Good morning, NREB readers!

Let's get into today's bonus briefing.

The offer comes in $30,000 below asking price. Your seller takes one look at it and pushes it aside.

"If that's the market, we'll just rent it out. We have a 2.875% rate. Why would we give that up?"

You'll hear that often this fall. Redfin calls this the strongest buyer's market in its records. Pending sales fell year over year in all 50 of the largest metros it tracks, and 14.5% of September contracts were canceled. In June, Redfin reported that some sellers with low mortgage rates were choosing to rent instead of sell.

Some of those sellers are making a good decision. The question is which ones, and the answer usually isn't in the rate.

Take a seller whose home is listed at $520,000. They owe about $217,000 on a 2.875% loan and are buying a $650,000 home next. Sold at list, after an assumed 7% all-in cost of sale, the house would free about $267,000 for the next down payment.

Keep the house, and that $267,000 stays in it. The new home still has to be paid for, so the new loan is about $267,000 larger, at a rate near Freddie Mac's 7.24% average on October 29. Their down payment also drops from more than half the price to about 12%, which on a conventional loan ordinarily means mortgage insurance.

So keeping a 2.875% loan on $217,000 means borrowing about $267,000 more at 7.24%, with mortgage insurance on top. That's about $1,800 a month of extra principal and interest before the insurance.

That doesn't make keeping wrong. It means the rental has to out-earn the extra borrowing. Its rent has to cover the real costs of being a landlord, and its principal paydown and appreciation have to make up the rest. For this seller, renting for three years only beats selling if the house appreciates more than 4% a year.

Change the seller and the answer can flip. Consider an owner relocating for a job, with little equity and a 2.75% loan, who will rent in the new city. Keeping roughly breaks even if prices stay flat and wins if they rise. If prices fall 3% a year, though, keeping costs that seller about $26,000 compared with selling.

How the next lender will count the rent. Fannie Mae has rewritten its rules for rent from a home the borrower is leaving. A signed lease no longer counts; the rent has to be supported by the appraiser's rent schedule or comparable rentals. Lenders may apply the new rules now, and must for applications dated December 1, 2026, or later.

The calculation can decide whether the next purchase qualifies at all. Freddie Mac, FHA and VA each handle it differently. FHA, for example, counts it only when the borrower is relocating more than 100 miles away, among other conditions.

The tax deadline. A seller who lived in the home for at least two years up to moving out generally has about three years afterward to sell and keep the home-sale exclusion. "We'll rent it until the market comes back" needs a date attached.

The hard part isn't knowing any one of these facts. It's putting them together at the kitchen table, fairly enough that your seller trusts the answer whichever way it points.