The Das Group

The Das Group The Das Group, LLC

A 3% mortgage might be one of the most valuable assets sitting on an American household’s balance sheet.You can’t sell i...
09/14/2026

A 3% mortgage might be one of the most valuable assets sitting on an American household’s balance sheet.

You can’t sell it. You can’t transfer it. And once you give it up, you may never get it back.

That’s helping create one of the strangest housing markets in recent memory.

Roughly half of mortgaged homeowners are sitting below 4%, while prevailing 30-year mortgage rates are roughly 6.7%.

But this isn’t just a payment problem.

It’s a supply problem.

A homeowner with a 3% mortgage is not simply comparing one house to another. They’re comparing two radically different capital structures.

That changes the market’s behavior.

In a normal cycle, higher rates weaken demand and eventually pull more inventory into the market as prices soften.

Today, a large share of owners can simply refuse to participate.

Their financing is too valuable to surrender.

That makes existing housing supply unusually inelastic.

So even as buyer demand weakens, inventory doesn’t expand the way traditional housing models would suggest.

That helps explain one of the biggest contradictions in today’s market:

Sellers can outnumber buyers, yet prices can still prove surprisingly sticky.

The reason is that the pool of potential sellers is much larger than the pool of people actually willing to list.

That distinction matters.

A buyer’s market created by abundant supply behaves very differently from one created by weak demand while existing owners remain financially anchored to their homes.

The first can clear through price.

The second can linger.

For investors, that changes how you read inventory, days on market, price reductions and negotiation leverage.

Headline supply alone is not enough.

You have to understand why that supply is there, and just as importantly, why so much potential inventory is still sitting on the sidelines.

The lock-in effect isn’t just keeping people in their homes. It’s disrupting the normal mechanism through which housing markets clear.

Paradise Valley used to be for the rich. Now it’s for the ultra-rich.That didn’t happen in a vacuum.From 2014–2024, the ...
09/12/2026

Paradise Valley used to be for the rich. Now it’s for the ultra-rich.

That didn’t happen in a vacuum.

From 2014–2024, the Scottsdale–Paradise Valley wealth hub grew its millionaire population 125%, the fastest rate among the U.S. wealth hubs tracked by Henley & Partners.

Paradise Valley absorbed the very top end of that wealth.

The town’s residential sales record now sits at $40.24M. Recent median sold pricing has hovered around $4.3M, while prime Paradise Valley dirt can command roughly $4M–$5M per acre.

And the supply side is doing very little to relieve that pressure. The town’s development pattern is designed to preserve scarcity.

One-acre character. Low density. Limited commercial development. Very little new supply.

That combination has pushed an already elite market into a different stratosphere. For many affluent buyers, Paradise Valley simply isn’t financially accessible anymore.

Scottsdale is benefiting from the same wealth migration, but from a different tier.

It’s a true luxury market, with broader inventory, more new development, deeper transaction volume and a substantially more accessible price point.

That momentum is showing up in the numbers. Scottsdale’s citywide median is around $907K, while $5M+ home sales surged 157% in the period we analyzed.

And there’s another layer to the story: the economic base around North Scottsdale is getting stronger at the same time.

Axon is planning a $1.3B campus with up to 5,500 on-site employees. Cavasson represents roughly $1B of development across 135 acres. ASM is investing €300M+ in expansion. Banner Health is adding a major new medical campus. One Scottsdale is bringing 120 acres, roughly 2,000 residences and around 400 hotel rooms.

So Scottsdale’s luxury momentum isn’t being driven by housing alone. Wealth migration is adding demand while corporate, healthcare and mixed-use investment are strengthening the fundamentals underneath it.

Paradise Valley is becoming more exclusive.

Scottsdale is becoming a larger, stronger luxury market alongside it.

Same wealth influx. Two fundamentally different markets.

The showing goes beautifully.Buyers love the kitchen. The island gets photographed. The staging works. Someone starts me...
09/06/2026

The showing goes beautifully.

Buyers love the kitchen. The island gets photographed. The staging works. Someone starts mentally arranging furniture before they’ve even left the house.

Then the appraisal lands.

Suddenly nobody cares how expensive the pendant lights were.

The value has to survive comparable sales, above-grade square footage, bedroom and bathroom count, lot size, condition, and documented improvements.

That’s where expensive taste and market value can separate quickly.

Spend $70,000 on a renovation and the market may reward you with $70,000.

Or $30,000.

Or almost nothing.

The receipt is not the valuation.

Unpermitted space gets even messier. A finished addition can look completely legitimate to a buyer and still receive different treatment in the appraisal depending on how it was permitted, reported, built, and accepted by the market.

Presentation can absolutely create competition.

But competition still has to collide with the comp grid eventually.

The housing market is increasingly being bought by people who already have housing wealth.First-time buyers now account ...
09/05/2026

The housing market is increasingly being bought by people who already have housing wealth.

First-time buyers now account for just 21% of purchases, the lowest share on record. Their median age has climbed to 40.

Compare that with repeat buyers: they make up 79% of the market, put down a median 23%, and 30% buy with cash.

That’s not simply an affordability gap.

It is a balance-sheet gap.

One buyer is trying to create equity for the first time. The other may be bringing years of accumulated home equity into the next purchase.

That advantage is now showing up in who actually gets through the door.

Baby boomers account for 42% of buyers, while millennials are down to 26%. The market is tilting toward households that already have assets, equity, and more flexibility in how they finance.

For investors, that makes attainable housing more interesting, not less.

The pool of people who want an entry point is still enormous. The problem is that the entry point itself has become harder to reach.

That puts a premium on homes that sit inside the narrow band where financing still works, monthly payments still pencil, and buyers can actually qualify.

The traditional ladder was simple: buy young, build equity, trade up.

The ladder is still there.

The first rung just moved higher.

Borrowers aren’t suddenly falling in love with ARMs.They’re reacting to a widening rate gap between two ways of financin...
09/04/2026

Borrowers aren’t suddenly falling in love with ARMs.

They’re reacting to a widening rate gap between two ways of financing the same house.

Right now, the average 30-year fixed is 6.79%.

A 5/1 ARM is 5.94%.

That’s an 85-basis-point discount for accepting reset risk.

And borrowers are responding to that spread.

When the discount widened in May, ARM share jumped to 9.6%.

When the advantage narrowed in July, it fell to 7.6%.

Now the spread is back, and ARM share has climbed to 8%.

That’s not panic. It’s price sensitivity.

For investors, the trade can make sense. A BRRRR, renovation, or short-hold strategy may never reach the reset period.

But then the mortgage becomes a timeline bet.

Permit delay.
Renovation runs long.
Appraisal comes in light.
Refinance doesn’t clear.

Suddenly year six matters.

The risk isn’t the ARM. It’s a business plan that only works if the exit happens on schedule.

Cash still matters. It just matters less than it did.Cash purchases fell to 31.4% of sales in early 2026.Total sales dro...
09/04/2026

Cash still matters. It just matters less than it did.

Cash purchases fell to 31.4% of sales in early 2026.
Total sales dropped 8.5% year over year.
Cash deals fell 11.2%.

And the retreat isn’t happening evenly.

Under $100K: 67%+ cash
Over $1M: 40%+ cash
Over $2M: majority cash

The opening is in the middle.

That’s where financed buyers are regaining ground, just as institutional buyers are pulling back too.

Less cash pressure. Less institutional pressure. More inventory.

That doesn’t make deals easy.

It makes the middle of the market less distorted.

Cash still talks. It just doesn’t own the room anymore.

Builders haven’t stopped planning.They’ve stopped committing.In July, single-family permits rose to 894,000. But actual ...
09/03/2026

Builders haven’t stopped planning.

They’ve stopped committing.

In July, single-family permits rose to 894,000. But actual starts fell to 808,000, down 9.9% in a month. New-home sales dropped 10.5% at the same time.

That’s a very specific kind of caution.

Keep the land entitled. Keep the permit alive. Keep the option to build.

Just don’t pour the slab until demand earns it.

Builder confidence has now sat below 40 for 16 consecutive months, and the response is showing up in the deal structure:

35% are cutting prices.
Average cut: 6%.
63% are using incentives.

That last number deserves more attention than the list price.

A builder can hold the advertised price and still give away real economics through rate buydowns, closing-cost credits, upgrades, lot premiums, or combinations of all four.

So a $600,000 new build and a $600,000 resale may have very different effective purchase prices.

Builders also negotiate under a different kind of pressure.

An individual seller can pull the listing and wait.

A builder has lots, carrying costs, crews, capital tied up, absorption targets, and an entire community that still needs buyers.

That doesn’t mean every builder is desperate.

But it does mean that the negotiation is bigger than price.

And right now, the buyers who understand that have more room to work with than the MLS headline suggests.

Luxury can buy better finishes. It can’t buy better returns.Case-Shiller split 16 major markets into price tiers and fou...
09/02/2026

Luxury can buy better finishes. It can’t buy better returns.

Case-Shiller split 16 major markets into price tiers and found something uncomfortable for the “buy the nicest house you can afford” crowd:

75% of those markets saw their low-price tier outperform the overall market over five years.

Tampa’s low tier: +88%.
New York’s low tier: nearly 20 points better than its overall market.
Atlanta: roughly 18 points better than its middle and upper tiers.

At the low end, the buyer pool gets crowded.

First-time buyers. Investors. Downsizers. More people competing for a finite pool of attainable homes.

Luxury plays by different rules. Fewer buyers. More discretionary demand. More exposure to wealth cycles. And when acquisition prices outrun achievable rents, yield gets compressed fast.

But “cheap houses always win” would be the wrong conclusion.

San Diego did the opposite. Its high-price tier beat the low tier over the same five-year window. More recently, rising starter-home inventory has also cooled price pressure even while sales remained strong.

Price tier isn’t a quality score. It’s a different supply-and-demand market.

The better investment is where scarcity, buyer depth, rent support, and basis line up.

Sometimes that’s the trophy property.

Sometimes the trophy is the boring house everyone can still afford.

47,000 contracts got signed. Then they died before closing.That’s roughly 14% of pending U.S. home sales in July, the hi...
08/30/2026

47,000 contracts got signed. Then they died before closing.

That’s roughly 14% of pending U.S. home sales in July, the highest July cancellation rate since 2023.

The market didn’t suddenly run out of buyers.

Buyers just regained the ability to say no.

More inventory changes behavior fast.

A bad inspection used to get rationalized.
A low appraisal got patched over.
Insurance came in ugly and everyone kept moving.
Another listing appeared and buyers still stayed put.

That psychology is fading.

A property can look attractive enough to win an offer and still fail the second underwriting pass once the buyer gets deeper into condition, insurance, financing, or comparables.

Contract velocity matters less when contract durability is weakening.

The cleanest listing doesn’t just sell faster. It survives scrutiny better.

The sloppy deal?

It gets exposed.

Canceled contracts can also create some of the more interesting opportunities in the market.

A deal comes back. The listing has lost momentum. The seller has already mentally moved once. Another buyer just found a reason to walk.

That’s a very different negotiating table.

Getting under contract is no longer the win. Getting through diligence is.

You close on a $900,000 rental.The listing shows property taxes of roughly $3,000 a year.The deal pencils.Then the count...
08/26/2026

You close on a $900,000 rental.

The listing shows property taxes of roughly $3,000 a year.

The deal pencils.

Then the county catches up.

That $3,000 bill belonged to the seller, whose assessed value had been creeping up slowly for decades under California’s Prop 13.

Your purchase resets the assessment.

Now the property is taxed closer to $900,000, not the seller’s roughly $300,000 assessment.

Your annual tax bill moves toward $9,000.

Nothing about the property changed.

The rent didn’t increase.
The roof didn’t improve.
The tenant didn’t suddenly become more valuable.

But your cash flow just lost roughly $6,000 a year.

For an investor, that’s not small.

At a 6% cap rate, a $6,000 NOI difference implies roughly $100,000 of value sensitivity.

And the timing makes it nastier.

The supplemental assessment can arrive months after closing, which means the first sign your underwriting was wrong may be a tax bill sitting in your mailbox.

This is why experienced buyers don’t underwrite historical expenses blindly.

They normalize them.

Taxes after reassessment.
Insurance after acquisition.
Management at market rates.
Repairs that reflect reality, not the seller’s trailing twelve months.

A seller’s operating history tells you what the property cost them to own.

It does not tell you what it will cost you.

The deal you’re buying starts at closing. So should your underwriting.

Address

Columbus, OH
43215

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Das Group posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to The Das Group:

Shortcuts

Featured

Share

Category