The following was taken from Roni's Facebook live video on 6/24/22:

Hello, hello, friends. It's Friday, which means I get to come over to you with a quick market update. And what a great week it's been. Beautiful weather today. I'm still in South Carolina. I feel like every Friday I'm traveling. Today, I'm in South Carolina. I'm in Newberry, South Carolina, cute little quaint town just between Charleston and Columbia, little bit closer to Columbia area. And actually, I guess I'm just past Columbia. Anyways, I'm on my way out of town, that's what I know. And I found this cute little town. It's my favorite thing to do when I drive through areas, find a local coffee shop, so that's what I'm doing

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Across from me is some music playing there, I guess because it's Friday. Why not? Why not have some fun on a Friday? But this has been a fun week. I've had a couple of investors recently that are looking to sell their homes. Of course, their investment has gone up. Their equity has gone up. And now they're making the decision at the height of the market still to go ahead and sell the house, sell the property. So let's talk about capital gains for a minute before I jump into a market update, because I do want to catch you up on the market and what's happening out there.

But as we prepare to do that, let's talk briefly, and a few people are joining us, thanks for joining if you are live. And thanks for rewatching it. Let's talk about capital gains for a minute, though, because as an investor, you are going to be paying capital gains tax if you sell a house. Now, there's a loophole in that, that you can get out of. And it's, if you have owned the house as a primary resident for two out of the last five years, two out of the last five years, they do not have to be consistent or consecutive.

But if you have lived in it as your primary residence two out of the last five years, you can walk away from that property, selling it with paying no capital gains if you're single is $250,000 that you can walk away with. And if you're married, filing jointly on your taxes, it's 500,000 that you can walk away from that property with. You do not have to reinvest that money. That is a huge misconception. I get it all the time. People say, "Well, I'm selling this house. I've got to reinvest all of this into the next one." That is not the case. Thank you, back in 1997, there was a new tax bill that was put into place. And it allows us as our primary residents to be able to sell it and not pay capital gains. Now, you can do that once every two years. So that's where it really spiked with a lot of people buying and flipping properties every two years, because you can walk away with that not paying capital gains.

Now, say you live in the house and you've been in it for three, four years. And you decide you want to rent that property rather than selling it right away. Great. I can help you do that, but we are going to be having a conversation in about two years down the road. Before we put a tenant in there for the third year, we are going to be making sure that you understand and that your lease is set up so that we can sell that property after two to three years. Because, again, you do not want to be paying capital gains on that. Everybody's equity has soared here in the last couple of years. And if you have lived in your property, you have been renting it for the last two years, let's talk about selling it. Reinvest that money if you want to, to keep it into real estate transactions, but sell the property while you still can and not pay capital gains on that house. Okay?

So I can't preach to you enough. I get a lot of business, a lot of business from landlords, people that want to sell their properties. And I can help you do that. I can also help you set up if you're out of state and we need to take the reins on getting the house prepared for the market and a tenant's been in there. And let's be quite frank, tenants are not easy on houses at all. So we want to make sure that we're lining you up for the best success. And so we will get it prepared. We will paint, we will do carpet, we will send a contractor through. We're going to do all the things that we need to, to help get the highest price in the shortest amount of time. But, let's talk about when the time is right for you. But if you've lived in the house, you're now renting it, let's go ahead and have a conversation if this is at the right time for you to be selling the property. All right?

So that's my spiel on capital gains. Reach out to me if you have any questions, if you have specific property that is in a scenario that you'd like to discuss. Let's talk about it and see what the right time is for you. All right, so let's talk about the market for a minute. Thank goodness our MLS is up over 2,100 properties right now. Now, that is thank goodness because we've been sitting between 1,000 and 1,800. I didn't come to you live last week, I was on vacation. But the week before, I was able to tell you that we had 1,800 properties in our MLS. Now, guys, this continues to climb about a hundred properties a day active in our MLS.

Here's the reason being. Our sales are not going down. In fact, we are sitting almost level with our sales. Properties are still selling. If you're a seller, and this is the time of the year that you would like to sell, if it works out for you and your family and your circumstances, let's sell it. Great. Let's do it. Let's get it on the market. Sellers are still selling. Properties are still changing hands. But, there are more houses coming on the market right now. It's just this time of the year. And it will help buyers. So a lot of buyers that have been fighting and battling over a specific property or buying something that really didn't suit their needs, but they needed to invest into the market, they're finally able to do so. So thank goodness our house market is going up with an active inventory.

Now, with that said, we're still much lower than our customary what normalized market might look like, which is between about seven and 9,000 listings in our MLS. So we're far from that, but I am happy to report that it is starting to climb up. Let's talk about interest rates for a quick minute, because that's affecting a lot of people. And so interest rates are not 6% yet. They're sitting just below that, depending on your credit score, of course, and what kind of loan you're looking to take out. But a conventional 30-year fix is just below for, I would say, a good credit kind of buyer, then we're sitting just below 6%, right around that. So anyways, they have climbed. They are projected to maybe continue to climb, and we will see that that is going to affect our market between the latter half of the year.

I think that the next six months ahead, it is a changing market. It is going to be shifting. That does not mean that your property values are declining. It just means that I may not be able to get seven, eight, 10 offers on your property. But the ones that we are getting, which are one or two per property, are still at list price, which we are pushing our list prices still. But they may not be 20,000 over list price, so we got to come back into a reality check. The market the last year and a half has really set a high precedence for sellers in their expectations. And now, my task is to bring it back down into reality of what a normalized market might look like. We're not quite there yet, but we are starting to soften a little bit, and we are going to start seeing some shifting of some areas.

Things are sitting on the market a little bit longer. Things are decreasing from where their list price is. Some properties are having to come down in the list price before they find the right buyer. So it is starting to shift, the climate's starting to change. And I think the next six months is going to be looking a little different than what we've looked at in the last year and a half. So if you have any questions about the market at all, reach out to me, that's what I do every day. I study the market. I help clients meet their real estate goals, and I too can help you. So if you know of anybody that's looking in South Carolina, or, let's be honest, even across the nation, I have people. I can connect you with a great agent in your market if you're not here in South Carolina. So once again, it's always a joy to be able to bring to you some words of wisdom. If you have any questions at all, reach out to me. I'm around this weekend. Thanks, guys. Take care.