Is the St. Pete real estate market actually slow — or is that just the national headline?

In this episode of Selling St. Pete, I sit down with Doug Wagner of CrossCountry Mortgage to unpack what's really happening in Pinellas County right now — and why the story here looks different from what you're seeing on the news.

Whether you bought in 2021 and feel trapped by your low interest rate, you're renting and wondering if now is the right time to buy, or you just want honest numbers, this conversation is for you.

What we cover:

• Why existing home sales have been stuck near 4 million nationally — and what that means locally
• How COVID artificially pulled demand forward, and why rates returning to "normal" isn't bad news
• The absorption rate trend in Pinellas County that the media isn't talking about
• Why 70% of real estate agents didn't sell a single home last year — and how to make sure yours did
• The bridge loan strategy that lets equity-rich homeowners make non-contingent offers
• Why renting is almost always more expensive than owning — and when the math finally tips
• The condo market split: why Downtown St. Pete (33701) is a seller's market while beach communities sit at 15 months of inventory
• How to use seller concessions and rate buydowns to improve affordability without waiting for rates to drop
• The starter home strategy: why your first home doesn't have to be your forever home

Key stats from this episode:

• Average net worth of a renter: ~$10,000
• Average net worth of a homeowner: ~$400,000
• Historical average 30-year mortgage rate: high 6% range
• Downtown St. Pete condo inventory: seller's market over $1M, buyer's market under $1 M (different dynamics)
• Beach community condo inventory: ~15 months

Connect with Doug Wagner: 📞 727-543-2897 | CrossCountry Mortgage | knowmyhomebudget.com

Selling St. Pete is your hyper-local guide to the St. Petersburg, Florida real estate market — hosted by luxury real estate advisor Nicole Saunches of Coastal Properties Group International and Forbes Global Properties.

Welcome back to the Selling St. Pete podcast. If you have turned on the news lately, you've probably heard some version of the same story. The real estate market is slow. Rates are high.

It's just not a good time to buy or sell. And for a lot of the country, that's the headline. But I'm not seeing the same here in Pinellas County.

And that may change zip code to zip code or neighborhood to neighborhood, but absorption rates, the pace that which homes come back off of the market, have been climbing for two months straight. And homes that are priced right, they're getting multiple offers and going pending fast. So which headline is true? Honestly, both of them.

And today we're going to unpack exactly what that means for you, whether you're a homeowner who's felt stuck for years in your home, low interest rate, a buyer who's wondering if now is your moment, or someone who's just looking to make sense of it all. And joining me today is someone I completely trust having these conversations, Doug Wagner from Cross Country Mortgage.

Doug has this incredible ability to take what feels like an overwhelming financial picture and turn it into something clear and simple.

So if you've been on the fence, sitting on equity you didn't realize you had, or just trying to figure out what's actually possible for you in this market, stick around. This episode's for you. Doug, welcome back to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely. So the national narrative says that the real estate market has been flat for a couple of years.

What's the honest story and what are people getting wrong?

And so far this year, we're on track to still be right around that number. And it's important for people to know that because in a normal market, we typically see anywhere from five to five and a half million transactions.

And so an extra one to one and a half million transactions nationally ends up being a lot of individual transactions in individual markets like Florida and Pinellas County, Hillsborough county and all of our surrounding counties. So it's important to know that because the market has had a lot less transactions these last few years.

Yeah. And you talk about homeowners feeling stuck. What's actually keeping them stuck? We know that interest rates is playing a large part in that.

Is it just interest rates?

I don't think so. I think that the main thing is interest rates. There's no doubt about that.

But I think that you know, Covid showed us that people, most people do what they see other people doing.

And so before COVID if you would have told someone to buy a house, you need to pay tens of thousands of dollars over asking price with no appraisal, contingency and no inspection period, people would have probably laughed or thought that that's a weird joke, or just not really understood why you would even say something like that, because we've never really experienced something like that. But then here comes Covid, and that becomes a very common thing for over a year, year and a half or so.

And it's because I think people had fear of missing out. And I think now the challenge is, yes, interest rates are higher.

And then you saw home prices go up so fast because of the low rates, but now we've got rates that are three and a half times higher than they were a year and a half ago. So then it got to the point where all over the media, it was a talk about affordability. And I think that that was a very real topic back then.

But then what's happened since then is in a lot of cases, people's income has typically gone up over the last four years. We have seen most home prices go down a little bit, and we've seen interest rates come down.

So my belief as to why existing home sales have not picked up is it's. It's the same thing, just a different reason. Most people are doing what they see other people doing.

So during COVID people were going over asking price because everyone they knew was buying a home. Right now you can get a better price on a home or better terms on a home. But most people are not aware of that.

And so therefore most people are not taking advantage of that. Because most people are thinking now is not a good time to buy or sell because of what you just said.

It's all over the media that it's not a good time to buy or a good time to sell.

Yeah. And can we unpack that a little bit?

Because the historically low interest rates that people capitalized on in the pandemic years were just that historically low. And they were, I would argue, artificially low because they were trying to stimulate the economy.

And the rates that we're seeing now, if you look at the historical averages over the last 50, 50, 60, 70 years, we are on par with where average rates have been in that time period. So those low rates that people were able to secure, again, great for them. But that's not what we've seen historically over the past 50 years.

And to your point, I think now that rates have been where they are for a while. We're kind of normalizing back into the absorption rates I talked about.

They are increasing nowhere near the frenetic pace that we were in 21, 22, 23. But we're going back to what we were seeing in 18, 19, so that we're more normalizing. Is that what you're seeing on your end?

Yes. The historical average for interest rates is roughly the high 6% range. And what we saw during COVID I mean, that was record setting.

You know that that is something that has never happened before.

And what people need to realize is that usually when something happens that the market creates due to a lack of regulation or due to a lack of just unreal, not realizing what, what the results are going to be, typically the market and the government puts things in place to make sure that doesn't happen again. So what do I mean by that?

So it probably seemed like, hey, this is just a good way to see stimulate the housing market. Well, lots of people were buying homes and people did what other people were doing.

So more people bought homes and it was so easy to buy a home and everything was fine up until a certain point in time when all of a sudden it wasn't fine anymore and there ended up being a big problem. Well, the lower interest rates caused a different problem. It was not Easy to get a mortgage.

The guidelines for getting a mortgage and underwriting didn't get easier. It's just the affordability had gotten so, so good that so many people that would have bought in the future. It basically pulled the demand forward.

So the way the current conditions are of the market, it's pushing the demand backwards. And so the challenge is, is if people think we'll see those lower rates again, it's highly unlikely.

And I say unlikely because none of us really know what's going to happen. Right, but you're right, rates were pushed artificially low. We've had the Fed's fund rate at zero before.

So that's not why rates were at two and a half percent on average for a 30 year mortgage.

It was because on top of that, the Fed was also buying billions and billions and billions, tens of billions in mortgage backed securities every single month. And so a lot of that is what determines the price of interest rates for mortgages or you know, the, the ten year Treasury.

When it comes to the US debt, the government was a heavy buyer when it came to those investments. And so that's why we saw interest rates come so low. We saw what happened as a result.

So chances of the government or the Fed getting involved in doing something like that ever again, it's just extremely unlikely.

And, and that frenetic buying caused prices to skyrocket because there was so much competition. We know that, you know, the home prices is driven by supply and demand.

And when you have say 10 people trying to buy one home, to your point, what you were talking about earlier, that was driving prices up because in order to have your offer accepted, you had to give the best rate or the best terms and oftentimes that term came down to price.

But now I think what we're seeing, because even though we are seeing prices rise nominally here, some neighborhoods more than others, but year over year or year to date I think we're just under 7% here in the Tampa Bay area for the average price increase home. But what we're seeing is the number of homes on the market is starting to decrease again because we are seeing some activity picking up.

But I think where we're sort of stuck is a lot of people who bought in 21, 22 who experienced those low interest rates, who maybe want to buy now, say there's no way I can do it because I'm not going to lose my 3% mortgage. I can't go into a 6% or a 7% mortgage. So how do you reframe that for someone who feels stuck as to what's actually possible right now for them?

So that's a good question. So I think there's. There's a couple of things there. First, the market is.

It's a little bit more strange now than it has been the last couple of years. And, and what I mean by that is we do see certain scenarios where there's multiple offers on a home that is listed for sale.

It's not common, but it's also not uncommon. It's the strangest thing.

Now, as far as the absorption rate, I can't speak on that, but I do know that the level of homes being delisted is pretty high. And I think it's important for us to just touch on that a little bit.

Because if you are listening to this and you are wanting to sell your home, again, we're not here to forecast what's going to happen. We do not know. But what I do know is that a lot of people are taking their homes off the market because they're not getting the price that they want.

Like, I just don't see that happening in most cases. So just like a lot of the data we see, there's multiple facets of it and that's important for people to be aware of.

Now, for the people that feel stuck again, I think some of that is a true emotional feeling, but I also think some of that is because it's what the media says.

And then people read or listen to the media, so then when they are with their friends, family or coworkers, they're saying the same things that they are reading about. That it's not a good time to buy, it's not a good time to sell. People are locked out of the real estate market. The real estate market is frozen.

And we know that's not true because we are actively helping people with buying and selling homes.

So the difference is that last year, and this was a study that came out from NAR, the National association of Realtors, that 70% of real estate agents did not even sell a single home last year. Why is that important?

Well, it's important to know that because if you are a buyer or seller working with a real estate agent that is not actively transacting in this market, then how are they going to give you the proper guidance to help you win in today's market? So what we typically see is that the market goes back and forth.

It goes from a buyer's market to a seller's market, and from a seller's market to a buyer's market. In those different markets, we have different strategies. When it's a seller's market like it was during COVID we focused on helping families.

We, we taught them, how do you buy in this market? You know, such as quicker closing dates, eliminating contingencies like inspection periods, how to waive their appraisal safely.

Because again, there's a safe way to do that and a risky way to do that, whereas in a buyer's market, it's more about getting incentives and concessions.

And so you and me were talking the other day, and one of the things you and me brought up was how builders that are selling new construction, they're leading with incentives, they're not leading with pro price reductions because most people buy based on monthly payment, not on price.

And what we have seen, and again, Covid is an example of this, is that the interest rates are going to impact a payment much more than lowering the price would be. If we're able to, instead of lowering the price, maybe get a seller concession to help with an interest rate buy down.

So it's really important that the people listening are aware of the importance of working with a good real estate agent, because it all starts with you guys.

If the real estate agent is not having a good conversation with the potential home buyers and renters and the people that are owners talking with them about selling and upgrading or downgrading, maybe based on their age and, you know, life goals, then they'll never get to us to have that real conversation.

And when we have those home buyer consultations, these are the things we talk with people about, is how do you leverage concessions in this market to help increase your affordability, help lower your monthly payment and get a slightly lower interest rate than where the market's currently at, because you can do all of those things. And I think that's the challenge, is that most buyers don't know what we know. And really most Realtors don't know what you know.

And if they did, they'd be able to guide their clients a little bit better.

Yeah. And it's so important, you know, you talk about that the market having different strategies for buyer's market versus a seller's market.

And we see both of those within our market here. So. But it really depends on what you're buying. And, you know, take for instance, the condo market.

It has softened drastically since the legislation post Surfside Tower collapse.

And but in downtown St. Pete's that's not the case, in part because a lot of those buildings are new or aren't yet subject to the milestone, the milestone report. That said, it really is building by building because Bayfront Tower is facing a significant assessment.

And then you have, you know, art House or 400 Central that are just coming to market, that aren't going to face that milestone inspection for 25 or 30 years. And so how you would go in with an offer would vary differently from Bayfront tower to, say, 400 Central or Art House.

They've had the milestone inspections. Maybe they're behind on the structural reserve integrity study that they're catching up.

And so you're seeing those HOA fees double or triple in some instances because of the deferred maintenance that has happened. And again, your strategy for putting on in an offer there is going to be far different than if you were buying in downtown St. Pete.

And even in downtown St. Pete, the supply changes over a million and under a million. In under a million, we're in a seller's market or in a buyer's market. Over a million, we're in a seller's market.

So it's really important to know what environment you're going to be buying in because it gives you different tools to use. Right?

Yeah, I agree with all that.

And speaking of tools, you have an ideal home calculator. Can you talk a little bit about what it is and what happens when someone runs Their numbers.

Yeah. So we have a tool that we created and made a website, knowmyhomebudget.com and basically it's meant for real estate agents.

But as a consumer, you could use it and just pretend you're a real estate agent and answer the four simple questions that it's designed for a real estate agent to ask their clients, which is simply, are you living in your ideal home in terms of size, bedroom count, et cetera?

And then there's a few other questions that go along with it, but ultimately it's to find out if you can upgrade in today's market, or if you're a renter, can you buy in today's market?

So it's a really good tool to use because again, I think a lot of people pre diagnose themselves, and that's a big thing for people to realize is to not pre diagnose. We talk about that on our team all the time. A lot of mortgage people, they will pre diagnose a client when they have a phone call with them.

It's not good to do because there are times where it might sound like, hey, this could be a problem or a challenge. But if you go through the process, you can oftentimes find ways to help a family with being able to qualify to buy.

Well, it's the same thing when you try to pre diagnose your own buying ability. You might not realize some of the different ways, strategies, programs, et cetera, that can help make homeownership a possibility for you.

And I think the other thing is to also realize that, you know, sometimes it's okay to start out with a starter home. You know, one of the biggest challenges is when people want to buy the most perfect home for their first home.

Everyone that I know that's done well with real estate never started out with their forever home on their first purchase. I actually don't know anyone that has done that, but the people that I see that have tried to do that, most of them have not bought a home.

And I say that because it's important to know that even though something might be your ideal home today, it might not be your ideal home in seven or ten years from now.

You might have kids for the first time, or, or your kids get older, or maybe your kids end up moving out of the house again, just depending on where you are at in life. So there's that.

And then going back to your question earlier, which also ties into this tool that we are currently talking about, is why people feel like they're locked in and if it's worth staying in a home because of their lower interest rate. The interest rate was an accessory to the home that you wanted to buy in the first place. The whole point of owning a home is the home.

You don't buy a home because of the interest rate. You buy a home because, number one, it fits your lifestyle.

Number two, this is a national stat that the average net worth of a renter is roughly $10,000, and the average net worth of a homeowner is $400,000.

And so when we're meeting with first time home buyers, that's one of the things we talk about, is how you have to tie yourself to something that goes up in value over time. Because if you don't, then you are simply relying on your own income and savings ability to grow your net worth.

And that's getting harder and harder to do. I mean, a large coffee from Starbucks is almost $10. Okay. It's just things are expensive.

And so one of the things you and me have talked about, just for example, is, you know, if you buy a home for $300,000, and if it goes up 5% a year on average over the next seven years, it turns into roughly $420,000 of a home value. If you took that same $10,000 and put that into a savings account at 4%, it might end up being 12, $13,000 over that same seven year time frame.

And so it's just such a big difference in wealth creation. And that's why it's not always about starting with your ideal home.

It's about just getting into the market and then down the road you can always sell that home. And now you have all this extra money to go towards a larger down payment on a bigger, more expensive home.

And that's typically the pattern we see with people that do the best with just buying real estate in general.

Yeah. You know, we talk about as your stat that the national association put out that renters or homeowners are on average 44 times wealthier than renters.

And home ownership having that mortgage is, I think the two biggest things about real estate ownership is it's a great hedge against inflation. And it's also sort of a forced savings because to your point, as the asset appreciates, it's kind of monopoly money until you sell it. Right.

So even as the market fluctuates, what we've seen time after time is that for large stretches of time, your home is going to appreciate.

I don't know that there's ever been a period of time over 10 years in the US where the housing market hasn't appreciated at some point, if you're holding it for 10 years. And, you know, the old adage used to be that in order to see any sort of profit, that you had to own it a minimum of five years.

And so I think what happened is a lot of people, especially investors, you know, we're buying, flipping, seeing huge returns, and then expecting to be able to do that in our current market. And, you know, are there those opportunities? Sure, but not nearly at the pace that we saw them, you know, a decade ago.

Correct.

So can you talk about, I know that Cross country has a great bridge loan program. Can you talk a little bit about that?

And also, I just want to point out for people who did buy in 21 or 22 and have those great interest rates, one thing that they may be overlooking is a large amount of capital that they're sitting on in terms of equity. And so the bridge loan is a great way that they might be able to tap into that without having to write an offer with a contingency. Correct?

Correct. Yeah. So the bridge loan is a really good resource and tool to be able to use for us to be able to help you with that.

You do have to have equity in your home. Right.

So the bridge loan, number one, can help you access that money without having to have your home sold first. And one of the biggest benefits that, like you said, it also removes that contingency. Right.

So when we think of how do we make our offer as strong as possible, we want to give the seller certainty. So if you think of one scenario, I own a home, I need to sell it to be able to buy the next home.

That doesn't give the seller as much certainty as I want to buy your home, and I'm ready to close on it. As long as the inspection and appraisal is Good. Right.

It's not about your existing home selling because you're using the bridge loan to access the equity in your home, which you're going to use for the down payment. That's the thing that most real estate agents and current homeowners don't know that they have access to.

And so even though in a lot of cases it may be a buyer's market, we still want to give the seller certainty because it just helps you negotiate even better. Right. And so we want to use that when we're able to use that.

You know, we had a family that we were talking to last week and they asked if they should use the bridge loan, and we told them no because they already had a lot of money in savings and didn't need a bridge loan to make an offer on a home. But for those of you who maybe don't have as much money available, then that could be a good option and it's worth looking into.

Excellent. And for a homeowner or a renter who's been on the fence, what do you want them to walk away knowing today?

Well, I mean, there's so much. Right. But if we were going to just give a couple of bullet points, I think one is that most of the time renting is more expensive than owning.

When you buy an investment property, the interest rate you get is a little bit higher than if you were to buy a primary residence.

And so landlords usually a lot of times get mortgages, the interest rate is higher, and then they want to make a profit on top of that, which is why so many times renting is more expensive than owning a home.

Now we're in a very rare moment in time where that might not be the case as often, because a lot of people that owned investment properties either before or bought during COVID either bought or refinanced into those really low interest rates. And so a lot of times you will see people that are paying a very low amount in rent. So we can't argue with that.

But at a certain point, you have to ask yourself, if you are a renter, when are you going to bite the bullet? Because if you wait another few years, you know, I'm just making this scenario up.

But if you wait another few years and then rent increases and then the landlord raises their rent to a more, we'll just say realistic number, you know, they just increase it to something that's more in line with where the market is. Well, then, now what do you do? You don't have the price stability because the rent or the landlord could raise the rent at any given point in time.

And in the future, chances are home prices are going to be higher because historically real estate goes up in value. You had made a comment earlier that we've never seen real estate go down for 10 consecutive years in a row. And that's right, we haven't.

Over the last 75 years, we've only seen real estate prices go down five or six times total. That's important to know. And so maybe you are one of those people that is living in a nice house or condo or apartment with a very low rent payment.

But what about five and ten years from now? And what if you bought today and your house goes up in value significantly over the next 10 years? How does that impact the rest of your life? Right.

It's usually never convenient to pay more for something, even if it's an investment. Same thing with saving for retirement. It's never convenient to give up some of your money today for what may be 30 years from now.

But the people that save at a younger age retire with more at an older age. And as they get older, they don't have to save as much because they started so long ago they had time on their side.

And so I think that's the message is that if you are renting, it is definitely worth looking into what it takes to buy a home. What's a scenario where I wouldn't buy if I was going to move in a year? Right.

I mean, if I'm moving in a year or maybe even two years, I probably wouldn't buy a home. But if I'm going to stay somewhere for three to five years, maybe longer, then chances are it's a good decision to buy.

Let the house go up in value you're paying to balance down. You have price stability. So that's what I would recommend.

Yeah. And a couple of points that I would make also is, you know, you mentioned the value of a starter home and using that to get you started.

And then when circumstances change, you can move that into the move up home house hacking for young people.

It's a great way, you know, for to have rental income count towards your mortgage or buying a multifamily property and having other people pay off park part of your mortgage or getting down payment assistance. There are a lot of different things that you can use to help get into a home that can help you leverage that appreciation.

And when it comes to retirement, you've got, you know, a nice chunk of money because you've been letting those mortgage payments appreciate or Build up the equity in that asset for sure.

When we meet with older home buyers, especially the ones that are either retired or close to retirement, most of them know what their net worth is. I mean, they're getting ready to retire or they already are. So those numbers matter.

And just like when I meet with first time home buyers, I stress the importance of tying yourself to something that will go up in value so you can have a good retirement and have your net worth increase. Well, with the older generation, I'll ask them, what would your net worth be if you never bought a house?

The answers are always different, but the what's common is that they all say that real estate was such a big part of their wealth creation. And so again, the time to start is as young as possible. If you're in your 40s or 50s, it's not too late really.

If you're in your 60s, it's not too late, it's never too late.

But if you're in your 20s and you're saying that you want to wait until you're making even more money or you have even more money saved, I'm not going to say that that's wrong because there's not rules to this stuff we're talking about. But in general that's usually not the best thing to do.

And that's why having a meeting with you, seeing what the market is like, and then ultimately having a conversation and a consultation with us to see what their options are is what people should do doesn't cost anything.

And it gives you the real information rather than so much of the, I hate to say the wrong information, but there's so much bad information on the Internet. You don't want one of the biggest decisions in your life being pre diagnosed by yourself based on what you read on the Internet.

Correct? Correct. Well, thank you so much for this conversation.

I know we could go on for hours talking about this and I would love to have you back to talk at a different time subject. But for people who want to have a consultation with you, what is the best way for them to reach you?

But it really just starts with our simple pre approval process. Getting an application in letting you know what documents are needed for review, such as pay stubs, bank statements.

It's usually a very short list of things that are needed.

Once we have those documents in for review, then we schedule a consultation to kind of go over all the facts and figures to help families with being able to make the important decisions that they need to make.

Excellent. Thank you so much for joining me, and have a great day.

My pleasure. You as well.

Thank you.