The Great Stall is ON

Dave:
The great stall is here, and the housing market in 2026 is shaping up mostly the way we expected, at least so far. Things are changing. There’s a war in Iran. Gas prices are rising. The labor market is weakening, and the housing market will react to all of this in ways that can introduce new risks, but can also create new opportunities for real estate investors. In today’s March housing market update, we’re going to dig into the most recent housing market news and help distill it down from overwhelming to digestible things you can actually do to grow as an investor. In this episode, we’re going to cover home prices, affordability, and inventory. We’ll also talk about how you can potentially save money on property insurance, new risks that have been introduced into the market, and the best opportunities where investors should be focused in March 2026.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer, investor, chief investment officer of BiggerPockets and Housing Market Analyst. Today, we’re doing our monthly housing market update because you probably already know this, but things in the economy are changing rapidly. We’re seeing bigger regional variances. The economy is sending mixed, and I’ll be honest, sometimes scary signals. It could be a lot to take in, but don’t worry. I got you covered. I’ve read all the news. I’ve analyzed all the data. Today I’m going to help you focus on what’s important and ignore what’s just noise. First, we’re going to talk about the state of the market. We’ll look at prices, inventory, affordability, and transaction volume, so you know exactly where things stand today. Then we’ll do a deep dive into insurance prices. I’m going to share an update on my risk report to help you understand what risks exist in this market.
And then we’ll end with the fun stuff. Opportunities that are emerging in today’s market. Let’s do it. First up, we’re talking about home prices, and really not much has changed here in the last month with prices. We’re still in our weird flatish, slow correction. It’s what I’ve been calling the great stall, and that has been coming true. Prices are up nationally, somewhere between a half a percent, one and a half percent, really depending on who you ask. So they’re up nominally. That means not inflation adjusted like the price you see on Zillow is going up a little bit, but they’re actually coming down in what I think is the more important number, the inflation adjusted number. This matters for investors in terms of your return, but it also matters for overall housing market affordability, which we’re going to dig into next. Hint, basically, prices are going up slower.
Then incomes are rising, which makes affordability a little bit better. But of course, regional differences are huge right now. We’re seeing total differences between markets in the West and the Southeast than what we’re seeing in the Midwest and in the Northeast. As of right now, 40% of markets are now seeing declines. I’m guessing you can guess where those are. It’s mostly on the West Coast and in the Southeast states like Florida and Texas, Louisiana, California, all seeing declines. Some huge in Florida and Texas, but elsewhere, the declines are mostly modest in those 40% of markets. And then there are still markets in the Northeast and the Northwest that are going up. But I think the key thing to call out here is that even in those markets that are growing, the rate of growth is decelerating. It is slowing down from where they’ve been over the last couple years.
Everything in terms of prices is really starting to slow down. And that’s one of the key takeaways from the report that we have for you here today, is that if you’re underwriting deals, if you’re analyzing your portfolio, I would discount appreciation in almost every market from where it’s been over the last couple of years. I think we are going to see continuing slowing for the foreseeable future. So that means if you were seeing 5% growth, it might go down to two or three this year. It might be flat this year. If you saw flat last year, I would count on declining prices in those markets. Now it doesn’t mean you can’t invest as we’re going to talk about later. That means opportunities. You can buy at a discount. There’s going to be more deals on the market, but you got to do your underwriting and anticipate that lower appreciation.
I think that’s the main key from our pricing update here today. Moving on to our sales volume update, because in any market, we need to look at prices and volume, the total amount of things being sold. That’s how you get to a healthy market. A healthy market for housing is where appreciation is a little bit above the pace of inflation. Let’s call it 3.5%. That would be great in my mind. And where you’d see five, five and a half million home sales per year, that’s probably what a good number would be. And the good news for February, that’s the last month we have data for, is that home sales went up a tiny little bit. So that’s good. I want to be encouraged where we can, but it is up from one of the worst numbers we’ve seen in a really long time. In January, it was actually down to 3.9 million.
So way off from that five, five and a half million that we want to be at. I said this last month, but I thought the January numbers were a bit deceiving. They’re kind of a blip because they had all those crazy blizzards. And so things just slowed down a little bit. So we did see bounce back to what we’ve been seeing for basically the last four years. We’ve been at four to 4.1 million. That’s an annualized rate for home sales for the whole year. And we’ve basically been there since 2022. And I’m glad to see it bounce back because I know a lot of people were concerned in January, is it going down? It was at 3.9? Is it going to keep going down? We’re back to where we were for the last four years. And unfortunately, I kind of think it’s going to stay this way.
I think even though affordability is getting a little bit better with the labor market is where it is, people are nervous that I don’t think we’re seeing a lot of buyers coming off the sidelines. That is true. Even though mortgage rates dropped from 7.1% a year ago to about 6% right now, even with that improved affordability, that hasn’t changed. People are wary of the housing market right now. So I think, yeah, it’s going to stay slow. But there is good news in the housing market, and that is around affordability. I am stoked about this because if you listen to the show, you know I’m all about affordability. I think that’s what drives the housing market, especially in these kinds of times. And those are the markets I think that are going to perform better. And that has largely been true since I’ve been saying this for the last three or four years.
And the good news is that affordability continues to improve. This has been going on for months and it keeps getting better little bit by little bit. Now, there are different ways to measure affordability. I kind of think there are three different variables that you need to think about. One, of course, is home prices. That’s the big one, but mortgage rates matter and incomes matter. You have to look at all three of those things in some relation to each other to measure affordability. And affordability basically means how easily can the average person buy the average priced home. And to talk about that today, I’m going to focus in on one metric. It’s one that I like. It’s a good metric for affordability. It’s basically, it’s called the payment to income ratio. This is basically your monthly payment on your mortgage, your principal, and your interest. And you compare that to the average income from the average American.
It has been getting better and it’s been consistently falling for a couple of years now, actually, when you look at it that way. It is now about 27%. The average person’s mortgage payment, it’s about 27% of their household income. That’s not the best it’s ever been. It’s certainly not where it was during COVID or the 2010s, but it’s not bad. Considering the fact that most budgeting experts recommend 30% of your budget should go to housing. And so we’re at 27%. That’s pretty good, right? That’s better than where we’ve been over the last couple of years. It’s basically where we were in a lot of the 2000s. Yes, much higher than it was in 2010, but that was unusually low. So even though we’re not yet at “normal affordability” yet, it’s still good news. Now, if you’re wondering what’s driving it, is it a crash? No, we just said home prices are actually up nominally 1% year.
So it’s definitely not a crash even though for years people have said affordability is so bad that there’s going to be a crash. Well, the first part of that sentence is true. Affordability is really bad, but there is another way that affordability can get better. It’s the great stall. It’s what we’ve been talking about. Affordability can improve by some combination of wages going up, stagnating home prices and falling rates. And that, my friends, is exactly what has been happening. Home prices, maybe they’re going up a little bit on paper, but like I said, they’re not going up as fast as inflation, nor are they going up as fast as wages are going up, meaning that relatively people are gaining more income faster than home prices are going up. That improves affordability. I just said earlier that mortgage rates have gone down 1%. That improves affordability.
It’s not as dramatic as a crash, but these little changes sustained over time can improve to affordability and that’s what we’re getting. In just the last year, the average mortgage payment has fallen nearly $200 a month. That’s great, right? If you’re talking about buying a rental property, that’s $2,400 more per year in cashflow if you are going out to buy the exact same property. We’re going to talk in a little bit about how you can save even more money if you do the right things with insurance, but that is an improvement in affordability that can meaningfully change which deals actually work for you when you’re going out and buying. So although the housing market is far from perfect, this is a real improvement. In fact, about one in six markets now are at historical affordability levels. As crazy as that sounds, that’s actually pretty good compared to where we were the last couple years.
We were at zero basically a couple years ago. Zero of metro markets were near their affordability ranges, historical affordability. Now we’re at one in six. It’s better and it’s trending in the right direction, even though we do admittedly have a long way to go nationally. So that’s where we stand, affordability. But next, let’s talk about where we’re going because we’ve talked about where prices were, but I think most people listening right now want to understand what’s going on in their market, where prices might be heading. And for that, we’re going to look at inventory. We’ll do that right after this quick break, stick with us. As a host, the last thing I want to do or have time for is to play accountant and banker. But that’s what I was doing every weekend, flipping between a bunch of apps, bank statements, and receipts, trying to sort it all by property and figure out if I was actually making any money.
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Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer giving our March 2026 housing market update. Before the break, we shared that housing prices have been largely flat over the last couple of months. We are seeing affordability improvements, which is great news, even though the market is still really slow. But that’s sort of where we are today. That’s a snapshot in time and kind of looking backwards. But if we want to understand where things are going, that’s when we look at inventory. It’s something that allows us to look forward a couple of months and predict where prices are going to be. Now it doesn’t predict a year in the future, two years in the future or anything like that, but we’re heading into the busy spring buying season and I think it’s useful to start looking at inventory to understand in your market what prices are likely to do.
Now, when I looked at inventory data this month, it’s kind of interesting because different sources are saying different things. Just for an example, we’re looking at realtor.com, and I’m not saying either is better than the other. Realtor delivers good information. They’re saying that inventory is still rising, but it’s sort of plateauing. We’ve been, for the last couple years, in really, really low historical levels of inventory, and although it’s been rising rapidly and some people say that’s signs of a crash, I think most housing market analysts would say that’s just a recovery from where we were at artificially low inventory levels during COVID back to normal levels. What realtor is saying is that even though active listings, it’s a measure of inventory climbed 8% over the last year, growth is slowing. It used to be 15% year over year, 20%, and that rate of growth has slowed nine consecutive months.
And actually, if you’re worried about a crash or you’re worried about some 2008 thing unfolding, just want to remind people that even though realtors says inventory is up, they’re saying that we are still 17% below pre-pandemic levels. So keep that in mind. That doesn’t mean that prices can’t go down at these inventory levels. They absolutely can, and we’ll talk about that in a minute, but it does mean that inventory is not spiraling out of control, which is good. That provides a stability to the housing market. Now, where inventory is growing the most really depends on where you are regionally, and it also depends what price tier you are in, in the market. So most of these inventory gains, as you probably can guess, are in the south and the west. That’s why we’ve seen housing prices come down there. Again, inventory is a great predictor.
When you see inventory go up, usually means the market is going to soften. And so we’ve seen concentrations of supply going in the south and west. That’s why we see markets going down in those areas. That’s something we’ve talked about a bit, but the thing I want to call out here is that we’re actually starting to see inventory really go up below $500,000. So that’s a little bit above the median, but I would say the lower half of the market is starting to see inventory go up, whereas the higher end of the market is still holding relatively strong. So that’s where we’re staying with active inventory according to realtor. They’re also saying that new listings, which is a measure of how many people are listing their properties for sale, grew 2.4% year over year, and that’s pretty low. I think that’s pretty good sign if you’re worried about a crash.
I mean, if you want a lot of more inventory, if you want more deals to find, it’s not the best, but 2.4% is a reasonable growth rate. And so what we can see when we look at these things combined, if you say, “Hey, inventory is up almost 10%, but new listings are up 2.4%,” you could sort of deduce what’s going on here. The reason there’s more inventory is not because more people are selling, it’s because less people are buying. So you could just basically say that demand has declined a little bit over the last couple of years based on those two numbers. Now, when we look at Redfin, another great source of data, they’re actually saying something a little different. This is sort of like what’s representative of going on in the market. One day you’re here like, “Inventory’s up.” The next day you hear inventory’s down and it’s kind of hard to distill what’s actually going on.
And even on a national level with two large reputable companies, the same thing is going on. We saw that realtors said that inventory was actually up 8% year over year. Well, Redfin is saying that inventory is actually down 2% year over year. It’s a pretty big difference. Realtors said that new listings were up 2.5%. Redfin is saying that new listings are down 1%. So what do you make of this kind of thing? I think as an analyst, what you do in these kinds of situation is try to get the general vibe of both datasets, see what they’re saying and see what commonalities you can find. I know that doesn’t sound scientific, but this is actually what you do. You want to try and look for something that would be called like a directional trend, meaning it is hard to determine the exact number because both of these companies are going to have different methodologies for doing it.
So we don’t know which one’s right. We don’t know if inventory is down 2% or up 8%. But what we can see among all of the data is that inventory growth is slowing. That recovery in inventory that I was talking about, it’s losing steam. Even if it’s up a little bit, and it will again depend largely on regions, it is losing steam. And we’ll talk about that a little bit more in the risk report, but to me, that is a sign that we are in a normal correction. When prices start to flatten, when they start to go down, you would expect fewer people to want to sell. You would expect lower demand. That’s exactly what we’re seeing. If a crash was starting to unfold, you would see inventory going up and up and up. The pace of inventory growth would probably be going up. And so that is not what we’re seeing.
And that’s the major thing that you should know if you’re worried about risk. But I think the other thing that you should know is that if you’re looking to buy right now, you should expect a relatively soft market, and that means you’re going to be able to negotiate. In a climate where things are sitting on the market, and that’s happening right now, days on market are up about a week over last year. They’re way up from where they were in COVID. Sellers are going to be more willing to negotiate in these markets where inventory is up and going up more. So that is something everyone should be doing is looking at new listings, looking at inventory for your market and figuring out how aggressive you have to bid. If you’re in a market in Connecticut where inventory is 50% below where it was in 2019 and days or market are still 10 days, you’re going to have to be aggressive.
But if you’re in Florida and your inventory is going up, this is an opportunity for you to negotiate and to be really picky. And so inventory is the number one thing. If you want to be active in the spring market, go do some research. Go pull these numbers from Redfin or from realtor, go on ChatGPT, ask them to pull inventory numbers for you and see what’s going on in your market. That’s what’s going to help you actually set your tactics and your strategy for the next few months. So all in all, as we look at the housing market as it stands today, we’re in the Great Stall. I am not taking any victory laps yet, but so far the market is doing pretty much what I said it would do when I made predictions back in October or November last year. It’s pretty flat. It’s pretty slow, but there is more inventory and better deals are hitting the market.
Next, we’re going to move on to our deep dive for the month, which is about insurance prices. It’s something that we get to a little bit here and there on the show, but this month it’s something I want to dig into the data on because I think it’s more important than ever that investors understand what’s going on with insurance so they can properly underwrite, so they can properly assess the performance of their deals because premiums have been going crazy. And this is sort of new for investors in the last couple of years. It used to be so boring to talk about insurance. I honestly never used to even think about it. Now it is a real variable you need to consider. The big picture here is insurance rates are still going up, unfortunately. I wish I had better news there, but I don’t. Over the last year, insurance premiums have gone up 6%, so that’s like double the pace of inflation, but there is a little bit of a silver lining here.
It’s the slowest growth rate since 2020. So the onslaught that we have been facing for five or six straight years now is at least slowing down. I know that’s probably not a lot of solace to people who are paying more and more for insurance, but at least there are signs that we are out of this era where we were seeing literally 15, 20% insurance jumps in a single year. Now it’s down to six. We can swallow that, but it’s still not the best. So why is this happening? Why is insurance going up? Well, first there’s a big thing, and this is sort of unfortunate because it means that prices aren’t going backwards, but it’s because of home values. This is sort of one of the downsides to appreciation and equity growth. I think it’s a small downside considering how much wealth has been created and equity has been built in real estate over the last couple of years, but when a property is worth more, it just costs more to insure, right?
This makes sense. A $200,000 home is going to be cheaper to insure than a $300,000 home. So the average price is bound to go up during a time of massive appreciation. Now, I know this hurts cash flow a lot, but when you weigh the benefits of massive appreciation versus increases in insurance premiums, I’m sure most people who have hoped properties for the last five years would take it, but it does matter going forward if you want to hold onto these properties or what you’re going to do with these properties. So home price is going up. That is increasing the cost of insurance. But it’s also, let’s just be honest, insurance companies are just charging more. There’s actually a metric. They basically track how much it costs to insure $1,000 of home value, and that’s now up to $6.21 per year. That is only up 2% this year.
So that is relatively good because previously the two years before combined, it went up 30%, which is a lot. So if you put these things together, the average insurance premium is now basically double what it was in 2017. Used to be $107 a month on average. Now it’s $201 a month. Yikes, that is brutal. It is basically double. And I know a lot of things have gone up like crazy over the last couple of years, but if you break it down, you actually see that insurance costs have gone up the most proportionally of all expenses basically for real estate investors. Because if you look since COVID started, basically since December 2019, it’s up 72%, right? Even with home prices skyrocketing, the average interest that you pay is only up 35%. The principle you pay is 22%, taxes are up 31%, but insurance 72%. So insurance is the most relatively speaking.
Now, the good news here is that I think it’s probably going to slow down. Like I said, it’s slowed down a bit. And the fact that insurance carriers are not really jacking up their rates per $1,000 of insured, it’s only up 2%. And because I think home prices are slowing regionally, from the research I’ve done, it does look like we’re going to get back towards more normal paces of insurance growth over the next couple of years. So for investors who are doing their underwriting, I get this question a lot. Should we expect insurance to keep going up 10% a year? It is regional, and I’ll get to that in a second. But I think generally speaking, that like three to 5% range around inflation is probably what we’re going to get over the next couple of years. That doesn’t help the increases we’ve seen over the last couple of years, but it does make it more predictable, which is super important for investors.
And I think that’s good news. Now quickly, I want to just talk about the regional changes. I mean, California just getting absolutely hammered over the last couple of years, double digit increases still. We see this in parts of Washington, Georgia, parts of North Carolina, parts of the Northeast, but there’s good news here too. This is going to be surprising to some people, but after years of just relentless increases, Florida and Texas actually saw decreases in insurance costs for the first time in years. Some markets seeing as big as 6% declines, which is a welcome relief to investors and homeowners alike in those areas. So that’s what’s going on with insurance, hopefully slowing appreciation, but you’re probably wondering, what do I do about this? And for that, there’s basically one simple, totally underutilized strategy. Change providers shop around for insurance premiums. I know this sounds absolutely stupidly simple and it kind of is, but actually when I was digging into this, I saw that on average, people who own homes, only about 11% of them change providers each year.
That means 90% are just sticking with whatever premium increases their insurance brokers send to them. They’re just sticking with it. And maybe that’s fine. Maybe it is the best thing for you, but I am betting for the vast majority of you out there, if you’re looking for a simple way to improve your cashflow, switching insurance providers is a no brainer. And that maybe you don’t even need to switch, but at least shopping around absolutely works. There is some data from the ICE Mortgage Monitor. It’s something that we look at every single month and that they show that for people who switch, they on average save money and sometimes they save a lot. On average, they’re saying it’s at least a five to 10% savings, and some markets, it’s even more. Just as an example, if you look at Orlando and Houston, they sort of dug into these two markets.
They showed that about 20% switched in those markets that’s higher than average, and their average savings was four to $500 per year in premiums. That’s really meaningful. That is a great way to improve your cashflow each and every year. And I should mention that those markets, Houston, Orlando, those are relatively affordable markets and those are for single family homes. So if you extrapolate that out to a duplex or a four unit even in those markets, or you extrapolate it to a more expensive place where you’re buying a duplex for 400, 500, $600,000, those savings on insurance could be upwards of $1,500 per year. That’s over a hundred bucks a month in cash flow, just doing a little bit of shopping. Now, if you look at the big picture here, I told you that mortgage payments are down $200 per month. Now, if you shop around for insurance premiums, now we’re talking maybe three, $400 a month in improved cash flow over last year.
That doesn’t even mean buying a different kind of deal. That just means by the fact that affordability is improving. By the fact that you can shop around for insurance, you can get significantly better cash flow each and every month. This is why I’m saying even though prices are flat right now, there is opportunity to generate better cash flow than we have seen in a while and insurance is a big part of that. And I know insurance may not be the sexiest part of investing, but if you want to maximize cashflow in your next deal, shop around for insurance. It’s the same thing as getting multiple quotes from contractors. You don’t just go out there and accept the first bid, find the best deal for the coverage you need. And I should mention, if you want to shop around and you’re BiggerPockets Pro member, you can actually get 5% off immediately just by being a BiggerPockets Pro member with steadily.
They’re a great landlord-focused insurance company. Definitely check that out. But just to summarize this deep dive into insurance, costs are still going up, but I think underwriting for three to 5% premium increases in the coming years makes sense. Make sure you don’t get caught, but hopefully it’s going to come back down to earth closer to the rate of inflation, and that’s going to be welcome news to most investors. But in the meantime, shop around. We still got more in our March housing market update. After this quick break, I’ll share my risk report and the opportunities I’m seeing in the market. Stick with us, we’ll be right back.
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer. This is our March 2026 housing market report. Now we’re going to turn our attention to the risk report, something I do every month because there’s a lot of news out there. There’s a lot of scary headlines. There’s a lot of people saying stuff on social media. That’s not always true, but there is real risk in real estate investing. There always is. There’s risk in any type of investment. And I just want to share with you what I’m seeing in the market and where I think the risks are. Big picture though, things are fine, right? Things really are fine in the housing market. If you listen to this show, you know that I think the big canary in the coal mine for a housing market crash is delinquency rates. If people stop paying their mortgages or cannot pay their mortgages, that’s a big red flag that would really increase what I think is a 20, 25% chance of a crash in the coming years to something much higher than that.
But as of right now, that’s not really happening. Delinquencies actually went down for the second month in a row. Now that was mostly led by early stage delinquencies. It’s measured in different stages, how many people are 30 days late or 90 days late, or actually in pre-foreclosure or foreclosure, all these different things. The early stage stuff is getting better actually. Fewer people are going into those early stages of delinquency and foreclosure. That’s good news. The later stuff is actually getting a little bit worse. So it’s a little bit of a mixed bag. Foreclosure starts are up six and a half percent And over last year, but I should mention still 20% below pre-pandemic levels. So when you see those headlines that say foreclosure starts are up over last year, that’s true. Still below 2019 levels when no one was worried about foreclosure crisis. So keep that in mind.
90 day delinquencies, more serious delinquencies are going up and are rising. And so that is a real risk. These are things that we need to keep an eye on. But again, they are rising but not to any sort of concerning level. Nothing like we saw during 2008. If they keep rising, that is something we’re going to have to talk about. But right now it’s relatively stable. And personally, I think the fact that more serious sort of later stage delinquency stuff is getting worse actually makes sense to me because we’re still working our way through a lot of the post-forbearance program issues in the housing market. A lot of people who couldn’t pay their mortgages during COVID basically got a break for a couple of years. And then when those programs stopped, they started making their way from 30 days to 90 days into pre-foreclosure, into regular foreclosure.
And so the later stage stuff that is working its way through, but I am at least encouraged right now to see that the beginning stages, the early stage delinquencies are going in the right direction. They’re actually going down. So overall, fine in terms of delinquencies, but that’s something we are absolutely keeping an eye on every single month because again, it’s the earliest indicator we’re going to get for severe market risk. Right now, we don’t have that severe market risk, at least in any of the data. There’s no evidence of it right now. But that said, I do want to just call attention to the fact that I do see more risks coming into the market right now. Things like the war in Iran. We don’t know what this is going to mean. We hear conflicting information every day. We’re going to be there for a long time.
It’s going to be quick. We don’t know. Oil prices went from $65 a barrel, up to $100 a barrel. Now they’re down to $80 a barrel. We don’t know. But when things like this happen, when there’s more geopolitical uncertainty in a very interconnected global economy, it just raises risk. I don’t even know specifically what those risks are, but as an investor, you just want to say things aren’t as stable as they were a couple of weeks ago because oil prices could lead to higher inflation. And if inflation goes up, mortgage rates go up. So these things can trickle into the housing market for sure. I’m hopeful oil prices will go back down. I’m hopeful inflation doesn’t get worse, but I think there’s risk of inflation and mortgage rates going up now that didn’t really exist in the last couple of weeks. And I also just think it’s going to slow down the market more.
I already said we are at 4.1 million home sales. The market is slow, but people don’t make decisions in uncertain times. They try not to. And so I think this is going to weigh on transaction volumes. I think it’s going to weigh on demand in the housing market because people are uncertain about the war, but also about the bad jobs data. That’s the other thing that got announced this month. January is actually surprisingly good jobs data, but if you look at the overall trend and you look at February specifically, the most recent month that we have data for, it’s not looking particularly good. We are seeing that the US lost 92,000 jobs, and I think a lot of that is concentrated in higher income areas. I do think there is a high risk of a white collar recession, and that could weigh on overall housing demand.
And that could be for both rentals. So in terms of vacancies could go up and for housing prices. Now, I’m not saying we’re going to get to 10% unemployment, but I’m just saying these are things that weigh on the market. It’s things that could take us from a flat market to a slightly declining market. I said at the beginning of the year, I think we’re going to be in a slightly declining market. So I think things are progressing largely in the way that I imagined in terms of the labor market. But when you introduce these new variables like the war, it does put more downward pressure on potential pricing and demand than we had just a couple months ago. Now, none of this, I just want to be clear. It means that I am predicting a crash. I don’t want anyone to think that. It is always possible.
I always say that on the show, is it crash possible? Yes, it absolutely is. I made my predictions back in November. I said there’s about a 15% chance of a crash. Right now, I’d say it’s a little bit higher. By crash, I mean more than 10% declines this year. Are we going to see 10% declines in housing prices in 2026? I don’t think so. Is that chance bigger than 15%? Yeah, I think it’s gone up a little bit. Maybe it’s 20%, maybe it’s 25%, but I still do not believe that it is the most likely scenario. We are not in 2008. Homeowners have a lot of equity. Like I said, forced selling is still unlikely. We see people paying their mortgages. The real risk here, I think that the only chance we get a full-blown crash is if we see a massive increase in unemployment.
If the AI fears really start to come true and unemployment goes from four and a half to seven or 8%, people start freaking out. We see a lot more new supply coming on the market. We see way less demand, then a crash could happen. Can that happen? Sure. Yeah. I can imagine a scenario where that unfolds, but again, the evidence, the data as of today, doesn’t support that. We’re seeing slowing inventory growth. We are seeing delinquencies relatively stable. Unemployment did tick up a little bit, but the worst AI fears have not yet come to fruition. So I think like most things in the housing market, the big dramatic thing is not going to happen. What’s probably going to happen is some combination of these things in little bits where we just see a week slow market. So I’m not really changing my overall prediction about what’s going to happen in housing.
I just want to raise the reality that the risks are going up. And I’m not telling you that to scare you. I just want to be honest about where I think things are heading and where the potential risks are. And I’m also mostly telling you to help you focus on opportunities and where they’re going to be, because there are going to be more and more deals in the coming months. If inventory is going up, if people are scared, those are often the best times to buy. I started in 2010. People love talking about how easy it must have been. Everyone was so scared to buy real estate in 2010, but if you bought right, it was one of the best times to buy. And although this is a very different situation in 2008 and 2009 and 2010, generally speaking, when people are fearful, when inventory starts to go up, that means there is going to be better deal flow.
I really believe in the coming months we’re going to see more and more motivated sellers, which means that you’re going to have the opportunity to pick up good assets at a discount. If you are a buy and hold investor, this is what many of you have been waiting for. People have been saying, “I’m going to buy when prices are going down.” Well, relative to inflation, prices are going down. The averages I’ve been giving you of 1% growth, that’s for home buyers. As an investor, you might have an opportunity if you buy right, if you bid right, if you find the right deals to buy five or 10 or 20% under current market comps, these are the opportunities that you should be focusing on. Now, yes, you need to be patient and specific about what you buy, but there are good things out there. And you couldn’t buy under market value in 22 and 23, maybe even in 24, but now you can, and that’s what you should be focusing on.
I know it’s scary to see some headlines where people are freaking out, but as an investor, you should be thinking about, now I can get value. Where do I find value in the market? Because there’s better opportunity for value than you’ve been able to find in, I think, like five years. Now personally, I think the good value is going to be in the B and C class buy and hold assets. Again, I think there is pain coming. It is not reflected in data. This is just an opinion. I’m just going to share with you, my opinion is that the pain in the housing market that’s coming is mostly going to be concentrated at the top end of the spectrum. We see the biggest risks to the labor market and wages and layoffs with white collar workers. That is where AI is coming for a lot of jobs.
We haven’t seen that fully impacted in the market yet, but I do think it’s going to happen more and more. I think if consumer spending starts to slow down, companies are going to look for any excuse to not hire expensive people and maybe they start laying off. And I think we’re going to see the high end of the market be kind of weak. It’s not in every market, but I think generally speaking, I like the idea of focusing on workforce housing, starter home kind of assets make a lot of sense to me because if you look at the employment trends in the trades or in healthcare or sort of blue collar jobs, employment’s great. It’s doing really well there. And I think that’s going to lead to solid demand for both rental properties, meaning low vacancies. And if you’re a flipper and you’re selling homes, there’s going to be opportunity there as well.
That’s basically what I’m trying to do. And these are the basics of the upside error.This is what we’ve been talking about for years. Good investors are going to see the current market and say, “Yeah, there’s going to be slower appreciation. There is some risk of price decline, but I’m in this for the long run and I am going to be active and selective and opportunistic and find great assets that I couldn’t afford or couldn’t compete for in previous years.” That’s what the market is giving us right now. And that’s where I’m going to be focusing my attention for the foreseeable future, buying good value and positioning myself for long-term upside. That’s our housing market update for today. I’m Dave Meyer. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll see you next time.