Dave:
Mortgage rates are the highest they have been in over a year, making it harder for investors to find rental properties that actually cash flow. But what if I told you that you don’t have to settle for a 7% or 8% mortgage rate? You don’t have to wait for the Fed to cut rates or refinance down the road. Regardless of what your mortgage broker or lender is probably telling you, there are multiple ways to get your mortgage rate down to 6%, 5%, or even lower even in today’s market. The right strategy could slash your mortgage payment by hundreds of dollars. And if you’re buying a rental property, that could be the difference between a deal that cash flows and one that bleeds money every month. And today I’m showing you how to get these lower rates right now and put more money in your pocket. From negotiating with sellers to taking advantage of incentives, these six strategies could help turn your good deal into an even better one in 2027.
Hey, what’s up everyone? Welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer, chief investment officer at BiggerPockets, investor for 16 years. And today on the show, we’re talking about how to get a lower mortgage rate. This is obviously a topic on the mind of every investor right now as higher mortgage rates are making deals harder to pencil. But despite what you see in the headlines, these big numbers where the average mortgage rate is now 7.5% or higher for investors, there are ways that you right now can get a lower mortgage rate. You don’t have to settle for a seven or 8% mortgage. And today on the show, I’m going to share with you six different strategies that you can use right now to lower your mortgage rate. That’s the plan for the episode, but I want to start by just talking about a quick high level overview of where we are with interest rates.
You may have heard this, but mortgage rates are currently the highest they’ve been in over a year. The Fed actually has stopped cutting rates. They have raised rates in recent months. They might be raising rates again in 2026 and again in 2027. And as of right now, most forecasters, and I agree with this, believe that in the next year or so, we should expect the average rate on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, the most popular mortgage out there to be in the mid sevens. It’s obviously not where we hope to be. We started 2026, rates briefly got below 6%, but we are heading in the wrong direction. Now, of course, this has made it harder for deals to generate cash flow. And before we go on, I just want to say your properties, the deals that you’re looking to buy need to cash flow even if it’s just a little bit at the rate that you are buying at.
A lot of people are out there saying buy now and you can refinance later. I have hated that advice for years now and I’m feeling a little vindicated about that because now a lot of people are realizing that wasn’t a good strategy because we don’t know the exact direction of rates. And so when you’re underwriting a deal for cash flow, it has to cash flow at the rate that you get when you buy. And that’s what we’re talking about today is not how do you buy now and refinance later, how do you get your rate lower today so you can actually count on that cash flow, hold onto your property long term because that is what makes you successful as an investor. A lot of the six strategies that I’m going to be talking about today include a buydown or a rate buydown. And so before we get into the six strategies, I just need to explain what a buydown is.
So a buydown is basically it allows you to pay upfront to lower your mortgage rate. So you pay more at closing to lower the interest rate on your mortgage. And I’ll talk about how you pay for that, how much it costs, but there are basically two types of buydowns that you need to pay attention to. So the first one is a temporary one. You’ll hear me talk about a three-two-one or a two-one buydown. A three-two-one is basically you get three percentage points off your loan in year one, two percentage points in year two, and one percentage point in year three. A two-one is basically just like that, two percentage points in year two, one percentage point in year one. So these can be really effective. You can go from seven and a half to four and a half percent, but it’s just for one year.
So keep that in mind that these are temporary. On top of temporary buy-downs, there are permanent ones where you lock in a lower mortgage rate for the entire loan term. So you can go out and buy down your rate from seven and a half to six and a half percent, and it stays locked in at six and a half percent for the entire loan. Now, both of these strategies work for investors. I just want to call out that there are different kinds of buydowns and different kinds of mortgages work with different types of buydowns. Just for example, conventional investor loans that are bought and sold by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac do not allow temporary buydowns. You can’t use like a three, two, one or a two-one. For those, you need a permanent buydown. On the other side, portfolio loans that are made by smaller banks that aren’t bought and sold and packaged and resold, those do allow both temporary and permanent buydowns.
So just high level overview before we get into these strategies. Again, there are temporary and there are permanent buydowns, and depending on which kind of loan you’re getting, you have to tailor the buydown to the type of loan. All right, with all of that explanation out of the way, let’s get to our six strategies to lower your mortgage rate today. First strategy, number one, super good right now in today’s market is seller concessions. The basic premise here is asking the current owner of the property to buy down your rate for you. And the reason I like this strategy so much right now is because concessions are very easy to get right now, at least in the majority of markets, not in every single market in the country. If you’re in San Francisco or another really hot market, it’s tough to get a seller to make these concessions.
But actually, if you look at the data right now, you are seeing that we are seeing half of home buyers are getting concessions from sellers, and that’s just regular home buyers. So if you’re an investor and you’re doing your job and you’re negotiating well, you should be able to extract concessions from people. And this can go on top of lowering the price that you pay, or sometimes it’s better to do this in lieu of lowering the price. For some psychological reasons, certain sellers just have a price in mind that they want for their property. So maybe they’re marketing it for 400 grand and rather than selling it for 380, they’ll spend 20 grand buying down your mortgage rate. And this is just a good negotiating tactic because at the end of the day, that might actually work better for you. Some people want a lower price, but for some people who want to generate cash flow, a better way to generate cash flow is buying down your rate than lowering the price.
That will actually increase your rate of return, your cash on cash return in most scenarios. So this is something you should talk to your agent about. When you’re making an offer or when you’re in negotiation for a property, you should propose concessions for a lower mortgage rate. And I encourage you to be as aggressive as possible about this. I personally think, all things being equal, getting a permanent buydown is better. If you can lock in your rate, you know what your cash flow is going to be, barring any vacancies or anything like that. But that is the peace of mind that I like, especially in this kind of market, to underwrite deals because if your rate is going to go up with a temporary buydown, you have to account for that, and we’ll talk about that for just a minute. Now, I want to give you a couple of practical points here.
The whole goal of this show is really actionable things that you can do right now to lower your mortgage rate. And so what you need to know is that even if a seller is willing to buy down your rate a lot, there are actually caps on how much of a concession your seller can give you. It’s a percentage of the total price. So just as an example, $400,000 property, it’s actually a 2% cap. So the seller can’t give you concessions worth more than 2% of the property. So using our example, that’s $8,000. So they’ll be able to buy down your rate up to $8,000. And I’ll explain this quickly, we don’t need to get into it, but there’s a rule of thumb that each discount point, which will reduce the rate of your mortgage by 0.25%, costs about 1% of the loan. So if you’re following me here for a conventional mortgage, that means they can permanently buy down your rate about half a percentage point.
Not bad. That’s pretty good. That’s going to change your cash flow by a hundred bucks a month, maybe more depending on the property. So that is definitely worthwhile, but you should know that that cap exists. If that is good enough for you, great. You can use this 2% concession on top of lowering price if you’re negotiating hard, or there are a couple other things you can do. Rather than using those conventional mortgages, remember I said that certain buydowns work with certain types of mortgages. If you go and use a portfolio loan from a credit union or a small bank or from a private lender, there’s no cap. So you can actually go out and get them to buy $20,000. Like the example I said, if they were willing to put $20,000, that would buy you five discount points or that would lower your mortgage rate by 1.25.
Now you’re sitting in the mid sixes. That is a much more attractive mortgage than you can get currently on the market. So that’s one option. The other option is getting that 2% concession and pairing that with a price reduction. Those are two great ways to use seller concessions right now, but I have a bonus for you. If you are house hacking, this strategy works even better because just based on the way all of these rules work, and I know there’s a lot of rules, but follow me on this one because this one’s important. If you’re an owner occupant and you are going to house hack, or if you’re doing a live-in flip, that 2% concession cap, nuh-uh, it is a 9% concession cap if you put 25% down. So if you are willing to put down money, you can get 9% concession. So following me here on a $400,000 property, that means you can get 2.25% off your mortgage rate.
So instead of sitting at seven and a half, now you’re sitting at five and a quarter. That makes a really big difference. That is hundreds of dollars in cash flow every single month. So extra bonus there if you’re going to owner occupy the property that you buy. All right, so seller concessions, that is strategy number one to lowering your mortgage rates, but there are more ways to get a five or even 6% rate, and we’re going to get to them right after this quick break. Stick with us. Before we go to break, if you’re someone who’s bought a couple of deals and you’re looking to scale up your portfolio into something bigger, I have a really exciting announcement for you. BiggerPockets is hosting its first ever conference focused just on scaling up. It’s this December, it’s coming up soon, this December, 5th through 7th in Phoenix, Arizona.
We’re going to have a full day of programming with speakers like myself, James Daynard, Kathy Fecke, and Devon Kinard talking about how to scale up and build a sustainable business. Tickets are on sale now, but there are only 100 tickets. So go to biggerpockets.com/conferences now and get your ticket today.
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer. Today on the show, we are talking about six strategies to lower your mortgage rate here in 2026 and heading into 2027. The first one we talked about was seller concession, but we have five more great options for you. And number two is builder concessions. So this is very similar to seller concessions, but I just wanted to call out separately that if you are buying new construction right now directly from a builder, the concession rate is insane right now. 65% of builders have reported using sales incentives just this month. And personally, I think that number is going to go up. Builders are in a rough spot right now. They are in a worse spot than their traditional seller, and you have a ton of leverage when you go out and negotiate concessions with builders right now. Now, similar to seller concessions, builder concessions will require you to either use a portfolio loan to bypass the 2% conventional cap or use a combination of concessions and price reduction.
Now, just a little insider information here. Builders, they don’t like giving price reductions. They are loathed to do that because it’s just think about their business model. The average builder, D.R. Horton or Lennar, they’re going out and they’re building dozens or hundreds of homes in a similar location. And if they reduce price on one of those properties, all of a sudden, all of the comps in their area or in their subdivision gets lowered. That makes it harder for them to sell the next property and the next property and the next property at their target price. And so they much prefer to give concessions that other buyers can’t see. That’s just how their game works. And so they will often give concessions in multiple forms and you should negotiate for all of them. They will offer home warranties. They’ll offer credits for closing costs. They will offer upgrades on the properties in terms of nicer finishes, better floors, whatever it is, throwing in appliances.
They will do all of that. But as we’re talking about today, one of the things they will do is buy down your rate. Now, I see all sorts of structures being offered by lenders. Traditionally, they try to offer temporary buydowns because it’s cheaper for them, like a three, two, one. Again, that means you’ll get three percentage points off of your first year. So that might go from seven and a half to four and a half percent, amazing for your first year. They might go for two points for your second year, so it goes to 5% for a second year and then it goes to 6% and then it goes up to that 7.5%. This could really work well, but I encourage you to underwrite the deal with 7.5% because it’s going to go back to that and you shouldn’t count on a refinance. And so if your deal works at 7.5%, and then for those first three years, you’re just getting a little bit of bonus cash flow, amazing.
This is a great concession to try and negotiate with builders. The other thing is using a portfolio loan. And something that I am seeing personally right now is that because this is a little bit harder for buyers, like most buyers use conventional loans sold and packaged by Fannie and Freddie because it’s cheaper for them. They don’t go out and find portfolio loans. So what a lot of builders are doing is going out and establishing relationships with portfolio lenders specifically so you can get around that 2% cap. And so if your builder or who you’re talking to is open to this, that’s when you try and negotiate for a big permanent buydown. See if they’ll buy down your rate by two percentage points forever, three percentage points forever. They might be willing to do that. If you’re in the right place, if you have the right leverage, if you negotiate well, you can get huge discounts here.
This I think is one of the best opportunities in all of real estate right now is negotiating hard with a lender for permanent buydown. If you can’t get permanent, follow my other advice about the temporary stuff, but a lot of them are figuring out ways. They are finding the lenders for you to be able to do this because it’s in their best interest. If they can find the lender and do these buydowns for you, they can move inventory, which is their absolute goal. Builders are concerned about moving inventory as quickly as possible. And so knowing that and leveraging that and saying, “I’ll buy your property, but I need this two and a half percent buydown forever,” that’s an amazing thing. You can get in the fives. Yo might even be able to get in the fours. I’ve heard in now you can get in the fours.
I’ve heard a lot of people getting in the fives. So this is a great way to lower your mortgage rate. So that’s strategy number two. We talked about seller concessions, that’s from a typical homeowner. Number two was talking about builder concessions and they will offer traditionally bigger builder concessions. And I should mention, builders are just more used to the idea of concessions. They are very familiar with this. They use this tool all the time, and so those negotiations might go easier. And that brings us to our third strategy, which is turnkey provider concessions, another group that is willing to buy down your mortgage rate and is very familiar with this concept. If you don’t know what a turnkey rental provider is, it’s companies like Rent to Retirement, you’ve probably heard their ads on BiggerPockets. Their CEO, Zach LeMaster, has been on the show frequently. But what they do is they either go out and buy new construction from builders bulk.
They buy 10, 20, 30 properties at a time and they can drive down the price and they negotiate these concessions with the builders for you. So you don’t actually even have to go and do that. Now, these turnkey providers do have ways of making money. They manage your property and there is a margin between what they buy it for and what they sell it for, but they will do a lot of work for you and you still benefit from it. These turnkey providers, similar to what builders do, is they also go out and find preferred lenders that can get you great buydowns. So they’re not traditionally talking about these conventional mortgages that have that 2% concession cap on them. These are portfolio loans where you can get either really good, really aggressive temporary buydowns or really good, really aggressive permanent buydowns on your mortgages. And I should just say with turnkey providers, you’re not necessarily buying new construction, although many of them do work with builders, you can also get these same kind of concessions with a bur project or a renovation project that you are running through a turnkey provider.
So as we’re talking about, the first three strategies are all buydown strategies, and I know that they sound similar. The mechanism for getting the lower mortgage rate is the same, but you need to think about who’s incentivized and who is familiar with this concept of concessions, who is most motivated to move product. And so I would say builders and turnkey providers understand the concession game and they’re playing the concession game. And so if you approach them and talk to them about this, they’ll know what you’re talking about and they’ll be willing to deal. Sellers, it’s a case by case basis. Some of them, if their property’s been sitting on the market for a long time, they’ve already reduced price. Their agent has probably talked to them about concessions. I would hope so. If they have a good agent, they should be talking to them about concessions, but some sellers are just stubborn, and so you’re not going to be able to do that all the time.
Doesn’t mean you can’t succeed at that. I still recommend trying, absolutely, but that is just part of the game is realizing that not every seller is going to be willing to do this for you and you have to throw out a lot of different concepts. So those are our first three strategies. Let’s move on to our fourth strategy where we’re getting out of the concession rate buydown game and talking about a whole different strategy for getting a lower mortgage rate. And number four, this strategy is seller financing. Seller financing is a creative financing strategy where you’re basically identifying an owner of a property who owns their property outright, and rather than just selling you the property and you going out and getting a mortgage on it, a traditional mortgage on it and taking it over, the seller essentially becomes your mortgage provider. Because they own the property, you can structure a loan with them to pay them back over time.
And this is a really good win-win scenario for people because a lot of times, perhaps it’s a tired landlord or an older person or an older couple who owns this property, a lot of times they like the idea of the passive income that comes with being a creditor. If they negotiate with you a seven or 8% mortgage, they’re getting a seven or 8% return on their money every single month and they were able to sell you the property. So that’s how seller financing works. And the reason this works right now to lower your mortgage rate is because if you’re negotiating with a seller, it’s all fair game. I mean, there are some legal rules, but basically it’s whatever price, whatever interest rate, whatever loan terms you can agree on with the seller is pretty much fair game. You should have a lawyer look at this stuff and make sure that it’s all legal and above board, but it’s fair game.
And so some sellers are willing to offer a lower interest rate in order to get this arrangement. Now, I want to call out here that oftentimes seller financing rates are higher than traditional mortgage rates because a lot of buyers who can’t qualify for traditional mortgages will approach sellers to do seller financing and because of that risk, the seller says, “All right, if you can’t qualify for a traditional mortgage, you might be a risky borrower. And so to compensate for that risk and for me to give you this loan, I need 8% or I need 9%.” And sometimes that works. On the other hand, sometimes they’re lower. If a seller has this idea in their mind that their property is worth 500 and it’s not selling and you say, “Hey, I’ll pay you 500, but I need a 3% mortgage rate,” they might do that. That stuff works.
That stuff happens actually quite a lot. That’s not the most common thing in the world because not every seller is willing to do seller financing, but this actually works. Some sellers care more about the price they sell it for than the interest rate that they’re going to get on the seller loan that they create. This is absolutely a lever you can pull in your negotiations. If you can figure out a way to get a property on seller financing, three, four, 5% mortgage rates are absolutely possible. It’s really whatever you can do. And this is where being a great investor and negotiator and getting creative comes in handy because your job when you talk to a seller is not to demand a 3% mortgage rate or 4% mortgage rate, is to understand what they’re trying to accomplish, what matters to them in the sale of this property.
And if you can find a mutually agreeable solution where you get what you want, which is a lower mortgage rate, they get what they want, which might be certain terms about the sale or the price of the sale, you can absolutely create a win-win scenario with seller financing. So that is seller financing. Again, a way that you can save hundreds of dollars a month, thousands of dollars a year on your mortgage rate. That’s more cash flow in your pocket if you find the right deal and negotiate the right seller financing. Really great strategy right now. Definitely recommend this one. We do have two more strategies for you to consider, but we have to take one more quick break. We’ll be right back after this.
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer. Today, we’re talking about six strategies to get a lower mortgage rate right now. We’ve talked about various different buydowns and concessions. We’ve talked about seller financing. Number five is for people who want to owner occupy. Again, that’s a house hack or a live and flip. This is the assumable mortgage. You might have heard of this, but basically assumable mortgages are when you take over the loan of the homeowner. I know it sounds crazy, but this is a real thing that you can do, and there are actually 12 million loans in the United States right now, 12 million that are assumable mortgages, meaning that if someone bought a home during COVID or hopefully they refinanced during COVID and have a two and a half or a three or a three and a half percent mortgage rate, you could just go in and take over that loan, and now it’s you on that mortgage instead of them.
Now, this only works in certain circumstances, and the number one criteria that you need to know about is that it’s only for owner occupied. So this either needs to be for your primary residence or a house hack or for a live and flip. You cannot do this for a traditional rental property where you’re not living in it. The second thing to know is that not all mortgages are assumable. Most conventional mortgages, if you were just to go out, take out a 20% mortgage, live in your home, and it was a Fannie Freddie loan, it’s probably not assumable. Most assumable mortgages are government backed mortgages. So these are either FHA loans, VA veteran loans, or USDA loans. These are often the best places to look to find an assumable mortgage. And again, there are 12 million out there. Now, you might need to do a little bit of work, talk to your agent about identifying these, but smart sellers right now are advertising this because we’re in a buyer’s market right now.
Sellers have to compete for buyers, and this is a good way for sellers to compete. If I was that one of those people, I would hope my agent is putting that in the listing and making it very clear that there’s an assumable mortgage because that is super valuable. It is so valuable to a buyer to be able to assume a mortgage at three and a half or 4%. I think the logic goes that a buyer would be willing to pay more for a property with that assumable mortgage because it makes it more affordable. And so that is one way to find it, or you can talk to your agent about working together to find those types of loans. Now, if you find one, that is great, but I just want to call out one more caveat here because it’s not just magic. You don’t just get to go in and not have to put down a down payment.
You do have to cover the gap between the purchase price and the loan amount. Because just imagine this, if someone went out and bought their property for $300,000, they put 10% down, they put 30 grand down, and they got a 3% mortgage rate. And now let’s just say it’s 20 years later and they are selling this property to you for $500,000. Even if you’re putting 10% down, the down payment now would be 50 grand instead of 30 grand. And so you do need to come with that cash and cover that cost, but that would absolutely be worth it. Now, I know not everyone has that cash, so you have to decide if this is right for you, but this is an incredible opportunity if you can find these kinds of loans. And frankly, I’m not happy to report this, but if you look at delinquency rates on mortgages and what areas of the housing market are in trouble, FHA and VA loan delinquencies are up.
And so a lot of these mortgages are not underwater, but if delinquencies are up, we could see more sales on FHA and VA loans. And so my thinking is that there is going to be more and more of these assumable mortgages hitting the market, and that is a huge opportunity for investors to find a way to lower their mortgage rate. That’s strategy number five. We’ve covered concessions, incentives, assumable mortgages, seller financing, and we have one more. Strategy six, probably not the most complicated, probably not the sexiest, but you can just buy down those points yourself. We talked about a buydown and getting sellers to do these things, but you could also just do it yourself. And a lot of times this is worth it. And it goes back to what we were talking about with the cap, because if you’re going out and getting a conventional mortgage, the max buy down that you can get is 2%.
But if you want to use a conventional mortgage and get a lower rate and you want to buy down that rate yourself, there’s no limit. You can buy it down really a lot. You can put $30,000 into it. If you want to buy a $300,000 property and put 30 grand into it, you can get your loan down two and a half percent. You can get a 5% mortgage rate. Now, in today’s market, how do you make that work because you should be negotiating? Well, that’s when you negotiate on price, right? So instead of paying 300, Maybe pay 270 and you use that savings in 30 grand, that equity that you’re walking into, you use that to buy down your points. So I just want to give you an example because this really helps in two different ways. So first and foremost, it helps in your cash flow.You’re going to be making a couple hundred bucks more per year, but you’re also just paying less total interest over the lifetime of your loan.
And that’s why I really recommend the strategy only if you’re going to hold this property for a long time because you’re going to put cash down and if you sell it in three or four years, you’re not going to get enough benefit from the cash flow to make this worthwhile. But if you’re buying something that you intend to hold for 15, 20, 30 years, consider this. It’s a good strategy. I actually did the math that breakeven points usually about eight or nine years. I think you need to say at least 15 years because you never know what’s going to happen. But if you’re going to hold onto it for 15 years or so, this can be a great strategy. Just as an example, on a $240,000 property, so a pretty inexpensive property, just buying down your rate from seven and a quarter to 6% will save you $71,000 in total interest over 30 years.
That’s on top of $200 a month in savings. So you’re getting $2,400 a year in cash flow that you wouldn’t be getting. And on top of that, if you held this property for 30 years, you’d save another $71,000. All of that benefit, the cost to do that is $12,000. So $12,000 to make $2,400 a year in cash flow. So that is already a wash in five years. So it pays for itself in five years. And then you make 2,500 bucks a year for another 25 years. That’s another $60,000 you are earning for investing 12,000. So buying down points just on a rate of return, if you think of this at its own investment, the rate of return on that $12,000 is incredible. It’s like a five, 7Xer just on buying down those loans. So yeah, if you can get someone else to buy them down for you, absolutely do that.
That is way better. But don’t write off the idea of buying these down yourself because it’s something I’ve though about doing in my own properties recently and for own acquisitions because if you’re buying something you want to hold long term, I think you know if you listen to the show, I am not optimistic that mortgage rates are going to come down significantly in the next couple of years. But if I can negotiate on price with a seller and I can get a property that’s worth 500, get it for 450 and then buy down those points, that could really change a deal from being good to being really great. Just so you can figure this out. I actually uploaded a calculator to BiggerPockets. It’s free. Go to biggerpockets.com/resources. You can download it for free. And it’s just called Is Buying Rates Points Worth It? And you can put in all the details of your property and it will tell you whether you should buy the points and how many of them.
And I’ll just give you the TLDR. Usually the longer you hold it, yes, it’s definitely worth it. If you’re going to do it for three or four years, don’t bother. If you’re going to do it for five, six, seven years, kind of on the fence. 10 to 15 years, do it. Absolutely do it. It makes a lot of sense. It is an underrated strategy for investors in my opinion, especially with these concession caps. So definitely something for you to consider. So that’s it. Those are our six strategies for getting a lower mortgage rate. And as you can see, these are all things that you can go out and do today. Number one, just as a reminder with seller concessions, this is working with a homeowner or another landlord to negotiate concessions. Number two, builder buydowns and builder concessions. Number three, turnkey concessions. Number four is seller financing.
Five is assumable mortgage. And six is paying down the points yourself. Now, you don’t have to get a lower mortgage rate to make any deal work right now. You can get a traditional mortgage and only buy deals that cash flow with a seven and a half percent rate that we’re seeing today. But right now we are in a buyer’s market. That means you have leverage to negotiate and these are some of the best things that you can negotiate for. Everyone tries to negotiate on price, but why not do both? Why not negotiate on price and get concessions to get a lower mortgage rate that’s going to allow you to walk into equity and to get better cashflow from the outset of your deal? This is how you buy deals during the great stall. This is the kind of stuff, the kind of tactics that really, really work.
And it’s what I encourage all of you to think about as you’re underwriting and pursuing your next deal. That’s our show for today. Thank you so much for watching this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer and I’ll see you next time.