Hey, it's Gagan.

Welcome to the Deal of the Week - every Thursday I pull one home off the Columbus market and give you my honest read on whether it's a real deal or just looks like one.

Not a listing blast. An actual opinion, including the parts that would cost me the commission if I told you them too late.

This week is different. This one isn't really about the house.

First, the numbers that frame it. Powell, September 2026:

[Columbus and Central Ohio Regional MLS]

Worth noting before we go further: 2.55 months is the loosest supply of any suburb I've tracked this fall. Dublin is at 1.81. New Albany is at 1.84. Powell has meaningfully more room in it right now, and almost nobody has noticed.

The house:

The money:

And then there's the part I've been waiting all fall to write about.

Here's Why It's the Deal of the Week:

The seller is offering two financing options. Not both - you pick one.

Option 1: A seller-paid 2/1 buydown, up to $15,000. Your rate drops 2% in year one and 1% in year two. Standard, useful, temporary.

Option 2: Assume their VA loan at 3.5%.

Read that again. Three and a half percent.

And here is the thing almost nobody in Columbus knows: a VA loan is assumable by any qualified buyer. You do not have to be a veteran. You do not have to have served. You just have to qualify with the servicer.

I have had this conversation maybe forty times this year with people agonizing over today's rates, and I would estimate that fewer than five of them knew assumable loans existed at all.

What that gap is actually worth:

The spread between 3.5% and where conventional money sits today is roughly three percentage points. On a loan balance in the mid-$300,000s - which is roughly what's left here - that works out to somewhere around $600 to $650 a month in payment difference.

Call it $7,500 or so a year, every year, for as long as you hold the loan. Over ten years that's in the neighborhood of $75,000 that stays in your account instead of going to interest.

You cannot negotiate your way to that. You cannot renovate your way to it. There is no amount of haggling on price that produces a $650/month swing on a house at this number. The only way to get that rate in 2026 is to inherit it from somebody who locked it in 2020 or 2021.

That's why this is the Deal of the Week. The $35,000 price cut is nice. The rate is the actual asset.

Now the honest part, because that's the whole point of the Deal of the Week.

The catch is enormous, and it's the reason this house is still sitting at day 78.

You need roughly $300,000 in cash to assume it.

When you assume a mortgage, you take over the remaining balance - you do not get a new loan for the purchase price. So the gap between the $654,900 price and what's left on their loan has to come from you, in cash, at closing.

That is not a down payment. That's a very large check. This deal is genuinely available to a narrow group of people: downsizers with equity from a sold house, someone sitting on a liquidity event, a cash-heavy buyer who'd rather deploy $300,000 and keep a 3.5% note than pay all cash.

If you're putting 10% down, this is not your house, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise to get you to reply.

You can't stack the two offers. The $15,000 buydown and the assumption are alternatives. Take the buydown if you need financing flexibility. Take the assumption if you have the cash. Running the comparison properly is a real exercise, not a vibe.

Assumptions are slow. Servicer approval is its own process and it is not a two-week close. Build that into your timeline and don't write an offer with a 30-day close expecting to assume.

There's a VA entitlement wrinkle that your lender needs to walk you through - when a non-veteran assumes a VA loan, the seller's entitlement generally stays tied to that loan until it's paid off. That's the seller's issue, not yours, but it is a known reason sellers get cold feet partway through. Confirm it's understood on their side before you spend money on inspections.

Count the bedrooms carefully. Two of the six are in the lower level. The listed above-grade square footage is 2,827; the 4,300+ figure includes the finished walkout. A finished walkout with fairway views is genuinely good space - and an appraiser still treats below-grade differently than above. Don't pay above-grade prices for below-grade feet.

It's a 2002 multi-level. HVAC and water tank are 2020, flooring is 2026, appliances are current. I don't see a roof date. And multi-level floor plans are polarizing - some buyers love the separation, some walk out after four steps. That narrows your buyer pool when you sell, which is a real cost even if it's a distant one.

The part that makes it more than a discount:

Two things, and the second one is specific to Powell.

First: this is a closing window, not a permanent feature of the market. Every assumable loan in Central Ohio at 3% or 4% was originated in a roughly three-year stretch. Those houses get sold once. When they sell, the rate either gets assumed or it gets paid off and disappears forever. There is no new supply of 3.5% mortgages being created. The pool only shrinks.

Second: Powell has more room than its neighbors right now, and the school lines are not what people assume.

Powell's 2.55 months of supply against Dublin's 1.81 and New Albany's 1.84 means buyers here have options that buyers four miles east don't. Days on market in Powell ran 34.9 in September. That's a market where you can think for a weekend instead of writing an offer in an hour.

And on the lines - in the same batch of Powell listings I pulled this morning, one has a Powell address and feeds Buckeye Valley, not Olentangy. This one is Olentangy. That distinction has shown up in my data three weeks running now, and it is worth real money at resale.

So: a cut price, in the loosest suburb in the metro, in the district people actually want, with a mortgage you cannot buy at any price attached to it.

That's not a perfect house. That's leverage - and leverage is what a deal actually is.

📩 Reply "ASSUME" and I'll send you the address, the full photo set, the tax figures, and the two financing options run side by side with real numbers - the actual remaining balance, the actual remaining term, and what the assumption saves you per month and over ten years versus just taking the buydown.

The per-month figure above is an estimate built off the listing. The real one needs their payoff statement, and I'll go get it.

And if the $300,000 isn't you - reply anyway. Tell me your price range and I'll start watching for assumable loans in it. They don't get advertised as such most of the time; you have to know to ask. I'll ask on your behalf.

Talk soon, Gagan