An investor I work with told me this week that rates and property taxes have made it hard to find a deal that pencils. Fair complaint. The 30-year average hit 7.28% on October 1, highest since late 2023.

But on a flip or a BRRRR you only pay the rate for the months you hold. You pay the price for the whole deal.

Say your loan is $200,000 and the rate is 2 points higher than it was a couple years ago. Six months of that is about $2,000 extra. A full year is about $4,000. Now say you get 5% off a $250,000 purchase. That's $12,500. On a six-month hold you only need 0.8% off the price to cover the higher rate.

And the discounts are out there. Houston closings were down 11.5% in August and homes sat 54 days on average. Stale listings mean price cuts, seller-paid closing costs and room to negotiate.

Taxes cut the same way. A tax bill $1,500 a year higher adds $125 a month to your retail buyer's payment. At today's rates that's roughly $18,000 less house they can afford when you sell. Put that in your offer and the seller eats it, not you.

The point I keep coming back to: run the numbers before you're in the loan, not after. Once you're funded the price is locked, and the rate is the smallest number in the deal.

I wrote up the full report on my website, which you can find through my profile. You can sign up there to get new reports by email.

For those of you buying right now, what kind of discount or concessions are you actually getting from sellers this fall?