Ohio right now.

As Mortimer Duke would say, sell, sell, sell. You guys don’t know that reference. Mortimer Duke sounds like a Fox News anchor.

Mortimer Duke, him and his brother tried to corner the orange market. It didn’t work. It was, yeah, trading places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd.

So, long time ago. But the reference still works. Sell, sell, sell.

Jaime, what about buy, buy, buy? Not much different than our last few weeks’ worth of updates here on the buy side. Buyers just have a wide selection of possible houses. They don’t have to feel rushed into making a decision.

They can wait for the house that’s priced right and the location they really want. And, you know, they’re wanting things that are updated. Master bathrooms, kitchens, flooring.

All that good stuff. They want houses that are updated and move-in ready. Something where they aren’t going to have projects that they have to take on when they purchase the house.

That it’s just move-in ready. It’s turnkey. Ready to go.

So, buyers seem to be waiting for those houses to come on the market. And then those houses get multiple offers and the buyers fight over them. I think the six and a half plus percent interest rates.

And at these all-time high prices, that’s what a buyer is expecting. That’s what a buyer wants. If we’re going to be agreeing to a 30-year mortgage at this payment, it better have marble quartz countertops.

It better have an updated bathroom, a 25-year roof. That’s what we’re seeing on the buy side. Rich, any final thoughts from the finance world? Don’t buy land in Florida.

Just want land, right? Someone called you with 4% interest rates. Probably not true. Probably not true right now.

That’s definitely the case. From my point of view, I have seen a slowing in people calling to be pre-approved. Things are slowing down, but as Jaysen said, this is the time of year where people take a pause on buying a house and get the kids in school and waiting for the Buckeyes to start playing, waiting for the Browns to start playing.

Home of the Whopper, or not the Whopper, the Big Mac, right? The Primanti sandwich. Pittsburgh was where they developed the Big Mac. I did not know that.

You did not know that? That just makes things up. Oh my gosh. That just makes things up.

Steubenville, Pittsburgh, all that stuff down through there. There was a franchise owner there in Pittsburgh that came up with the idea for the Big Mac. Didn’t they kind of copy the big boy, the Shoney’s kind of big boy kind of idea? Wasn’t that? That I don’t know.

That I don’t know, but I do know Pittsburgh is the home of the Big Mac. Is the Big Mac? Yeah, because they had the special sauce. That whole song that went along with that thing.

Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickled onions on a sesame seed bun. You got it. It was invented in Uniontown, which is in Pennsylvania.

Yeah, that is right outside of Pittsburgh. Well, no, it’s right outside of Pittsburgh. That is a quasi-suburb.

If you consider 40 miles just outside. You won’t find any Browns fans in Uniontown. Let’s put it that way.

You won’t. You’re exactly right. Well, I’d hope not.

Try to disprove me once again. Sorry about it. How much money do you need to live comfortably? Things to do.

Speaking of online charts, I saw every state by their favorite sandwich. Pennsylvania was the cheesesteak, of course. That was invented in Philadelphia.

Imagine, hence the name, right? The Philly Cheesesteak. They had grilled cheese. I was like, what? They had grilled cheese for us in Indiana.

Louisiana and Texas was a brisket sandwich. That one looked pretty good. There you go.

What’s West Virginia pepperoni roll? I don’t remember what West Virginia was. The ones that looked the best to me were these prosciutto and rye ones, though. Like California.

I did not realize that. Am I saying that right? Prosciutto? Is that how you say that? Nope. That came from the Jewish culture.

They brought that over from Europe with them. I always assumed that was like an Italian meat. No, it was a Jewish meat that they brought over.

Let’s see. West Virginia. I just sent your mother a TikTok on that.

The correct pronunciation. It says the most iconic handheld food is the pepperoni roll. There you go.

Rich is on it. I know my West Virginia. There you go.

All right, fellas. I got to get going. I have a closing and a very important meeting with our state representative.

Take us on home. Who has to edit this? Is that Jesse? Me. No, he just has some robot do it.

Chops it all up. Oh, he eliminated Jesse’s job and hired a robot. Yeah, see, he’s just a true right winger, isn’t he? Eliminates the common person jobs, replaces them with the robots, driving wages down.

Now we’re working on replacing Jaysen. The day that I can hire a robot to show houses, I’m in. I mean, I can’t wait.

Yeah, I’ll hire a fleet of robots show houses. The nice thing about working with the robots is that they don’t talk back. They just, I found a way to get them to talk back and to do things that you need them to do.

They try and like deny it. You have to like, oh boy, you have to kind of tell them they’re not as smart as they think they are. And if you neg them like that, then they will.

Go and do your bidding the way you need to be done. It’s very interesting. You’re talking about like the chat GPT and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I’m going to chat GPT myself into the rest of this conversation. You guys can have yourself a nice day. Make sure you subscribe.

Yeah, there you go, Rich. All right, well, if you like the content, like and subscribe. If you’re listening, leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and make it easier for people to find us.

If you need to complain, call Scrooge McDuck, a.k.a. Dave Barlow. He’ll listen to all your complaints.

If you need to buy a house, give young Jay Marunsky a call, a.k.a. Jameson, a.k.a. Jaime, a.k.a.

Jaime. And if you need a pepperoni roll, give Rich a call. Absolutely.

He can reply you and do a 4.35% rate. Call Rich. He’s ready.

20 points. Thanks for watching. I’m Jaysen Barlow, the best-looking realtor itself for 1%.

And we’ll see you next week.