Mortgage Matters

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a Kun V studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Roland Daniels 0:43
Good morning Las Vegas. Welcome to mortgage matters. I'm your host, Roland Daniels, a certified mortgage advisor with Geneva financial. My NMLS number is 355859, company. NMLS number is 42056, and I'm here this morning as always, with my fantastic co host, Heidi Griffith, good morning. Heidi, well,

Heidi Griffith 1:04
good morning. Roland, you are always so kind. I am. How are you this Sunday? I am doing awesome. I'm glad to hear that my name is Heidi Griffith. I'm also a mortgage advisor and your Director of Client Services. My NMLS is 2447754,

Roland Daniels 1:17
and we've got an awesome guest and a great show lined up today, but before we get started, we just want to let you know about our upcoming class that could make a difference if you're thinking about buying a home. Yeah,

Heidi Griffith 1:29
that's right, you're invited to join us for Nevada housing divisions home as possible down payment program. It's happening on Monday May 12. That's from four to five, and it's online. If

Roland Daniels 1:39
you'd like to register, feel free to give us a call or text. That number is 702-210-2057,

Heidi Griffith 1:46
and you can always head over to our Facebook page. That's mortgage matters radio. You'll find a link to the event there. Before we introduce today's guest, we just want to take a moment. We want to talk about something that we're really committed to. It's our Help us. Help campaign. This campaign was created by Roland and I as a response to what we're seeing every day, people feeling like they're being left behind, a housing system and a housing market that feels harder and harder to navigate every single day, whether it's

Roland Daniels 2:10
rising rent, unfair lending practices or families getting pushed out of opportunity, the cracks in the system are definitely growing, and we knew we couldn't wait for someone else to fix it, help us. Help is our way of stepping up and bringing others with

Heidi Griffith 2:26
us. That's right, and the campaign's about coming next. Couldn't right? We're linking arms with housing advocates, nonprofits, legal experts and even elected officials. Right? People who care and are ready to act. So if you're someone looking for help, or maybe you are someone who can help or know someone who can, please feel free to call or text us. We're at 702-210-2057, let's do something real together. And

Roland Daniels 2:49
that brings us today, to today's guest, someone who's deeply aligned with exactly this Maurice page. He's the Executive Director of the Nevada Housing Coalition. Welcome,

Heidi Griffith 3:00
thank you for having me. Welcome. I'd love to read your bio really quick. Do you mind? Please? Let's do this. Maurice so Maurice page. He's the Executive Director of the Nevada Housing Coalition. It's a statewide member based nonprofit working to promote the development and preservation of affordable housing for all Nevadans through collaboration, education and advocacy. Maurice is a solutions oriented and a visionary leader with an undying passion for community service and civic engagement. Maurice brings with him 20 years of invaluable experience and a deep understanding of both the challenges and opportunities within the Housing and Homeless sectors. Having dedicated 14 years to transformative work in these areas, he has a proven track record in fostering collaborations with public agencies and various stakeholders to instigate systems change aimed at preventing and eradicating homelessness. Maurice,

Roland Daniels 3:50
good morning and welcome to mortgage matters. Thank you. Thank you for having me so pleasure. Yes, we're excited to have you with us today, right? Heidi, yeah, and it's such an impressive background. So before we jump in, we would like to just share a little bit more, or we want you to share a little bit more about yourself with our listeners. Tell

Maurice Page 4:07
us, what do you do? Excellent. Well again, good morning. Thank you again, just for having me and allowing me to be a part of this show and talk about these issues that were that's going on in our in our in our great state. So originally, I am to give you a little bit of bit more background. Originally, I was born in New York on the Long Island kid, but I was raised in Philadelphia and and so from there, was able to, you know, just inner city kid, went through the ups and downs of life. Was able to go to school, got my degree and played a little basketball, and one of my mentors was actually a executive for Campbell Soup, okay, and and so when I was looking coming out of school and wrapping up my basketball career, asked him, I said, hey. I need a job. What's going on? And so he said, okay, cool, apply for a regional manager position for Campbell Soup and and so, you know, I got hired, and then I got the call. He said, Hey, how about Las Vegas? I said, Hey, how about so that began my journey here into the desert state, and I came, moved here, and within about a couple of years, actually, unfortunately, I lost the job due to layoffs. Campbell's had a severe, major layoff and and so, you know, loved it here, and so, you know, I'm gonna just stay here and try to work things out. And so that began my career went went into banking. I was a a VP for which is an Assistant Vice President for being in Nevada, doing business development. And then after the recession hit, the housing recession hit, crossed over and jumped into the nonprofit sector, and have never left. Found a passion for helping others. Kind of, kind of really realized my my flair for when I was a child, my mother always kept me involved in the community and helping out with others. And so, you know, it kind of reignited being able to help others achieve their goals, their dreams and and so here we are today, awesome.

Heidi Griffith 6:14
So, so tell me about the Nevada Housing Coalition. Absolutely. So

Maurice Page 6:18
Nevada Housing Coalition was a vision by one of my current board members, Bill Brewer, who was the executive director for the Nevada Rural Housing Authority after the housing recession of oh 809, he saw that, you know, we were going to, you know, incur a lot of housing issues, a lot of housing concerns. And so, you know, his vision was, well, let's bring together a coalition of like minded individuals who can, you know, you know, put together some plans and funding to be able to incorporate more housing throughout the state. And so by 2019 that dream was came to fruition. And, and so the first executive director, Christine, has was at the helm and and so I've been fortunate. She has now moved on to the Nevada housing division, where she is currently the chief financial officer. And I stepped into her toes, stepped into her shoes, I should say, big shoes to fill. And so I credit her, but we was able to develop a great relationship over the years. And so this was just, you know, the next step for me, and I'm hoping that making her proud and making my board proud. You know, as far as carrying out the responsibilities of creating more affordable housing

Heidi Griffith 7:29
throughout our state, that's great. So what do you guys do? How does this work? So,

Maurice Page 7:33
as you said, the Nevada Housing Coalition, we are a membership based organization. We do not provide direct services. So we don't do rental services, we don't provide, you know, support services, anything along those lines. But what we do is we, we educate the community, right? We, we act as a convener between our developers, our our politicians, our our constituents throughout the state. And then, you know, we, we collaborate with everyone, right? And so we make sure that your voice is heard on every level. And excuse me, we advocate, I should say, on every level. And so we want to ensure that your voices, from the from the ones who are barely making it to the ones who are just getting by, that their voices are being heard and that we are creating an opportunity for them to be housing, sustain their housing, that's

Heidi Griffith 8:23
what so. So this year's the big year,

Maurice Page 8:25
right? This year is the bigger every every other year is the big year, right? The biennial. So, yes, we are in the legislative session right now, 2023, you know, we have an unprecedented number of housing bills that have been presented, everything from tenant rights to affordable housing, to home ownership, to land availability, you name it. People are, you know, legislators are putting bills forward and are looking towards making an improvement on housing throughout the state. And so, you know, our organization, we, in the years past, we've normally had a bill that we've probably sponsored this year. We do not however, we are covering a lot of those bills, and we're keeping our membership informed what's going on. Just as a backdrop, we provide policy calls every first and third Tuesdays of each month. We have our government affairs team that comes on the fourth Thursday of every month, and then we send out a bill tracker that highlights all of the housing bills that are being presented every second and fourth month. So we're keeping our, you know, we have a coalition membership base of close to 400 members, so we we are definitely growing and and so that's how we keep everyone informed. That's

Roland Daniels 9:35
awesome. And where does the public where? Where can they find those bills?

Maurice Page 9:39
So they can go on the Nellis website to find all of the housing bills. I believe, in general, there's possible, oh, my goodness, don't quote me on this, but it's probably over 1100 bills. Oh, wow, yeah, all together. And so, I mean, but you have to realize it's everything from housing to medical to education, so forth and so on. Health. Wellness, but for us, and us being a Housing Coalition, we're just going to monitor all of the housing bills. And so again, you know, if you would like to just be able to know what those those bills are, you can become a member. You have option becoming a member. You can also visit our website in the Housing coalition.org, where you won't necessarily have access to the housing matrix, but you can get updates on what we're presenting and when we're presenting

Roland Daniels 10:27
them. Okay? And one of the biggest questions we hear, what is going on with the current affordable housing landscape, and what does that look like? That's,

Maurice Page 10:36
that's, that's a lot. That's a big question, right? So, so let me, so let's take it back, really. And if I can, I'm gonna draw this answer out a little bit, just so that we can all be on the same page. You know, before the housing recession, you know, we were building, you know, Nevada was one of the fastest growing metropolitan cities where the country and then the housing recession hit, and then from there, especially from a affordable housing perspective, that that creation or development of affordable housing really was minimized and to the point where we was, you know, really building a roughly about 300 units a year, maybe 300 units, 300 units a year, right? So. And again, looking at our population and looking where we were going, we were top 10 in the country in regards to how our how our housing was being developed, and so then you had COVID hit, you had our homeless numbers that were increased. And our coalition brought together a plan called the homies Nevada initiative that we, you know, we created by having town halls and multiple discussions with stakeholders throughout the state, and we presented this plan to the governor's office, they were able to move forward and put it together and pass it. And that was $500 million right? And so prior to that, we had all together throughout the state. We have roughly about 36,000 units considered affordable, right? So, so this was pre COVID, pre COVID, right? So you're looking roughly about 2021 was the last tracking 2022 so you had about 36,000 units. But for those that were below 60% AMI, which is area medium income, you had roughly about, let's say, 4000 affordable units, and then anything below 30% AMI, you had roughly about 1100 Okay, so for those you know workers who are your Panda Express your you know department store workers, or even Your casino you know, janitorial staff or front front desk, those are the folks that were making that, you know, minimum wage to, you know, low income. Those will be considered affordable, affordable affordability, right? So again, back to H, M and I, we was able to pass that that was $500 million that was broken down into four tiers number one, affordable development, preservation of affordable units, land acquisition and then home ownership. Through that, we've been able to obligate $498 million of that and to that, that is going to increase our inventory by 3400 by the end of 2026 No, okay, so it's a, it's a, it's a, it was a drop in a bucket, because overall we are short. Or the gap report that comes out by the National Low Income Housing Coalition reports that Nevada is roughly at about 78,000 units short of affordable, of affordable units throughout the state. That number, again, 78,000 that's a lot, and that's, and that's, you know, you're looking at a national organization that's taking a number, so that number is actually probably greater, right? There has been other reports through other entities, whereas they was through like applied analysis, they say we are short roughly about a Southern Nevada loans, excuse me, is short 140,000 for housing and that so that in number includes market rate and affordable units, right, right? So, right now, you know, we are in a conundrum. You know, when you ask, you know, where are we at? You know, we are struggling, right? We are really struggling. People are being priced out. You know, homes, home values for SF, our single family residents are at 480 you know what that market looks like? We do, you know. And so, and then people are cost burden, right? They are spending more than 50% of their income towards their rent or towards their mortgage, so, which means leaving them house poor. And so they're like one incident away from becoming evicted or going into foreclosure. And so, you know, with that, you know, we are in a situation where we need to find more funding, we need to open up more land, we have to build more infrastructure just to be able to keep up with our with our growth. So

Heidi Griffith 14:47
how do we make that happen? I know it's the billion dollar question, but I mean, that's why we're sitting here today. So Right? We brought you on specifically for this, because there are so few you. Organizations that are looking out for this stuff. And this is the stuff that matters most to us, and that's this is why you're here to Maurice, how do we how do we do this? And

Roland Daniels 15:10
before, before we continue on to that. I heard you say 500 million, but you've already spent 498 million. I mean, there's only 2 million left, right,

Maurice Page 15:20
and pretty much that's going to be obligated through other costs and things of that nature. But you know, particularly when it goes towards development, all the money has been spent, we had to say, we had to have all of it obligated by the end of this year. And so we have met all of our because this was through the home, the ARPA act, American rescue plan act, and so all the money had to be obligated and committed to by the end of this year. So we have done our job. So

Roland Daniels 15:43
moving forward, where will the additional funding come from? You

Maurice Page 15:47
got me on two different questions. That's actually the easier question to your question, the question, you know, when you say, Where's the money? There is none. That's as easy as life story. Absolutely, that's the easier part. And so that's where we need to figure that out. Again. There is no easy answer to say or easy solution for that we you know, we have to learn how to be creative. I think it comes from a federal and state perspective. We have to all be tied in. I've had some meetings with our federal delegation and with some of our state leaders, and I have told them that there has to be more coordination, more communication between both entities, so that this way we can get on the same page and be able to fight for the resources for Nevada, right? So you know that is that is part of the solution, or a start as to where we can go, as far as finding new monies, when you ask, how do we get there, or how can we move forward? Wow, I know that's a big one. It is. And you know, if I could probably, you know, the numbers are really real. You know, we're going to need by 2050 we're going to need 450,000 new homes altogether, right? Because our population is going to grow to almost 4 million by that point. You know, we are seeing issues with food and supplies where, you know, folks are our food pantries are now serving more food, and so they're there. They're, you know, becoming the resources are becoming evaporated, and so they don't have the resources to be able to restock and get the food out to folks. And I only bring that up because, you know, I had a meeting earlier or last week, and you know, I was talking to a food pantry, and they were just saying that, you know, with the cost of how things are going, so many people are unable, so many of our organizations are unable to donate. And so, you know, health is housing, right? And so if you don't have housing, your health is going to separate. And you know, if you don't, if you're not able to keep your health up, you know you're not going to be able to go to work, you're not going to be able to take care of your children, you're not going to be the best teacher, you're not going to be the best police officer, so forth and so on. But when you talk about solutions, getting back to the meat of your question, you know, it is. It's really a situation where we have to look at, you know, we need to build up, not necessarily out, right? I agree. We have to look at our zoning you know, look at zoning reforms. We have to change some of those models. We have to create more public, private partnerships. We have to get more more of our big entities involved into the housing conversation. We have to look at our tax situation, right? We have to look at where we can provide additional funding. And so, where does that come from, you know? And that is, this is a tough conversation, because we are such a great state for businesses and for individuals and for home ownership, right? And so, you know, people don't want to see those changes, and I understand that, right? As a homeowner, well, sure, we don't want our taxes to go up, absolutely right? But, you know, when you look at other states and the things that they're doing to overcome their situation, it's because they have these they have different tax measures put in place to be able to create more housing or more subsidies to be able to build out right and so right now we don't have that as a state. I think that is a conversation that definitely needs to be examined, needs to be had. And so I think we have to start there, because the more money we can bring into the state, the state, the more we'll be able to build and keep up with our growth. The reality of the situation is, we're, we are the entertainment capital of the world, right? We have pretty much every sport, major sport that's going to be here, you know? We do football to hockey, women's basketball, and we're captains and we're champions, right? We're champions in this we have baseball coming basketball in the near future, you know. And so what is that going to do? That is going to produce more jobs? Is going to, you know, produce, you know, more folks moving here. It's going to produce more tourism, even though we're in a down slump, right down, but it's going to produce more tourism and and so what's going to happen, people are going to want to move here. And so, you know, where's that money going to come from? To be. Able to keep up with the capacity, I

Heidi Griffith 20:01
agree. And I guess the biggest challenge, in my opinion, is going to be to get the powers that be on board with that kind of stuff, because we know that the lower tax rate that's a business draw. We understand that, but we also understand, you know, us sitting here every day talking to folks that you know go out and work hard and don't have the big dollars. In all instances, it's getting tougher and tougher. It's, you know, to purchase a home, but just to rent. Yes, absolutely. And I know that you speak with legislatures, right? You speak to some you've, you've sat down with our governor, right, correct? And so I know that he's recently talked about an affordable housing initiative, and I know that that's and it's

Maurice Page 20:48
not necessarily affordable, but it's more of attainability, okay, his housing attainability bill, which is Assembly Bill 540 which has become a huge topic of conversation, and right now it's a it's a very, I would say that bill is very encompassing, because, number one, it provides monies towards homeownership. It provides money towards rental, rental assistance, down payment assistance is also introducing a fourth tier to housing. So now you're raising the area median income, ami, to 150% so for those who can be huge, that could be definitely huge. So you know, the average salary in Nevada is roughly about 68,000 so if you push your person up to 150 now, they're, you know, their salary could be equated to 105,000 roughly. Forgive me for all my math majors out there, my math may be a little off, so don't quote me on that, but it, but it's going to be in that realm. So, you know, when you look at the price of housing, where it's at, right now, at, you know, what is, I don't even want to be misquoted. What is the average

Heidi Griffith 21:54
price? No, as you were, right, is that average? So 50 higher, you know, we've got 50 that are slightly less, yeah, but that's a good number,

Maurice Page 22:04
absolutely. So when you look at all of that, this is where this bill is going to help out. And so, you know, again, we're looking to create, oh, and also wants to open up more land, right? So this bill, like I said, it's very this bill is very heavily involved. It touches on a lot of different areas. When it comes to housing, it is roughly about 200 million, with 50 million altogether, 250 million. But 50 million will be coming from the Nevada housing division. And so, you know, we're looking to see if this bill will pass. You know, he had a task force that he put together to, you know, put this bill together. And so he has some of the smartest and brightest minds put this bill in place. And so it was dropped, and it was, it was pretty much well received. There's some areas of concern, but as usual, but you know, we're hoping to see that it moves forward, and even though it doesn't directly addresses the affordable housing landscape, what this bill does, it's providing an opportunity for your low to moderate income families have an opportunity, because what he's looking to do is build more duplexes and triplexes and condos smaller units to be able to bring down the cost so that people would be able to achieve that goal or vision of general or of generational wealth, and

Heidi Griffith 23:22
that's important to us. We talk a lot about the duplex, the triplex, the four Plex, because it is a great way to get into home ownership, especially if you're purchasing with let's just say you want to buy with your brother, or you purchase a unit, and then we can use the rental income from the remaining units. And there just really isn't a lot of that stuff here. So that would be something that we would love to see on the forefront affordability. It is. It's a tough conversation, because how do we bring stuff down? Will we see a slowdown in the market? I know that we're starting to see a little bit more inventory in the marketplace. We still have those folks that are sitting on those two and a half, three and a half, four and a half percent interest rates that don't want to sell, but more people are listing their homes now. Sales haven't jumped through the roof since that happened, because there's still those buyers that are waiting for whatever that phantom rate to come down looks like. So we're taking advantage of that with folks who might not have an opportunity because they're competing against an all cash offer, or they're competing against someone who's willing to go up and above the purchase price of the house. And this is just one of those times where we're telling people, you know, we don't know what's going to happen with pricing, but the one thing that we know about real estate, and that's going to be probably anywhere in the country, right, is prices may dip. That's going to happen in real estate, but they will come back. And like you mentioned, you mentioned, sports right, entertainment, capital of the world, in places like California and Florida, who are struggling right now just to get fire insurance right, because the major insurers have pulled out of that, those folks are coming here also. And unfortunately, when people come with cash. Pocket. It's going to drive our prices up when we own a home. It's great, right? We want to see the prices continue to rise. It's just trying to get into something. And

Maurice Page 25:07
you brought up an interesting point, and something that I haven't heard. When you talk about the you know, there's been an uptick in a little bit in sales, you know, I wonder. And it's with those individuals who have the three and 4% I wonder if it is because though everything else around them has gone up in pricing right? So now they're, they're being forced to sell because they have to cash out, because they need to be able to settle their debts and then be able to have to start over. So I would love to be able to see if there's any data that attributes the sellers wanting to do that. Because, again, as we, as I stated earlier, with folks being now home board and home burden with, you know, their mortgages and with rents and things of that nature. Is that really an issue? Because, you know, when you when the housing boom before the pandemic hit, right? We had 3% interest rates. People were just buying out the wazoo, but prices were were evenly killed right at that point in time. But now, if you're talking, you know, if you're buying cars and you know, you're not, you know, you probably not get them at a zero to 6% injury. So you're probably looking at over 10% for that average cost is maybe $1,000 you know. So I'm just, you know, wondering, you know, groceries in our valley, although the President says, you know, the groceries will come down, I don't see that. So gas has not come down in Nevada, right? And so, you know, just speaking to our state and where we're positioned, I would love to Dave see if, if the reason we have enough tickets because people are just saying, hey, my finances are just, you know, out of whack, and this would take us out of debt. Well,

Heidi Griffith 26:32
we're seeing it, okay, we're seeing it. So people maybe not even selling, but, you know, they're doing a second on their home, you know, doing a HELOC or a cash out refinance, because they need the money. Interest rates on credit cards, car payments. You know, we've seen people they

Roland Daniels 26:48
still want to keep that two and a half 3% interest rate right? Absolutely, absolutely.

Heidi Griffith 26:52
So I mean it, it's kind of one of those areas that we're going to we're going to have to wait and see what happens, but we want to make sure that we have our finger on the pulse, and we want to make sure that everyone is informed, because it's easy to not pay attention to everything, because there's a lot going on right now, right there's a lot going on right now. We are running really short on time. We would love to have you back, because I bet we could have another hour long conversation absolutely about what you're doing. Thank you so much for coming. We definitely appreciate it again. If anybody wants to reach out find out about membership. Has any questions, how do they get a hold

Maurice Page 27:26
of you again? You can go to our website at NV Housing coalition.org, you can reach out to me via email. This is a long email, so I'm gonna take my time with it. It's Maurice, M, a, u, r, I C, dot page, P, A, G, E, at, NV housing, H, O, U, S, I N, G, coalition, C, O, A, l, I T, I O n.org, so you can reach out to me at email or go to our website. All of our information is on there. We work virtually, so we do not have a brick and mortar type office and so, but we are always interested in expanding our membership. Our memberships start off at single rates, at $45 per year, and you get access to our conference and all of our lunch and learns and anything else that we put on throughout the year. And I would like to if I could just put in a quick plug for our conference, which is our sixth annual it will be at the circuit this year, October 15 and 16th. Again. If you need more information about that, if you like to attend NV Housing coalition.org, you can reach out to us, and we'll definitely get back to you with more information. We'll

Roland Daniels 28:32
see you next Sunday at 7:30am right here on K, U, N, V, 91.5, stay encouraged. Every step you take moves you closer to your dreams and Remember stay true to yourself and your mind. Bye You