Buying, Selling, and Financing Real Estate: Minimize Risks, Maximize Returns

In this one-hour presentation, we will cover many different ways how to buy, sell, and finance properties, whether you're a first-time home buyer, a seasoned investor with multiple properties, or a real estate agent.

How are so many asset prices (homes, commercial real estate, gold, stocks, etc.) today at or near all-time record highs, while the purchasing power of the dollar is at all-time record lows? Is the economy booming like never before or is the dollar’s purchasing power seemingly crashing and burning?

A recently published Statista Consumer Insights survey that was conducted in June and July 2025 found that 49% of U.S. adult respondents said that the high cost of living was their biggest daily concern.

Dollar’s Purchasing Power Turns to Ash
The federal government’s published inflation rates in 2025 are still lower than inflation rates back in the 2021/2022 years that peaked near 9%. However, it sure doesn’t seem like our dollar buys the same amount of goods and services here in 2025 whether or not the published inflation rates are 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 9%, or 10%.

Here’s a summary of the decline of the dollar over the past 112 years:

• $1 in 1913 (the year when the Federal Reserve was formed, ironically, as a way to “contain inflation” and “stabilize the dollar”) now has the equivalent purchasing power of almost 3 cents today.
• The purchasing power of $1 fell to about 7 cents over the past 50 years, so most of the dollar’s decline in value has taken place during this 50-year time period that followed the removal of the dollar from the gold standard during the 1971-1973 years.
• Since 2000, the dollar’s purchasing power has dropped by -41%.
• The M1 money supply (cash or cash equivalent) increased from $4 trillion dollars in January 2020 to $20 trillion dollars by October 2021. The more money in circulation, the less purchasing power for the dollar.
• The dollar’s purchasing power has fallen 10% in the first seven months of 2025 as the dollar’s losses are accelerating.
• Because real estate has proven to be an exceptional hedge against inflation and an imploding dollar or fiat currency that’s backed by “thin air,” these are key reasons why home values today are near all-time record highs.

Falling Rates & New Buying Opportunities
The average 30-year fixed rate over the past 50 years was about 7.7%, which is actually much higher than today’s 30-year fixed rate average that is almost 1.5% lower as of the first week in September 2025.

The peak high 30-year fixed rate over the past 50 years reached 18.63% in October 1981, while the low rate average fell to 2.65% in January 2021.

On October 30, 2025, the 30-year fixed rate reached a 6.17% rate average, as per Mortgage News Daily and CNBC. This rate was near the lowest 30-year fixed rate average dating back to October 2024.

Declining Housing Sales Turnover Rate
Today’s U.S. housing market has the lowest sales turnover rate in at least 30 years, as per sources like Redfin and The Kobeissi Letter. Only 28 homes out of every 1,000 homes, or 2.8%, changed hands by way of sales in the first nine months of 2025, as I shared in this article here that was published on November 4, 2025: The Intersection of Declining Home Sales and Creative Marketing.

The housing market is frozen with a much lower sales volume here in 2025, partly due to a mortgage rate lock-in effect, where nearly 70% of all homeowners currently hold mortgages with rates near 5% or below.

I’ve written about the “lock-in effect” over the past few years in articles like this one that was published in July 2023: The Lock-In Effect and Keys to Success.

Even though the average 30-year fixed rate fell to a one-year low near the low 6% rate range by the end of October 2025, median home prices in many U.S. regions are near or at all-time record highs. As a result, fewer home buyers can afford to purchase their dream home because they can’t afford the mortgage payment along with other consumer debts.

Pending Home Sales Aren’t Improving
Pending home sales, which track the number of home sales contracts signed, didn’t change much in September 2025 as compared with the previous month of August.

This is now the third year in a row that pending home sales have remained near record lows as per data shared by the National Association of Realtors, dating back to July 2010.

Pending home sales compared to the Septembers in prior years:
? 2024: -0.9%
? 2023: +1.2%
? 2022: -8.3%
? 2021: -35.1%
? 2020: -41.1%
? 2019: -30.7%
Source: WolfStreet.com

Creative Financing: Gets You Into & Out of Properties
Generally, the most important part of any real estate transaction is the buyer's access to money (cash or third-party mortgages) that cashes out the seller's equity at the same time.

The more creative your access to capital as a buyer, seller, or real estate agent, the more likely that your real estate transactions will sell sooner rather than later.

Thank you for your interest. We hope to see you online.

Rick Tobin

Realloans.com (Broker/Owner)

NMLS 1934868