Property Brothers share insights on homeownership
Akiko MatsudaNEW YORK - The Property Brothers, highly successful HGTV home renovation show hosts, were back in New York last week to talk about homeownership and opportunities for first-time buyers.
"There's a lot of people who make a lot of money in real estate," said Jonathan Scott, one of the identical-twin TV stars. "But there's also a lot of people who lose a lot of money because they don't know what they are doing."
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From 2015 to 2016, the brothers, Drew and Jonathan Scott, filmed two seasons of their shows — "Buying & Selling" and "Property Brothers" — in Westchester and Rockland.
The Scotts were the featured guests for the "Search for Home" panel discussion, held at the Google headquarters in Manhattan last week.
The event, sponsored by Chase Home Lending and Google, was also an occasion for the two companies to release the outcome of their collaborative study, "Search for Homes Snapshot."
The study indicated that millennials, who have been slow to enter the housing market, are becoming more interested in owning homes: In 2016, 44 percent of Google searches related to the term "mortgage" was about first-time buyer mortgages, up by 11 percent from 2015.
The trend is reflected on Chase's mortgage business as well: Customers younger than 35 years old accounted for 36 percent of the bank's new mortgages in 2016, up by 16 percent from the year before.
Drew Scott, a licensed real estate agent, advised those first-time homebuyers to do their homework before showing up for an open house.
"You narrow your search down online, and even before you are searching for your property, you are narrowing down what you can afford, using (online) financial calculators," Drew Scott said during the forum.
"Whether to find a contractor for renovation, whether it's buying and selling, you have to get organized because the more information you have right from the get-go, the easier the process, the less stressful it’s going to be."
Jonathan Scott, a licensed contractor, told aspiring homeowners not to be fixated on move-in ready homes.
"Lose the ego. This is a business decision. Don't go in and say, 'Well, I can't settle for a house that's not perfect. I'm not going to settle for something that’s gross.'" he said. "Don't be afraid to take on a fixer-upper. Put a little bit of elbow grease and fix it up and then you just help secure a safer retirement for yourself."
Even if you can put your ego aside, financing a renovation project can be tricky for first-time buyers, as their resources tend to be limited.
To assist those young buyers, financial products and programs are available, said Mike Wise, senior lending manager at JP Morgan Chase, who was also on the panel.
"There're two ways to help millennials: Help them to have less money down and less closing costs," Wise said, giving examples such as a loan product that requires a minimum down payment of 3 percent, and a first-time homebuyer education program that comes with a $500 grant to reduce closing costs.
The education piece is important, not only to find some additional funds, but also to become a financially savvy homeowner, Wise continued.
"There are two things going in tandem when we talk about homeowhership," Wise said. "It's being able to buy a home and sustainability: How I stay in the house once I get it."
The Scott brothers, who currently star in a Chase commercial filmed in White Plains, couldn't agree more.
"Education is the biggest thing," Jonathan Scott said. "If you are going to do it right, you need to know what you are doing."
Drew Scott chimed in: "If you are organized and you are educated as to what to expect and you are surrounding yourself with professionals, you will be successful in real estate."