Alright, here's the midweek chaos I called the Punch List — I'm Eric G., your loudspeaker for home stuff and occasional festival hype. I kick things off by bragging about being the MC for Rock the Locks in Umatilla (Sept 25–27) — three days, 25 bands, camping, and a ridiculous amount of classic rock goodness. If you’re wondering why a home-improvement nerd is moonlighting as a concert MC, it’s because we appreciate good build quality whether it’s a guitar rig or a soffit detail. I promise I’ll be handing out high-fives and remodeling tips between bands. Come say hi; I’ll trade a festival story for your best paint-splatter war scar. Then we roll into the real-deal housing talk — the market's shifted. Inventory is up (1.62 million existing homes), sales have cooled, and mortgage rates are doing their dramatic weekly impression (30-year hovering near the high 6s). Translation: it’s more of a buyer’s playground than a seller’s gold rush right now, but lending is stingy. We talk the nitty-gritty for buyers (opportunities if you can stomach the rates), sellers (you’ll need strategy), and investors (get creative with financing and beware fixes-and-flips — margins are thinner than a quarter-inch shim). I also hit a recall roundup — sketchy AC units, problematic hair-dryer brushes, dodgy fire spray cans, and dual-fuel ranges missing a safety cap — because living in a safe home is the hot trend I can absolutely get behind.

Takeaways:

• I'm stoked — I'm MCing Rock the Locks festival Sept 25–27, a camping-friendly, three-day bash with 25 bands that I absolutely can’t wait to hang at.
• We’re watching inventory climb to the highest levels since November 2019, which is quietly flipping leverage to buyers and making life harder for sellers who expected last-decade dynamics.
• I keep saying borrowing costs are the wild card here: the 30-year average jumped to about 6.76%, and that squeeze on affordability is changing buyer behavior fast.
• If you’re a real estate investor, get creative with financing now — fix-and-flip margins are getting crushed by recent price cuts and interest volatility, so play smart or sit this cycle out.
• I can’t ignore the cold numbers: roughly 59.5% of homes sold below their original list price with a median fifty days on market, which is a pretty blunt signal sellers need to adjust strategies.
• We went deep on safety recalls — from Amana through-wall ACs that risk fire to plug-in hair-dryer brushes risking electrocution and dual-fuel ranges missing gas caps; do me a favor and check cpsc.gov if you own any of these.

Links referenced in this episode:

• cpsc.gov
• aroundtheline.com

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Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

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Eric G. Welcome to the around the House show.

I am Eric G. Thanks for joining us today.

Waking up with a new name here for our midweek episode and we're gonna call it the Punch List.

This is that episode that didn't get covered in last weekend's maybe next weekend show.

This is that stuff that we're doing during the week that, hey, we should be talking about but maybe don't have enough space to do a complete episode on.

That's where we're at today.

So thanks for joining us.

I am super excited, guys.

Not this weekend, but next weekend.

If you're in the Pacific Northwest, there is the Rock the Locks Festival.

Why does this matter?

Yeah, it's another concert festival.

One, it's kick ass two.

I am the MC for it.

So join me up in Umatilla, Oregon here September 25th through 27th.

This is going to be great.

I'm looking forward to it.

Three days of rock, 25 bands, two stages and a lot of my favorite bands.

So we got God, Smack, Simple Plan, Leonard, Skynyrd, so many other big ones.

It's going to be an absolute fun time.

Now here's the cool part as well.

This is going to be super fun because it's camp the whole weekend as well.

So we'll see you there if you're going to be there.

We've got a great lineup for this festival.

Some of my favorite bands all at the same time, which I absolutely love.

So we've got Daughtry, we've got Jackal, get out the Chainsaw, the band, Dorothy, she's amazing.

And so many other bands.

So many other fun ones.

And this is exciting with Simple Plan, one of my favorites, Candle Box, Theory of a Dead Man.

I love those guys.

I tell you what, they are my Bernie Toppin of breakup songs.

Those guys have got the best writing.

Seven Dust, which is super fun.

And then just the bands keep going, Blue Tattoo.

And I can't tell you what, it's going to be a lot of fun.

Lynyrd Skynyrd is going to be fun.

Tesla, Ricky Rocket, Rocket Mafia, the Driver for Poison, Cowboy Math, so many other Leviticus.

Geez, it just keeps going.

So it's gonna Be a great time.

See out there, come say hi to me, send me a message.

Maybe we can meet up and we could say hi face to face.

This week I wanted to talk here.

We've been talking about kind of in this and now what we call the punch list.

We've been talking about what's going on in the real estate market out there because I still see plenty of Facebook posts, oh my gosh, the housing market is going to crash like 08.

It's not.

Now, are we seeing some big warning signs that things aren't going well for sellers?

Heck, yeah.

Absolutely.

So there's our warning sign right there.

That's some critical data when we look at it.

Okay, if there's a lot of homes, then people don't build them.

So let's talk about why do we have this inventory accumulation?

So existing home sales slipped in September here, basically actually August, they're measuring August.

They reported in September, existing home sales slipped 2% month over month from July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.98 million units.

So the primary catalyst here is not the absence of buyers, but an accumulation of unsold inventory alongside some pretty restrictive debt costs.

So unsold existing home inventory jumped 3.2% from July to 1.2 1.62 million units at the end of 26 here of August.

So that's a 5.9% increase from the year before.

So we have got a lot of homes out there, which is pushing.

It's really changed this.

So what do we have?

We actually have a buyer's market instead of a seller's market now.

So if you're out buying your home, you're like, hey, I want to buy my first home.

We're getting to the time, except for our interest rates, for you to try to dive into this.

So borrowing costs right now are super volatile and restrictive.

So if you look at Freddie Mac's primary mortgage market fund survey that just came out a few days ago, the average 30 year fixed rate mortgage rose to 6.76 from 6.71 the previous week and 6.35% 12 months prior.

So really tells you where we're at on the 30.

And if you're doing a 15 year, it's at 6.09%, up from 6.04.

So there's the thing.

So you think about it here.

In a year ago we were at 635 and now we're at 697.

So that has come up there.

So here's where we're at.

There are definitely like we talked about in the last couple of weeks, there are a lot of places that are booming.

There are a lot of people that are coming together.

So when you look at this, we're seeing price cuts across the country.

So we're seeing that cruise across now.

What I'm seeing here in my area, I'm starting to see short sales come up.

And what this is people that have bought a house maybe in the last two or three years or had a bunch of.

Maybe they had a second mortgage on it, something was going on.

Those are increasing.

And I'm seeing it out there because we're out doing the house looking ourselves.

Adam, that came out on September 9, it said that 59.5% of homes sold below their original list price, with property spending a medium of 50 days on the market.

So that's something that's interesting.

So if you look in the south, this is where we start to see these changes, guys.

If we look in the south, existing percent in the west here where I'm at, sales were flat.

So that's a big one right there.

In the Midwest, sales declined 3.1%.

And in the Northeast, sales dropped 4% month over month.

So that's where we're starting to see that here.

So real estate investors, this is where it's getting interesting here.

So they're going out, maybe buying some homes.

We're not seeing those big companies buy homes up, which is great.

I like that, since they've changed some of the rules for that.

Here's the other one, though.

If you're a real estate investor, you're gonna have to double down on creative financing.

Because I tell you what, that is one of those things out there that we're seeing.

There is a lot of different interest rates for this stuff when you're doing the investment side.

So if you're using other people's money, like many people are, there's a lot of those programs that are gone.

They're just gone.

So you're gonna have to come up with some creative money to do this.

Second of all, fix and flip investors, this is where it's gonna get interesting.

This is where a lot of the flippers are gonna get Burned.

If you're going out to buy something and all of a sudden you're 5% lower than you were a few months ago, 5%'s a lot when it comes down to your margin on this.

So this is not the best time to fix and flip.

Are there exceptions?

Absolutely.

In your market, if there's a hole out there, that's a rare house, like you're in a neighborhood, you're in an area and that's there's only one neighborhood with single story range homes or something.

Yeah, makes sense.

So that's where we're at.

So be real careful out there, guys.

And this can burn you pretty easily if you're a real estate investor.

So make sure we're in that spot where this can be a big one.

So be creative.

If you're out shopping for a home and you're an apartment.

We're getting to the point now that be really careful.

People are trying to sell those things and they're getting aggressive, which is good for you and the buyer.

All right, guys, I want to talk about some recalls here.

We did talk about it a couple weeks ago, but I want to bring it up again.

Dakin Comfort Technologies manufacturing recalls the Amana through the wall air conditioners and heat pumps due to risk of serious injury and fire.

That's a big one right there.

We want to make sure that we're careful with that because I tell you what, Whoo, buddy.

Don't need to be getting a fire from that ac, especially this late in the season for many people.

So take a look at that.

Make sure that you don't have the.

The wrong one in the wall.

How do you find this [email protected]?

There's a few other ones here.

Some of these are amazing.

And again, it's the problem that we see with stuff that you buy online.

Great example here.

This one.

Junkins.

What a name.

Recalls their hair dryer brushes due to risk of injury or death from electrocution.

This is a plug in brush.

I didn't even know they made these things.

But the hair dryer brushes lack an integrated immersion protection device, which could cause a fire.

Yikes.

Or electrocute somebody.

But I was like, wow, that could go completely sideways.

There is a ton of dressers and furniture out there on that.

Didn't put a kit to attach it to the wall.

So that's one there.

And then prepared Hero recalls fire spray canisters due to risk of serious injury or death from fire and burn.

Hazard.

The recalled fire spray canister can deteriorate over time, causing it to rupture and fail to operate during a fire.

So there's about 31,000 of those.

It's a blue and red little spray can.

A small little thing.

The next one here, and this is an interesting one.

Dual fuel ranges recall due to risk of serious injury or death from fire or explosion hazards.

So this is AGA.

This is that European looking range.

Those are kind of dangerous out there, so be very careful.

They should shut off the gas supply to avoid a risk of gas leak immediately.

And contact aggressive AA range master.

They were missing a cap from the gas test port that can cause a gas leak, posing a risk of serious injury or death.

So somebody missed cap day there at the plant.

Make sure that you're careful with that Triumph close course competition motorcycle due to risk of serious injury or death from a crash hazard.

So there could be problems there.

There's about 15, 60 of those.

Be careful.

And really everything else that I'm seeing here is just a lot of toys, a lot of furniture, a lot of that kind of stuff.

So be really, really careful out there.

All right, guys, one more thing.

Could you do me a favor?

We are on a push right now to expand our audience.

Could you share this show with somebody if they're out there starting a remodel?

We got a great one coming up this weekend.

We'll be talking about remodeling on the show.

We'll talk about that a little bit later.

But share it off to your friends.

Put it up on social media.

I would love to get some help on that.

So if you could help us with that, that is the best thing you can do so we can grow this audience and get you better content every single week.

All right, guys, we're running out of time.

I need to roll.

Thanks for tuning into around the house.

If you want to find out more, head to aroundtheline.com.

We'll see you Saturday.

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Thanks for tuning in to around the house.

Take this good time and turn it up louder.

No one ever talks about the nights they went to bed counting them.

She catching teas?

Kidding.

Beauty rest acting your age don't make for good story.

Knock one back.

No buzz, no glory.

No one ever talks about the shots.

They didn't take drinks.