Mortgage Rate Whiplash, Home Listing Chaos & 3D-Printed Homes

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Imagine you're a home buyer in Chicago. You're on  Zillow. You've got 50 houses saved. You're looking around. There's a lot for sale. 50,000ish houses  are for sale. You wake up the next morning and 43,000 houses are gone. 43,000 houses disappear  from Chicago Zillow overnight. What happened?

[00:00:25]Yeah, that's one of the stories we're going to  be covering today. So today we're going to be talking about the case of the disappearing  listings as well as why we may see that in more parts of the country as well as 3D printed  houses. Are they becoming the future? And finally, mortgage rate whiplash. What is going on with  mortgage rates? If you're new to this channel or if you like this channel, like, subscribe,  drop a comment. It does help. And if you're new and you're like, who are you? I've been a  mortgage lender for 19 years. My team is one of the top purchase teams in America. We help  people coast to coast achieve the American dream. Give us a call if you have questions  or if you want to get preapproved. 7869332077.

[00:01:09]Let's get into it. Let's start with mortgage  rates because that's a quicker, easier story. The disappearing houses is a full saga. So, I want to  save that for the end so that I can give you guys all the juicy details. mortgage rates, literally  mortgage rates hit a 9-month high. Did you guys see that headline? And then today, mortgage rates  hit a two-week low. Here's the deal. Mortgage headlines get clicks. Everybody knows that. Every  news organization knows that the minute you say mortgage rates jump or mortgage rates drop, click,  click, click, click. Money in the bank. Now, as someone who actually prices loans on a dayto-day  basis, are we seeing volatility in the market?

[00:01:51]Yeah, of course. Of course, guys. Global  uncertainty affects mortgage rates. And what we're seeing right now is that whenever we think  we have a peace deal with Iran, we see that rates the pressure on them eases off. They get a little  lower. And then if strikes start, if it looks like a peace deal is going sideways, if it looks  like the uh activity in Iran's going to escalate, we see rates go up. Why? Energy prices and fear  of inflation. So if suddenly we have a peace deal with Iran and it holds, well that takes  some of the pressure off of inflation because energy prices are going down. Just one of the many  factors, right? If we see that it's escalating or it looks like it's going to get worse, well guess  what? Then everyone's worried about energy prices going up and they're worried about inflation. It's  going to continue like this until there's some level of stability. And honestly truly, I don't  think there's going to be any stability in general coming up anytime soon. Not because of Iran,  but just because we haven't had any in a very long time. Last year, we had the tariffs, which  made mortgage rates incredibly volatile. The year before that, we had the presidential election.  The year before that, I mean, it goes on and on, guys. But here's the thing. The market we're in  right now is like this, okay? It's not like 2022.

[00:03:09]And I think a lot of people when they see those  headlines, especially buyers that maybe looked in 2022 and got scared, 2022 was like this. Here were  rates. They just went up. It was bad, right? So, it's going to be a year of volatility. Just make  sure the loan officer that you're working with has the ability to renegotiate your rate. Super  simple. When you're in contract to buy a house, with most of our buyers, we're like, "Let's lock.  We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow."

[00:03:35]That's true. No one knows what's going to happen  tomorrow with mortgage rates. If someone says they do, they're lying. You can't know what's happening  in Iran and how our government's going to react to it. Period. You can't. So, watch out for those  loan officers. You want a loan officer who's going to lock you and have the ability to renegotiate  if rates get lower. So, talk to your loan officer about that. Okay, let's move into the 3D  printing story because this was super interesting.

[00:04:02]I recently did a video about data centers on the  side of houses. Well, 3D printing is another way that builders are looking at making houses more  affordable by building them for less cost on their end. So, there's a company called Icon. This  company makes the printers. What these 3D printers do, they're not printing the electrical, they're  not printing your plumbing, they're printing the walls. Now, I think it's important to note that  when I was reading about it, it seemed like a lot of people thought it was concrete walls because  it looks very similar to concrete. It's not. It's a patened formula called Lavacrete. So, if you're  looking at buying one of these houses, please do your research on Lavacrete so that you're an  educated and empowered buyer. Now, what's the scoop? So, a hundred of these houses have already  been built. They're in Wolf Ranch built by Lennar in Georgetown, Texas. And based on the strength  of those sales, Wells Fargo has actually partnered with Lennar on their next 3D printing community.  It's important because the first community, normal lenders wouldn't finance. Like, if you had called  me and said, I mean, even if you call me today, we can't finance 3D printed homes. They're too new.  You know, people don't know enough about them.

[00:05:19]There were concerns about resale, all that stuff  that make most lenders go, right? All of that was there. I mean, it's the first hundred houses with  a material that no one's long-term tested. Like, that holds lending pause. The fact that Wells  Fargo is now going to be working with Lennar to finance the next batch is a signal to the  industry that these could become mainstream. So, something to keep your eye on. Um, if you're  looking at new construction, you may see more of these communities. uh popping up because we're  also seeing icons start to sell these machines to other builders. So, just make sure you're  researching the material, paying attention, and understanding that as I film this, you don't  have multiple financing options on it, but you could in the future. So, make sure you tell your  lender if you're looking at a 3D printed home so that they don't tell you you totally qualify,  etc. on something they can't even finance.

[00:06:15]Let's get into the juicy story because this  is the one that as a home buyer really, really can affect you. There's a lot of battles  going on in the real estate industry right now.

[00:06:25]There's a lot of class action lawsuits as well.  What we're seeing is a true battle royale between Zillow and Compass. Zillow started off as just  a little data aggregator. They would sell ads basically around the country. There's these groups  called MLS. And what happens is when you're a seller and you list your house, the realer puts  it on MLS and then that feeds it to all the data aggregators. So Zillow, Homes, Realer.com, all of  those get fed by MLS after the real estate agent puts in your information. Okay. So what happened  is the Chicago MLS looked at the rules that Zillow had and looked at Compass and said, "Okay, Zillow,  you don't get any of Compass's listings." Well, Compass was once upon a time a little luxury  broker, but now they have so many brands, real estate brands, big brands like Century  21. Century 21's owned by Compass now. They have so many brands underneath them that in many  markets, they have the bulk of the listings. So Zillow's rules not matching Compass rules in this  case ended up with Zillow losing 43,000 listings overnight. Yeah. And so the moral of the story for  this for the home buyer is look, this is going to keep happening because it's not like we have one  national MLS across the country. There's little ones everywhere. There's some that have multiple  states. And right now, as I film this, there's already a battle about to happen in Tennessee,  Southern California, um, four East Coast states, all between Zillow and Compass where Zillow could  end up not having access to any Compass listings.

[00:08:11]Okay? As a home buyer, this is important because  the last thing I want you to do is go online, go to Zillow because they are the platform most  people go to and go, "H, there's nothing for sale." Now, in Chicago, a federal judge did make  it so that all the listings had to be on Zillow.

[00:08:29]The outage was only two days, but we don't know  what's going to happen next. So, as a home buyer, what I would recommend is look, do you have to  pay attention to the lawsuits and the drama? No.

[00:08:40]Just have multiple platforms. You're gonna have  to pick two or three. I would probably say if you really like Zillow, keep Zillow. Homes.com's  been really good about staying out of these fights. They're like Switzerland right now.  So, Homes.com is a good one. And then if you're in an area that's very Compassheavy, I would  recommend you look at the Compass site as well because they're going to have the pre-listings  there. So overall, there's a lot of drama in real estate land right now. We have technology  moving forward with 3D printing. We have the big giants in our industry fighting each other. All  for your eyeballs is really what it comes down to. Consumer transparency and eyes on the screen.  And finally, we've got mortgage rates doing the volatile dance that they've been doing for the  last few years with the hyped up headlines just to get clicks. So, I hope this video was helpful  and I look forward to talking to you again soon.