Episode originally aired: June 30, 2026
In this episode of the DASHcast Podcast, the DASH Carolina team dives into Looking to buy a home and wondering how mortgage rates, FHA loans, down payment assistance, and loan approvals really work? In this episode of The DASHcast Podcast, Zach sits down with mortgage expert…
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Episode Overview
Looking to buy a home and wondering how mortgage rates, FHA loans, down payment assistance, and loan approvals really work? In this episode of The DASHcast Podcast, Zach sits down with mortgage expert Ned Liggon of Argos Home Loans to break down the mortgage process, common mistakes buyers make, and what agents can do to help transactions close successfully.They discuss mortgage rates, FHA loans, conventional financing, down payment assistance programs, investor financing options, DSCR loans, bank statement loans, and the importance of communication between agents and lenders throughout the transaction.Whether you're a first-time home buyer, real estate investor, or real estate agent, this episode offers valuable insight into today's lending environment and how to navigate the home buying process with confidence.Ned Liggon | Argos Home Loans, LLCContact: ned@argoshomeloans.comargoshomeloans.com
Full Episode Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript of this DASHcast episode. Some portions may be condensed for readability.
If you like your standards high and your growth even faster, pull up a chair because this is Dash. My name is Zach. I’m one of the hosts here on the dashcast podcast and I want to introduce you to Ned Ligon from Argos Home Loans today. So thanks for coming today. Absolutely, yeah, thanks for having me. Awesome. So how long you been in the industry? I’ve been in the mortgage industry for about 13 years. Directly before that
I was in retail banking for maybe five or six years. Okay. Yeah, nice. What made you want to do loans and mortgages in the first place? You know, it was just a childhood dream of mine. Okay, okay. I just kind of fell into a banking job when I got out of college. Found my way into the mortgage industry due to the flexibility and I like the commission based compensation aspect of it and you know, here we
are. Nice. Yeah, excellent. So 13 years in the industry, so I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of deals take place and work through a lot of deals and, and whatnot, right? I’ve seen quite a few, yeah. Yeah, I guess so. So you, you help our office get a lot of funded loans and pre approvals and things like that. The Raleigh office, Charlotte office, Green Greensboro, Fayetteville, Asheville, all over the place. All over North Carolina right now
and maybe South Carolina at some point too from what I hear. Walk me through the last deal that you did that just fell apart. Well, I haven’t had any fall apart. Okay, well with you guys, let’s see, the last one I had that fell apart, geez, I can’t really speak to that. I mean, I’ve had one, but I just, I can’t think of it. I mean, they fall apart for different reasons. You know, the appraisal coming
in low and clients not having enough cash to bridge the gap, not being able to negotiate sales price with the seller. There have been unforeseen tax liens pop up, things like that that have thrown deals off, you know, all kind of things that pop up during the underwriting process that are not apparent during the pre qualification process, you know, that maybe are withheld from by the borrower or maybe they forgot about it or things like that.
So I mean it’s usually things that affect the ratios, you know, like a payment that pops up somewhere that we didn’t know about or like I said, large debt or credit issue. Okay, gotcha. Do you think that a lot of times that is solved based off of just going really deep early on in the process to. You know, I’ve heard about Getting a pre qual. Pre approval. What’s the other one? Underwritten, pre approval, things like that.
Like what, what have you seen the most success in when you. Yeah, I mean for the most part we’ll, when we do a pre qualification, I mean we’ll review income and asset documentation, there’s have an in depth conversation with the borrower. But during the actual loan process there are caivrs, reports ordered which are like kind of background check type things that check like multiple databases for any real estate or financial information that might not be readily
available and stuff like that. But during the pre qualification the docs are reviewed. A pre approval is technically reviewed by an underwriter first and if you have a more complex file you’d want to go that route. But for the most part a loan officer pre qualification or pre approval there is really all you need. Yeah, and I mean in our market, I know it’s very difficult, you know, years ago you’d submit an offer and you might
not necessarily need a pre approval. But on the listing side now I kind of expect clients and buyers to submit lease proof of funds or pre approval just to give my seller peace of mind. Right, for sure. What are, I guess what are some ways that you help clients to win in that area once that offer is submitted? Yeah, I mean a lot of times I’ll, you know, upon the buyer’s agent’s request, we’ll reach out to
the listing agent and just speak to the strength of the buyer. You know, talk about the steps I’ve taken in pre qualifying them and you know, the docs I’ve reviewed and, and you know how in depth the process on my end was because it’s not the case with all lenders, you know, some folks will just run it through, take your word for it and move on. Right. It’s good to count your ducks in a row. Right?
Count your ducks in a row. Yeah, for sure. I mean, because the last thing I want to do is pre qualify somebody, have them go through the process and then the loan fall through. Because that’s A, it’s really stressful for me but B the borrower has skin in the game with due diligence and earnest money and it’s just a waste of time for everybody. But I mean mainly selfishly, it’s the stress on my end that keeps
me from slinging out unverified pre qual letters here and there. Yeah. So I guess it seems that if a good agent will ideally work in combination with a lender to make sure their client is well Prepared before they submit an offer on the biggest purchase that they’ll probably make ever. Right? Yeah. Most people aren’t going out and buying Lamborghinis or you know, multi million dollar houses all the time. Right. So most, most folks we work with,
300 to 500 thousand dollar house. Right. And that’s, I mean that’s a ton of money. So making sure that we make those right steps and make that introduction and explain the whole process up front helps to avoid some of those pitfalls. Absolutely. 100%. Yeah. Awesome. If you had to blame One thing for 80% of failed deals, what would that be? I’d say failure to disclose information by a borrower. You know, I mean a lot of times
they will withhold material facts, you know, because they want to be qualified but they don’t, you know, realize that things are going to shake out in the process anyway. So I think that’s probably the, probably the biggest, I would say the biggest catalyst there. Yeah, I mean I get it. Right. People don’t like people kind of snooping around in their business. Right, right. We live in America. Right. So. But I totally get that where they might
say, you know, I don’t have a, I pay, I don’t pay alimony for instance, or if I have large credit card debt, I mean usually that is picked up. But if I have other, you know, you mentioned tax liens and things like that. You know those are like child support alimony tax liens. Yeah. I mean they’re I guess a handful of different things that can pop up that are not disclosed up front. Yeah, sometimes. So it
sounds like in order to help our clients be the most successful, it’s to partner with the right people. Right. At the end of the day, the right lender have the right person to go out there and inspect the property. Right. Agent to help show the property closing attorney to help with all that stuff that I mean it seems like super important to when you’re making a big decision like this to do that, right? I think it’s
highly important. Yeah. And I mean unfortunately a lot of buyers and I mean, I guess a lot of people in general are so heavily focused on the rate and the cost from the, from a lending perspective. And so there, there’s you know, laser focused on like interest rate and we’ll just like shop you over a couple hundred dollars here and there when really in the long run, I mean it’s a smoother process is in, you know,
white glove service is really a lot more beneficial and you know, helpful than have Been like zeroing in on like the lowest rate or the lowest fees or whatever. Just because I mean a lot we’re all pretty much pricing from the same sheets. I mean we can, depending on the day, depending on the appetite, we can probably fluctuate here and there, but for the most part, you know, it’s going to be pretty close to the same.
And I think, you know, the focusing on the service aspect of it versus the just the rate I think is very important. And you know, you’ve probably heard this being in the industry for 13 years, but you date the rate, but you marry the payment. Right? So if the that payment makes you feel safe and comfortable and you’re able to make it every month, then that’s what most, that’s what matters most at the end of the
day. Right. And so if we’re, and also how long we’re going to stay at this property, on average, I feel like clients stay at homes anywhere from three to seven years and they move on. So if I get a 30 year mortgage, this is what the monthly payment is. That makes sense for me. I’m going to move on in five years or refinance, things like that. Correct? Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Awesome. Well, what are the rates
right now? Are they like pretty level, Are they pretty high? Like what are they historically based off of like where we’re at last year at this time? They’re a little lower than we were last year at this time. I mean we’re floating around the low 6% range on a 30 year fixed good credit with no points. I mean, seen it hit the fives a little bit here and there, but they’re fluctuating still, you know, and on
a downward trend on the large scale. So I mean, I think we’ll continue to see them to, to go down, but I mean it’s not, there’s not going to be a quick drastic decline anytime soon. But yeah, right now especially it’s like I’m telling people, you know, you should probably be prepared to look at refinancing sometime in the next couple of years, I would think. I mean there’s no crystal ball and you don’t really know. But
I mean, all, you know, everything points to the rates continuing to decline and you know, not we’re not going to get back down to the 2, 3% range anytime real soon. If we do, there’s a problem. Do you think we’ll ever get that low again? I wouldn’t think so. I mean, you know, not naturally. I mean, if it’s done artificially through bond buying and those type things then possibly. But I mean, you have to look at
what happens when the rates get that low. I mean it just, it causes a huge surge just like it did in, you know, like 20 to 22ish. And then after that there’s a huge lull. So I mean, because we saw when rates peaked and I think it was October 23rd, they hit like 8%. And I mean the market just kind of died for a little while. I mean it was extremely slow. So I mean, you’d really
prefer a balanced market, you know, I mean, in general, it’s just, it helps with the supply and demand, the prices, I mean, you know, all that stuff. And I think the rates today are kind of what they were like maybe about a year or two before the pandemic happened. That’s right, yeah. Yeah. Which, I mean, historically, I mean, if you look at very large scale, I mean they’re pretty low on the grand scheme of things. It’s
just like people, you know, most people that own houses right now have a 2 or 3% rate because they refinanced or bought, you know, back in the early 2000s. And so like 6% seems astronomical, but I mean it’s really for 30 year money. I mean that’s a pretty good. Yeah. I’ve got a client that has a 1.9 on his and he was like, I’m thinking about selling. I’m like, you will never sell this property. I want
to make sure you never do. Because that’s, I mean, why, why would you do that, you know? Well, I mean, you know, because, yeah, I mean it’s, he’s used as a rental property but like borrow against it and then, you know, maybe do something like that. But yeah, I mean that, that time was pretty crazy because there was barely any inventory. At one point, I think there was like three days of inventory. So if you got
a house, you got a deal, even if you 150k over for it. Right, for sure. I remember talking to my parents and like some other folks around the time when they got their house in 91, 92. And I mean the rates were like 14 and a half percent, but again, prices were a lot lower then. Right. So that’s kind of where we see that, that big difference now for sure. Yeah. So let me ask you this.
What’s the conversation that you feel like most agents are avoiding with their buyers? And it’s actually like costing a deal to get to the finish line? Man, you guys should have fed me these questions ahead of time so I could have some time to think about it. Most agents avoiding with, I’d say, honestly, I don’t know, I can’t think of that. But like, one thing I will say, like, coaching your buyers to shop rate is a
bad idea. That’s one thing that I see. Coaching your buyers to shop, right. It only convolutes their. I mean, they’re talking to three to five different lenders and getting different structures from everyone. I mean, everybody gets confused and they end up going with some Internet lender that’s probably going to provide a poor service. Gotcha. Okay. As far as what they don’t talk about, I mean, I think mainly coaching the client to be open and honest with
the lender. You know, make sure you kind of open the books and let them know everything. Because, I mean, I’m here to make sure that they get qualified, Right. So, I mean, I’m going to work around any obstacles that we have. But if I can do it on the front end versus doing it when we’re in a tight timeline, you know, under contract, then obviously that’s going to be more beneficial. You know, we’re here to help
them buy homes and, you know, we want to close lines, Right. We’re not going to drop the hammer on them if they’ve got, you know, some sort of blip on the, on the history. But it’s something that I need to work around because it’s going to come up during the process regardless. Yeah. And I get, I mean, I run a team of 40 agents and one thing that we always coach them is just to say, hey,
if it’s a good idea to at least talk to multiple lenders, at least then that way your client can see if the grass is greener somewhere else. But like you said, it depends on who you talk to, right? If you’re talking to some, we always recommend, hey, if you bank with Wells Fargo, bank of America, talk to them, right? But we’ve got some great lenders that we work with that have provide that white glove service that’s
gonna give you great service from start to finish. And even after the transaction, why not at least talk to them too? You know, I mean, I would say you as a real estate professional, they’re looking to you for advice, right? So, I mean, you’re the professional in that arena and you have lenders that you know and trust that you’ve worked with that provide good service that, you know, qualify on a deep level. I think you are
doing them a disservice by letting them just go out there and choose a lender. I mean, you know, you’re, I feel like directing them to a lender that you know is going to do the best job they can for the client is part of your responsibility as a real estate professional. Yeah. And I guess for me, the reason I do that is they’re gonna see when they talk to their bank that their bank is not as
good as my lender. Right. I guess that’s kind of my mindset of doing it. Right. It’s, it’s more of go out and see what, how bad it is and then come back and you’ll see well, how great this is. Right, sure. That’s kind of my mindset with it. But also just, you know, I want all the clients to get the best deal possible when they sell a house and talking about what they want to do with
the property if they’re gonna own it for, you know, five to 10 years. You know, going with Ned at Argos would be a great option. Right. He’s gonna give you a great service. He’s gonna do all these different things for you. You know, when I, when I was buying a house, we actually used Ally to get our pre approval, which Ally. They don’t even have physical addresses anywhere. Like it’s, there’s no building, it’s just an online
lender, like you said, an Internet one. But then we ended up swapping like we got another pre approval with someone else that gave us a better deal, better situation. We went with them and then of course they’ve, you know, we’ve been with them for quite some time. They sold it off a few times. But yeah, I mean, if we didn’t get pre approved initially with Ally, then you know, that wouldn’t have started the conversation in the
first place. So it’s. For me, I think it was good that we can educate our clients to talk to the right people and partner with the right people to get to be able to move forward. Yeah, for sure. What does an agent do in the first 24 hours of a transaction that tells you everything about how it’s going to go? I mean, I like when agents send out like detailed emails and a lot. I think that’s
probably a standard for you guys specifically. But I like the detailed emails to the, like the lender, the closing attorney, maybe insurance, if that’s been chosen. But. And it just shows all the details that you need, just kind of breaking out into bullet points. I like that. I mean, as far as anything else goes, I Can’t really, you know, but. But I mean, that. That’s very helpful and, you know, just helps frame the. The process for
everybody. Yeah. I mean, you want our clients to be set up for success and the same thing for us on your end too, right? Absolutely. I always say that we got a great team to work with, and if you work with me, you’re gonna get great lenders, great inspectors, great closing attorneys, great everything. Right? Yeah. Um, so let’s see here. Give me. Give me a real example, if you can, when there’s a tight agent lender relationship
and how that saved a deal that. That could have died. Well, I mean, I think having just constant communication, open and honest communication between the lender and the realtor. I mean, overall, it just. That just helps. And when everybody feels comfortable with each other, when you feel like you can shoot me a text, you know, at 8pm and ask me a question, or if. If your client, you know, says, like, I can’t get in touch with
my lender, if you, you know, you can reach out to me and be like, what’s going on? You know what I mean? Things like that. I think that just helps overall in the transaction, you know, just in general. I mean, just having that open, working communication is key, for sure. Yeah, I think. I mean, communication is the bedrock of every relationship, I think. Right. Personal, business, professional, everything. Right. So I love that I can text you
any time of the day and you’ll respond and say, yeah, let’s hop on a group text with a client for that introduction. Or during the process, you give us a kind of like a checklist going through, like, here’s some updates where we’re at in the process, and you give us a call and kind of talk to us about that. For me, that gives me reassurance that things are going well because I’ve had situations. Couple years ago,
I was representing a seller, and the buyer had this Internet lender, and the day of closing, you know, I hadn’t heard anything for a bit, called the agent. I was like, hey, what’s going on? They’re like, yeah, we can’t close. And I was like, what happened? They were ever, never able to get fully conditionally approved. And I was like, what in the world? Yeah, so that taught me, like, yeah, I need to, even on the listing
side, to be proactively making sure things are going to keep moving on for my sellers. Right? Yeah, for sure. So, Ned, at Argos, what are some of the loan types that you guys offer? What are some of the programs, packages all the, all the stuff. Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously we offer conventional fha, still waiting on VA approval, which should come anytime, any day now. Usda. So all the, all the standard, you know, conventional govy loans,
we do jumbo loans, which is any loan above. I believe it’s like 832, 750 I think is the number and have multiple investors there that we can shop for you. And then we do some different deals for investors like dscr debt service coverage ratio loans for business owners like bank statement loans for people who aren’t, you know, can’t qualify from tax return income alone. And you know, so pretty much anything with a structure on it, we
do not do land and lot loans. Okay. But pretty much any, anything that has a residential structure on it we can finance. But of course, if I have clients that need help with land, I could probably refer them to you and you’d have a referral for sure. Yeah, I’ve got some contacts. Gotcha. Okay, well, talk a little bit about like the fha. I mean, I feel like I work with a lot of buyers that utilize that
loan package often because it’s very appealing. Right. So kind of talk a little bit about the FHA stuff. Yeah, FHA is good for folks with lower credit scores, low down payment abilities and things like the rates and kind of the mortgage insurance there, it’s fixed regardless of where your credit is or the mortgage insurance that is. And then the rates are more forgiving from a loan level pricing adjustment standpoint for lower credit scores. So fha, you
know, it’s good. It does have a mortgage insurance premium. So 1.75% of the loan amount is going to be tacked onto the loan balance. But again, it’s just kind of hedging risk there. But yeah, overall it’s a great loan program for like I said, this may be first time home buyers or folks who are working on building credit up. And there’s a lot of misconception out there about like FHA appraisals being so much stricter than conventional
appraisals, which used to be the case. But I mean, the conventional appraisals are also pretty, you know, they’re more heavily scrutinized now. There have been more regulations kind of down on that. So they’re actually not that much different. I mean, the FHA appraisals, there are a few quirks there, but, but overall, I mean, if a property’s in decent condition, you’re not going to have an appraisal issue, I think. Yeah, we Coach our agents if it’s, if
it’s safe and it’s working. Usually you’re okay. Usually you’re okay. That’s right. I think, I think sometimes we’ve had issues with like, you know, wood rot, peeling paint. Yeah, things like that. Right, for sure. But that’s going to be across the board though. Exactly. Yeah. Right. I had, I had one a few years ago where that was a huge issue. On one, we backed out, moved on another property, the other property had it and then it
didn’t get flagged and so we were like, okay. Yeah. It also depends on the appraiser and what he’s going to pay attention to. So I mean that, you know, that’s just like anything else, who you’re working with. Mm. Do you guys offer any like incentives for first time homebuyers, things like that? We do. We’ve got a good down payment assistance program, the Home Zero program, and it’s basically an FHA loan. So 96.5% primary loan with either
three and a half or 5% down payment assistance. Okay. So it’ll finance either 100 or 100, 1.5% of the purchase price. The rates look different obviously between those two. So depending on which one you choose, the rates on the 3 1/2% down payment assistance are going to be a little better than the 5%. But yeah, it’s a great program. So I mean essentially if you pair those programs with some seller paid closing costs, then the buyer’s
contribution at closing can be very minimal to nothing. Excellent. That’s great. Tell me a little bit more about. We work with a lot of investors. I’m sure some of the agents watching this do too. Talk a little bit more about like the DSCR and bank statement stuff. Yeah, the DSCR deal said basically will take an investment property. The down payment requirements depend on the, the ratio which the DSCR debt service coverage ratio is the, the, the
gross income that you’ll get from the property either by a lease or a 1107, which is an appraiser’s rental estimate, you know, based on comps, generally needs to be about one one in one. So it needs to cover the payment plus the piti. So interest, insurance, taxes, interest and principal. So yeah. And so essentially depending on that ratio, you know, the down payment can differ, but usually it’s about a 20 to 30% down payment. And yeah,
I mean it only takes that ratio into consideration. We’re not looking at the borrower’s income or additional properties or any of that. It’s just solely focused on that transaction. So for somebody, for an investor who owns multiple properties or somebody who, you know, is a business owner that has more difficult kind of income documentation to, to decipher, then it’s just, it’s easier for the investor to go that route than to have to supply, you know, all
the. Yeah, absolutely. The heavy documentation requirements. Do you see those often? Fairly often. I mean, okay, not a ton, but. But yeah, I mean, we’ve got some, some investors around here that’ll that utilize them here and there. Nice. Yeah, I mean, I think I heard about those like maybe three years ago and I was like, man, this is, this is a cool kind of loan. Very cool. Yeah. As the real estate prices and the rates increase,
sometimes it can be tough to get the ratios to work exactly. But yeah, it’s definitely a good product. I guess as an agent, if we had a client that was interested in that, obviously talk to you first. But getting some documentation from the listing agent, like a rent roll, things like that, that would be helpful to kind of move forward with you. Absolutely, yep. And bank statement loans. Talk a little bit about that. Yes. I mean
that basically for a business owner who’s been in business for at least two years, will take 12 months worth of bank statements and analyze the bank statements that they run their business through. It can be personal or business, but analyze the income and expenses that are coming and out of there and use that to decipher income rather than what they reported on their tax returns. Gotcha. So it’s more of like for 1099s and things like that
typically might utilize something like that, correct? Yeah, yeah. I mean, anybody who’s a business owner. Well, let me ask you a question before we kind of wrap up here. I’ve heard a lot of differences between utilizing like an investment loan versus like a dscr. Like is there any real difference in your mind other than just like how much you bring to the table? Well, it depends on a lot of different factors. But I mean, if you’re
going to do just a conventional investment property loan, then it’s going to be a full underwrite. So we’re going to look at your total picture, you know, your income, property zone, total liabilities and all that stuff. Whereas if we’re looking at DSCR property, we’re just looking basically. I mean, the borrower has to be qualified and they have to be credit qualified and those type things. But like, we’re just basically looking at that ratio for the most
part. So we’re not digging into really anything else. So, I mean, it depends on the specific situation. Gotcha. Yeah. Down payment requirements for both are pretty similar. Yeah, 20 to 30%, usually. Yeah. Well, I guess what’s a way that folks can reach out to you if agents need help getting some. Some loans? I know you service. I think you said your license was in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Florida. Correct. So that’s. I mean,
that’s a lot of the east coast. So you can help a lot of folks in those areas, especially like, if agents have referrals in those areas, things like that. So how can people get in touch with you? Yeah, will y’ all throw my contact information up there so I don’t have to say it out loud? Call, text, or email? Yeah. Excellent. And we’ll put it in the description and the community notes, all those different things. But,
Ned, thanks so much for coming on the Absolutely. Podcast, and we’re glad to have you, and maybe we’ll come back again and talk about other things. Sounds fun. Excellent. This is the dashcast podcast. Make sure you comment, like, share and subscribe and let us know other content that you want to take a look at, and we will prep that for you. See you next time.
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