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The House with Eric G. Your go to source for everything home improvement.

Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or just looking to make your space shine, Eric.

G. Is here to guide you through.

The latest tips, tricks and trends.

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Eric G. Welcome to the Round the House show, the next generation of home improvement.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for joining today.

This is our midweek update.

This is the show that, well, covers the stuff that we didn't catch last weekend show and of course, the stuff that we didn't get for next weekend show as well.

And we've got a big one today.

This hour is brought to you by our friends at Monument Grills.

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All purchases made before or on August 20th are automatically entered for a chance to win their order for free.

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I wanted to talk about some rumors that are going around of people that are saying we've got a housing crash coming and we gotta be careful.

Really, guys, I don't think we have one coming.

And here is why.

Historically, housing crashes happen when multiple things pile up and trigger a sharp drop in home values.

And historically these things have been different combinations.

But really, here's the issues.

Easy credit and of course, loose lending standards where you give everybody a loan for a house and people can't make their payments.

Overbuilding and oversupply.

Then you've got that bubble where big people are out there buying houses and they're reselling them.

There have been other countries that have had big ones, like Japan had one in 1980s, their late 80s that was huge.

Prices soared and that absolutely crashed.

Interest rate spikes and economic shocks and job losses.

It takes the oil bust in the mid-80s in Texas or things like that for it to really happen.

So let's go down the list here real quick and maybe you can understand this a little bit better.

We don't have any Issues really with easy credit and loose lending standards don't have an issue there.

They've got that dialed in.

We have a shortage, not an overbuilding and oversupply.

Now, maybe in your area, in a local area, you could have overbuilding and oversupply.

But I tell you what, that is not the case if you jump on the MLS in many markets across the country.

So our housing starts are lower than what you'd expect them to be because our interest rates right now are higher than they've been.

So that's a big one.

We don't have to worry about overbuilding and oversupply across the country.

Tom, interest rate spikes?

Nope.

They're talking about maybe dropping that a point here in a number of weeks here in September, in about a month.

If we lose a point there, it's going to go the opposite way.

We're going to see all of a sudden the market open up where you'll see actually how housing shortage, because you're going to see people out there putting their homes on the market and of course trying to buy them and people that have been saving trying to wait for that interest rates to drop down.

Tom, you're going to see that happen as well.

So you're going to see something change here probably in the next 30 to 60 days.

And of course, economic shocks and job losses, I'm not seeing that either.

Yes, we're seeing some economic shop shocks and job losses, but we're also seeing, with the tariff situation out there, companies starting to bring stuff back on shore.

So I think we're not.

We're going to see job losses because everything is tight out there right now.

You're seeing health care with some big losses.

You're seeing lots of larger companies slimming down, but I don't see that happening in policy.

And tax changes, I don't see any incentives or anything else like that.

Tax breaks going around.

I don't think we're going to see anything there.

And of course, all it would take would be some external shocks like a terrorist attack or something like that.

But that's not going to affect things that drastically.

So my bet right now is we're not anywhere near any kind of a housing crash.

If anything, we are in that crash now where we had high interest rates, we had builders not building, material costs were high.

Now I think we are getting ready to spool up for another housing boom.

Which means if you're thinking about buying a house, now is the time to go through and really get ready for that.

What would you do for that go talk to a potential lender and see what you could do.

Right now, of course interest rates, you don't need to lock anything in, it's going to get better.

But what I would do right now, if you're thinking about buying here in the next year, go get pre approved, take a look, see what you can afford so you can be ready.

If we see a big interest rate drop and people go, wow, I'm putting my house on the market now you can go out and look and you might be able to find something because people are going to try selling.

Tom, we're seeing interestingly here in my area and let me know what's happening in yours because there's a lot going on out there.

But in my area the more expensive homes in the higher tax areas are going away, those are dropping down, those values are dropping.

And what I'm seeing is it's a great example in my area and it might be your area as well, but we have a county here, Multnomah county, which is way higher in taxes than the county next door in Portland.

So you're seeing those million dollar house prices, which isn't a lot of house in Multnomah county where those property taxes are almost double with all the different taxes they have with arts taxes and all this other crazy stuff that people that are going to buy a million dollar house and up, that's where you start to get interesting because those are not selling as well in the areas that have the lower tax rates.

Those are selling a lot better.

So it's interesting to see how governmental politics on a local level really affects the housing market there.

So you're seeing many people bailing out of there and I think that's going to be interesting to see what happens in especially in our west coast cities here where I think you're going to see more condo development, you're going to see a lot more stuff like that because what you're going to see is all these empty buildings and yeah, we have 33% commercial vacancy rate in downtown Portland and you're seeing that in many west coast cities.

San Francisco, Louisiana, all these places, people are bailing out of there with their companies to go to lower tax rate areas or they've just had a reduction of force and they're winding that down so they're not using that office space.

So are we going to see those office buildings and towers put into condos?

Maybe it's very expensive, there's zoning issues and things like that.

But it's going to be Interesting to see what happens across the board out there with housing when it comes to condos.

But here's the thing.

Many families don't want to live in a downtown condo when they can live out in suburbia for the same price and not have to worry about taking two kids on a bus or a train to go to the grocery store.

They want to jump in their car, go down the road, come in and have an easy in and out, let alone not have the crime problems that we have in our major cities like that across the country.

So I think that's going to be an interesting one.

And I don't think unless they come up with really affordable housing, which isn't gonna happen.

Cause it's expensive to work in a downtown core.

I don't see that happening for these things.

So I think it's gonna be a bigger issue.

Cities that get their crime dialed in will have a better chance of getting their inner core built back up.

We'll see what happens in cities when they start to figure this out.

But I think that's one of the biggest things where crime, drug use, mental health care is rampant in these cities.

I don't think you're going to see people wanting to move down there.

Considering now the restaurants, the businesses, the stores, the retail places are closing up shop left and right and it's leaving a city core that is empty.

And as far as building materials out there, we're still seeing some pretty crazy prices out there.

Almost $19 a sheet for half inch drywall.

Four by eight.

You're looking at 375 or so for.

Or 365.

375 for a two by four.

You're starting to see where these prices are still staying high up there.

And that's gonna also affect things because I tell you what, I was just out buying some trim because I'm working on my house right now.

And I've been saving some money buying materials from some of the discount lumber yards in my area.

For instance, I use a place called Building Materials Outlet where I get a lot of finished materials that I can get that are they buy the extras from the mill, that kind of stuff.

So I bought some rustic hemlock that's really cool that I used in a 1x6 shiplap.

I just naturally stained it, put a natural Olympic sealer on it just to give it a matte finish so it would be sealed up.

But I wanted that natural look.

So I put that up.

I got it for 41 cents a linear foot.

But if I Went in and tried to buy the.

This was hemlock.

So I bought.

Tried to buy hemlock boards basically from Home Depot when I went in there.

Holy smokes.

Just to trim out two windows.

I was going to have $200 in the trim to do that.

And that was almost as much as the 900 lineal feet of material that I got, you know, for the wall systems in there to cover that up to make it look nice.

So it's really crazy how expensive this stuff gets out there, Tom.

And the building materials are just still not especially when it comes to lumber, windows, everything else.

Yeah, it's expensive, but the lumber is still way high priced even though the lumber futures are down.

We'll see what happens out there.

A 2 by 4 by 8 walnut finished piece is $174 at Home Depot.

Give me a break.

That's insanely expensive.

And I don't think it's going to come down anytime soon.

We're going to have to see lumber producers out there really get after it.

And we'll have to see what the lumber futures prices go in the future to see what we have going on there because prices are still way out of line for what we should be paying for building materials.

Now.

One of my favorite places to go to find a good deal is of course, my local places that have donations.

I have my Habitat for Humanity stores here if I'm looking for something specific or I've got some other places here that are private places but that are really great.

You can search around and find all these places.

And I love the kind of places where you donate materials.

And guys, make sure at this time right now that you are donating those materials.

Because I tell you what, the thing that we see, and we talked about it in a previous episode, is we're seeing people not donating materials because they're hard on money and they want to get as much money back so they can continue the project here in Portland.

My favorite place to go where I live is the Rebuilding Center.

They really help their.

Their nonprofit, they help their community, they help people of low income and try to get people to stay in their house as long as possible.

So they have a really good program, including classes so you can learn.

It's just a really great setup.

So make sure and donate those extra materials to these guys because they're really hurting on donations out there.

And don't just give them trash.

I'm going to be taking a trailer load down to them when I get done with my house here and donate stuff.

So they've got a lot of materials to work with because some of this stuff, it's just doesn't pay to store it and I'll just have to get it the next time if I even need it.

Sometimes getting rid of it is the best way to save money.

Now the next thing here is I another one of my favorite places and this is a website that crawls Home Depot and Lowe's looking for closeouts and it's called Home Depot dot deal.

And then you can search the Lowe's deals and the Home Depot deals by state and by your local stores and you can go through and find so many crazy deals out there.

And so all you do is go to that and then pick your state.

And as you pick your state, you can distill down basically to whatever store you're looking for.

Like Lowe's.

Right now in my area, they've got a ton of stuff out there for tile and lighting on closeouts.

Right now if I go over to the Home Depot side in my area and this is the time of year you start seeing the resets for fall for winter.

But really when you start looking at materials like that, they've got a lot of ryobi stuff, some DeWalt stuff, lots of Milwaukee stuff that they're closing out, bringing in new products.

So a lot of this stuff is 50, 60, 70% off.

And so you can jump on there and see where it's at and run down to the store quickly or sometimes even buy it online and they can grab it for you and you can have it where you can do curbside pickup.

So all of these things can be great for you in saving money on projects because that's what it's all about these days.

It's hard to spend money on these things.

It gets expensive and I know the pain you're going through because I'm doing it myself on my own projects.

All right everybody, I gotta get back to my house.

I am on a two week push right now to get this house done and on the market because I'll be selling my place in Portland with some nice, nice new exciting stuff coming up once I get this place sold.

Time to get back into house finish mode.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for tuning in to around the House.

We'll see you this weekend for another brand new show.

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