First-time homebuyers have faced headwinds over the last few years. Mortgage rates rose dramatically starting in 2020 and have stayed stubbornly high.
At the same time, inventory is relatively low. Many Americans don’t want to trade their sub 4% mortgage rate for something higher, so they’re staying put.
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Real estate expert Barbara Corcoran has strong opinions about when is the right time to buy and has advice for anyone who is planning to buy a home and wondering: Is now the right time to buy?
Related: Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran speaks on buying vs. renting a home
Mortgage rates for 2025
For the last year, or two, prospective homebuyers have sat on the sidelines, watching to see if mortgage rates would come down, and if inventory would go up. While interests have come down every so slightly, inventory is still tight.
“Mortgage rates are high and they’re not going anywhere. But home prices are rising by three-four percent a year,” Corcoran said on Instagram.
But that’s just one issue buyers face. “The real problem in the marketplace is is that two thirds of homeowners are sitting on interest rates below four percent and they are not going anywhere.”
Taking those factors into consideration, Corcoran says spring — i.e., right now — is a great time to shop for a home.
Related: Dave Ramsey bluntly speaks on interest rates and mortgages
Corcoran even has a few tips that could put homebuyers in a “better, position to get a good deal.” For starters, “Shop when people are away for spring break. Houses are undersold in that week because nobody’s around.”
She also encourages considering a fixer upper, because “financing [is] readily available, easy to get … and and you get a better house on a good block. You fix a fixer upper [and] when you’re young and you can do it for a lifetime.”
More on homebuying:
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Barbara Corcoran says there’s only one “perfect” time to buy a house
“The best time to buy is the minute you have enough cash for the down payment,” Corcoran said recently.
“There’s more applications for mortgages right now because they went down a quarter of a point,” she told TheStreet exclusively. “So that says to me that people are losing hope that they’re going to go down much more. But will interest rates go down? Who the heck knows? What you should [be doing is getting] out there and looking for an apartment or a home.”
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“If you’re waiting until next year, forget about it. Prices are going to go up more next year so you’re not saving anything by waiting.”
Interest rates are not going down either, she says, so you might as well “get out in the market and do something about it.”
There is no such thing as a “perfect” market she emphasizes. “The best investment [I ever made] was my first studio apartment. I could barely afford it. I could barely scrape the money together. But if I hadn’t bought that studio apartment, I would have never gotten in the market,” Corcoran says.
Real estate is also an important part of many Americans’ retirement plan. As Corcoran says, “I think most people who retire in America have one thing under their belt. They have their home and the equity in it, and it enables them to retire. I think nobody really wants to give up the American dream.”
Related: Veteran fund manager unveils eye-popping S&P 500 forecast
