2026 Housing Market Outlook: What Buyers & Sellers Need to Know Before Making a Move

Welcome back everyone. We are heading into 2026 and it is stacking up to be an exciting real estate year, at least from people looking at it, making predictions, worrying about it, clutching their pearls, wringing their hands, trying to figure out what on earth is going to go on in 2026. Because a lot of us have a lot of hopes and dreams about what might happen in the housing market, but what is actually going to happen? That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to go through all of the major predictions that we have available to us. We're going to go over Zillow Redfin, Carr, NAR, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Mortgage Bankers Association. What are all they saying about what's going to happen in 2026? What do Dave and I think about what they're saying? I'll give you a little hint up front. Some of them I think are pretty accurate and some of them I think are blowing smoke to make everybody think it's going to be better than it is. We're going to go through which ones are which, tell you what we think is going to happen next. We're going to explain to you why the housing market is functioning essentially like a junior high dance right now. Until a couple of you brave souls jump off one wall or the other and get out in the middle to do your best running, man, we are not going anywhere. Stick around for that towards the end. Let's jump right into it with number one. I am your host as always, Rich Curtis. I've got my co-host with me today, Dave Miller. Welcome, Dave. Hi, Rich. Good morning. All right. Dave and I went, we did a bunch of research for this and just plowed through all of the predictions from the different outfits. We can bring that information to you and you'll have to excuse us an occasional glance at our notes because it's a lot of data to keep track for you guys. Let's start with Redfin. Dave, I think Redfin actually, and it does stick in my craw to say anything nice about Zillow or Redfin at all publicly, but I actually think Redfin is doing a pretty darn good job of crunching and presenting accurate data, especially this year with how tough things have been. I've been impressed with the data they've been able to bring to us and the value it adds to the marketplace. Right. I think one thing that from your perspective, as you share this information, whether it's Redfin or Zillow or NAR, yours is going to be a little bit more, the data that you're going to provide is going to be a little bit more regional focused versus where mine's going to be nationally really, because a mortgage rate typically in California is going to be very similar in New York or Florida or Arizona versus specific markets and what we're seeing on the real estate side. Yeah, it's a good point. I think too, when we get down towards the end of the show, so stick around for that folks or jump ahead. If you're just dying to skip over all of our prattling and get to the main point, you can jump ahead, feel free down there with the little Zoom bar. But I think when we get to the end there, you and I both are in the daily trenches in Northern California real estate and our predictions of what's going to happen in 2026 are going to be more rooted in that sort of day-to-day experience with our buyers and sellers that we've had throughout 2025 here and what the ones that are still on the fence are telling us about what might get them off the fence. Right. Yep. Good point. So what is Redfin saying? Redfin is expecting prices to go up 1% to 2%, but they're hedging mostly towards that 1% mark next year. So they're saying real estate home prices will go up about 1%. They're saying that mortgage interest rates are going to stay pretty much flat right where they are. So today we're running around six and a quarter, but we can expect them to bounce between six and six and a half for most of the rest of next year. The chief data officer for Redfin specifically said in a podcast recently that she does not expect to see mortgage interest rates dip into the fives for any significant periods of time. I mean, we might get a wild swing or a quick fluctuation, but she doesn't expect it to stick around in the fives for any significant periods of time. I know Dave has some data points later that might refute that. So we'll get into that. But what Redfin is calling this, which I think is really interesting, Dave, they're kind of calling this the great reset. I don't know if they're trying to get out there early with the branding. We had the great recession. So maybe they're just trying to be the ones to name this thing. But their essential point is that with prices only going up 1%, the real affordability play here, the way we're going to claw back affordability in the market is by wage growth outstripping price appreciation. So they're saying we have a supply problem in the real estate market. If this is your first podcast with us, that could be new to you. If it's not, you've heard us say in almost every podcast, we have a lack of inventory, a lack of supply. And actually, we're running 4 to 6 million units shy of where we need to be to have enough supply to meet the demand in the marketplace when it comes to housing. And that's a hard problem to solve. And even if you had a banger solution to that problem today, it still takes 5, 10, 15 years to roll that solution out. You just can't build homes that quick, millions of homes. So she's saying, I'm not going to have a real great solution to the supply problem anytime soon. We don't see the mechanics in the marketplace. The interest rates plummet quickly. And we also don't see them flying up quickly. But we don't have the mechanics in the marketplace to see prices plummet quickly. So the way we're going to reset the real estate market is through price stagnation in real estate home prices. They're saying home prices are going to stick about 1%. Inflation is about 3%. We're hoping wage growth runs at least in tandem with inflation. So you might see a 3% wage growth. You might see a 1% increase in real estate prices. So you've clawed back a 2% delta there in terms of affordability. If you do that over 5, 7, 10 years, which I think that's a pretty specious prediction. It's real hard to predict that far out. But you can really start to claw back some affordability in the marketplace. And that's all she's got for us, basically, in terms of affordability getting better. I think it's a reasonable assessment of where we are, although not a real rosy one. But I find it hard to disagree with her points. I think she got it mostly right. As of now, we see the market being stuck and stagnant. I think she got this one right, Dave. Yeah, I think you're right. And I do think that's accurate. And I think the disconnect where we see with, and we talk about this on all the podcasts, is what's going to make affordability come down and buyers being able to maybe qualify for what we call our fair market purchase price values if we use $500,000? And that's a very small buyer pool right now. Obviously, wage increase. But we always talk about interest rate movements. And people seem, for the last couple of years, they're holding on to still pandemic era interest rates. They're hoping they're going to come back down. They're sitting on the fence. And they're almost like, what's the word I'm looking for? I want to be careful not to be critical. But they're going to die on that hill. I'm not taking a 6% rate when my uncle has a 3% rate, my cousin has it. No one wants to go with a 6% rate when not that long ago rates were in the high twos, threes, and fours. And the reality is, unless we, what do you call it when something hits the osculating? The deviation hits the oscillation? Yeah. Unless that happens and we see something that makes something crazy happen in our world, we're just not going to see rates come back down with a four as a front number. I just don't see that happen, at least in the foreseeable future. So what do we have to go off of? We go off of, and I'm paying attention to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, MBA, what their projections are. And not that far out of line with what you're stating here. But I think what it does, it just reinforces that we're pretty normal. We're at a normal appreciation rate. We're at a normal interest rate environment. And it's been what, two and a half years since we've had those low interest rates? And we have short memories. And so hopefully we start, this becomes normal. If all through 2026, we see a front number of six on interest rate, that just becomes the normal rate. As time goes on, we start to realize that those sub 5% interest rates were in our rearview mirrors. They're just not coming back. And so now we got to decide, are we really going to buy a home and get a mortgage at what we consider fair and average market rates for a mortgage? Yeah, I think that's fair to say. And I think it's not even new normal. It's normal. I mean, 6% to 7% is historically average interest rates. I think the only not normal thing in our market is the supply problem. And I think that's what's, we have everything else kind of leveling out. And the supply problem is keeping that pressure on the market. But I think it's a really important point that everything else is pretty vanilla, pretty normal real estate market. But to your point, the pandemic kind of turned every seller into that old guy at the end of the cul-de-sac yelling, get off my lawn. And I remember when gas was $2. And he doesn't want to go pay today's rates because he's just not accepting that this is what it is. And Dave and I are not immune to this. We have our own pandemic era interest rates that we're happy to cling on to if we can keep them. But the reality is, if you have a reason to make a move in your life, if you're trying to buy a home, trying to move to be closer to grandchildren, get relocated for work, you are unfortunately stuck in a position where you do have to accept the reality of the real estate market that you face. Right. And for those that are maybe new to this, again, me and Rich have been doing this for 20 plus years now. And we were in those early 2000s when the Fed chair, Alan Greenspan, called it irrational exuberance. We were in this phase of where money was just readily available and irresponsible lending was taking place that we saw rapid growth. And then we went into the Great Recession and then the recovery from that, then the pandemic. So you and I have seen some pretty wild swings over the last 20 years. But nothing seems like this kind of stagnant. We're just kind of running on a treadmill. But there's nothing that indicates that it's going to really change much. So this is becoming like our normal here. We're hopeful. We go back six months. We thought, OK, maybe rates or values are going to drop 10% or 15%. And it's going to be an opportunity for buyers to submit some offers. And people just weren't selling the houses. They weren't willing to take those lower offers because they just, again, the lock-in effect, they didn't want to walk away from their 3% interest rate. So something's got to give, but it doesn't look like anything major is going to give. Yeah. That's a good segue into your first reporting agency, which is Fannie Mae. What's Fannie Mae saying we're going to see in 2022? Yeah. And so right now, so Fannie Mae is saying that the outlook for 2026, starting around 6.2%, again, I'm not quoting interest rates. This is Fannie's average 30-year mortgage fixed rate, interest rate 6.2. And they predict by the end of 2026 that we might get to 5.9, so a slow quarter decline of about 10 basis points. So they also anticipate cooling of inflation and a softening labor market, so increased unemployment, which makes the Federal Reserve pull some levers that make interest rates a little bit more palatable. But again, there's nothing in there that says that as a potential buyer that I should wait, and things are going to get way better, way more affordable for me. If you meet five fundamentals, don't sit around waiting for interest rates. And again, I think this is a really good indicator. And then Freddie Mac, which I'll get into in just a second here, is not that far off. I think that's an interesting convergence with some of what the chief financial officer for Redfin was saying, which was although she expects to see more Fed rate cuts, and she expects the Fed to even dabble in quantitative easing type of activities, the Fed has pretty directly said they don't have an intention to purchase mortgage backed securities, and that their adjustments to their balance sheet are going to be made mostly through long term treasuries. And while that could have a positive effect on mortgage interest rates if they bought a lot of treasuries and the yield came down and all that, it's much less direct than if they bought up a bunch of mortgage backed securities. And they're worried, I think, if they were to flood a bunch of money into the mortgage backed securities, they could trigger the housing market to go ripping again, prices to go up. And housing is one of the largest single line items in your core CPI numbers, your core inflation data. So if they trigger the housing market to rip again, they hose themselves on inflation. And so they're looking at assets they can purchase that specifically won't stimulate the housing market. Yeah, and I think maybe a lesson learned there is, like you said, the market ripped and it ripped for a long time. And now we're in this predicament. We're in this affordability value predicament. So hopefully, history, when I was in high school, I'm like, why do we need history? I wasn't mature and wise enough to know that history was important so we don't repeat maybe stupid things. So not to say that we don't do that. But the point being here is that we want to get away from creating this issue that's going to cause problems five and 10 years down the road. And that's where we're at. We're a product of the Federal Reserve in that quantitative easing. And maybe it went on too long. And it's hard to say what exactly. But it just allowed the market to just really rip like it did. And now we're at elevated costs. And when you're purchasing a home that's 4x or 5x your annual income, that starts to be a challenge. Yeah, I think about it this way. When I was a draft guide and we'd have an accident, an emergency, something went wrong on the water, we'd have these really long debriefs afterwards to break down what happened. And people always wanted to start with the point at which somebody went into the water, somebody got hurt, whatever. But usually, when we were done with that debrief, you could track the cause of the problem to 15, 20 steps before that happened. It was never the moment they went in the water. Was it steps in 12-ounce increments, maybe? I think the economy is the same way in the sense that I think you could actually draw a through line from the Great Recession to the problem we're in now. That when they turned the money printers on full bore for the Great Recession and told us they were going to turn them right back off again, they essentially never did. They slowed. They never turned the money printers off. And then we hit COVID. And they weren't off. And they cranked them right back up again. And at the same time, they dropped those interest rates. They dropped the interest rates dramatically in the Great Recession, but never down to what we saw in COVID. And they thought, well, if a little's good, a lot's better. And they cranked them down even more. And they just went too far. So they took these strategies that pulled us out of the Great Recession, 10x them to try to pull us out of COVID, which it did. We had, despite what you hear on certain news outlets, we had the strongest economy in the world up until 10 months ago. And we had the quickest and most robust recovery from COVID. However, there are some consequences for the way we accomplish that. And one of them is these multiple competing factors that has us frozen and sort of stuck in the housing market right now. And so I am at least heartened to hear the Fed say they're attempting to not repeat those same mistakes. Yeah, I agree 100%. Because 5, 10 years down the road, the problem is going to get worse. You just can't kick the can down the road for short-term reprieve for long-term pain. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we're not good at thinking long-term in this country with the economy. All right, let's jump, let's pivot to Zillow. Zillow is very similar. They're predicting rates unlikely, this is their exact language, rates unlikely to fall below 6% in 2026. So similar to Redfin, they're saying we're going to kind of stay where we're at, 6.25, 6.5. Maybe we drop to 6. I think your Fannie Mae, that was a standout in terms of saying we might get down to the high fives by the end of the year. I mean, I'll be doing backflips if Fannie's right. I'm pulling for Fannie on this one. But I don't necessarily see it happen. I see us more staying in the 6 to 6.5 here. Zillow is also predicting about 1.2% price increases. Redfin was leaning into their 1%. And Zillow is a little bit rosier at 1.2. But that still is a point at which your home price appreciation is lagging inflation. So when we assess home values, I think the other thing the news is really not great, and these outlets don't really want to explain to you, is the difference between nominal values and inflation-adjusted values. So nominally, you're going to go up 1.2%. That's the actual amount your house will increase. But because inflation went up 3%, you've actually got a 1.8% net loss in value on your home, because everything else in your life just got 3% more expensive, and your primary asset only got 1.2% more valuable. So nominally, it looks good. But on the ground, that actually does represent a loss in real estate value for you. Sorry to be the bearer of that news for everybody watching out there. And they're hoping that, again, that lags behind the wage growth, so that we can claw back some affordability. Now, I think I might have forgotten to say this about Redfin. They were expecting an increase in sales volume of 3% nationwide. And Zillow is, again, a little bit rosier. We're going from most conservative to rosiest here on my end. Zillow is a little bit rosier, a 4.3% increase in overall sales volume, which isn't going to make a big difference to what it's going to cost you to buy a house in 2026 on the ground. So I think not much difference there between Zillow and Redfin. I think they're both reporting reasonably accurate conservative numbers as to what they think is going to go down. Yeah, I think that's interesting. I think similar, maybe a good opportunity to pivot to my next projection, which is Freddie Mac. And when we talk about this, Rich, I think in previous podcasts and the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2025, my projection was in 2026, we will see interest rates with a 5 in front number. And when I say 5, and there's a big difference between 5.1 and 5.9. Now, what I think gets consumers excited is right now, even if we got in and we saw it touch the low sixes, but the difference between 6% and 6.1 and 5.9 and six is the same. It's just that 0.1. Now, from a psychological perspective, 5.9 seems a heck of a lot better than six. I talked to someone, you're six or 6.1, they don't really get caught up in that. But six to 5.9, it's super exciting. And even if we get and we see 5.9, let's not buckle the seat belt and say, okay, well, now we're going to see low fives or fours. There's just nothing that indicates that that's going to happen. So Freddie Mac's perspective is that just slightly higher than Fannie Mae. They're at 6.3, Fannie Mae was at 6.2. And they say gradual slow drift lower with some forecasting and rate drops to around 5.9 by year end and affordability expected to slowly improve as inflation cools more than home price appreciation and monthly costs back down for buyers. And that's kind of back and forth. They're kind of making a play of, yeah, your house, the houses aren't going to get much cheaper, but your ability to pay for them will get a little bit incrementally better. They're kind of making the same argument that Redfin is there. Yeah. One last, like continued low inventory, but rising sales, a rebound in rents and a lock-in effect for existing homeowners. So I just think for the folks that are watching this, we're not predicting one swing, one major swing, one direction or the other. It's really just a kind of a, at this point, a status quo. And where we're at today, it doesn't seem like we're that far off from where we're going to be well through the first quarter of next year. Yeah. I think that is, if you're looking for the through line, the continuous thread through all these predictions, and we're going to get into some people who are putting on the rose colored glasses in a second. So I think that through line will start to deteriorate with my next two that I'm going to present, but I think they're a little bit bonkers. But the through line here is gradual. You're right. Like what we keep hearing is real gradual. Like there's not a quick solution to this affordability problem. The market's not going to swing wildly in one way or the other. We're not expecting the great 2026 real estate crash, and we're not expecting prices to rip either. We're hoping for a moderate sort of soft landing in the housing market. Now, unfortunately, I think we're talking about a soft landing in the economy. That's good for everybody. When you talk about a soft landing in this way in the real estate market, that's a real slow crawlback of affordability or clawback of affordability there. And it means that for our buyers that are frozen out now, which represents about 85% of Californians who don't already own a home, which is a sickening number to report, probably 84% of them are still frozen out next year when it comes to affordability there. That's the part I don't like about what they're saying here. But the hope is that that gets better over the trailing five years here, the preceding five years here that we're going to get into. So the hope is over the next five years, we get a lot more of you able to come to the table and get your slice of the American dream. But we're not expecting wild swings in affordability to help a lot of you. So if you're on the fence because of price and interest rate, because you just would rather it to be better, it's not going to move very much. And you just got to make your decision based on other criteria. But if you're frozen out, literally financially can't pull it off, unless your personal income situation swings dramatically in 2026, it's very likely that you still are on the fence next year, I think is kind of the through line through these things. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I think the other point that I think is important to make from an affordability standpoint is what's your alternative? And I started in this business, one of the compelling discussions was, is it, how much more does it cost me to own a home or buy a home than rent or stay where I'm at, or go live with my in-laws? And I don't know which, some people can decide which one of those is the worst of all three. There's an extreme cost to going to live with my in-laws. Yes. And there's a good chance they're not watching this. So we're okay saying that. But I think that the point there is there just wasn't a large spread and it got to the point where it was almost as affordable. And by the time you took some deductions, some other things as affordable to go buy a home as to continue to rent. And so I think that might be the other jumping off point for folks. If values stay stagnant and rents stand to increase with inflation, that we might get to that point sooner than we expected to where it's a pretty good argument to say, okay, well, maybe it's time to go buy a house. So I'm just not putting all my money in to someone else's paying someone else's mortgage. And the cost difference isn't much at all. Yeah. Those benefits to homeownership are still always on the table where you can lock in your largest monthly line item on your budget, your housing costs, and have it not go up. It's important to say because people always like to yell at me in the comments. Yes, your insurance can go up. Yes, your taxes can go up, at least here in California, only by your prop 13, a couple of percent or whatever. But your principal and interest, the bulk of your payment cannot shift once you lock it in with a 30-year fixed rate mortgage instrument. So you get that benefit and the forced savings benefit of filling that equity account for yourself. I think the rent versus own, I think is one of the most important points that our industry never makes, at least not on both sides. It's easy to make that argument in a market where it's going to come out as a real estate professional on your side. So it makes sense for everybody to buy here. So go ahead and do that calculation. But there are places in the country where when you do that calculation, you find out buying a home would not be the best thing for you. And so that is, I think, an incredible point because we have people watching this from all over the country here on the show. Thank you for all of you, wherever you're coming from. It's actually fun for us to find out. So if you can't, pop in the comments down below where you're actually watching this from because it's really fun for us to see where everybody is coming from here. But if you're in Manhattan and you run a rent versus own calculator, very likely you're going to come out that renting is better. If you're in Santa Barbara, highest price real estate market in California, very likely for most average human beings earning an average income that you're going to find out renting is better than owning. And if you're in Sacramento, you're probably going to find out that owning is better than renting. But it's important to do the math and not make these blind financial decisions because people tell you that a house is your biggest investment. Sure it is. And yes, I still believe in all the benefits of it, but not in every situation. We say all the time in the show, there's no blanket advice in real estate or general advice. There's good advice, real estate's hyper personal and hyper local. So the best first thing you can do other than watching the video I'll link to at the end about the five real estate fundamentals that make you solid to buy in any market is to go run a rent versus own calculation for the city you live in before you even start this process and see if it works out for you. Because if it does make more sense to own the rent where you are and you meet the five real estate fundamentals, and we're telling you the real estate market isn't going to appreciably change over the next 12 months, then it's just about going out and shopping and finding the right opportunity for you. But if it doesn't make sense, rent versus own for you, and you don't meet the five real estate fundamentals, and this is not the market to be splashing around and playing and taking risks in based on the information we're presenting. Yeah. And part of that is, sorry, my phone just rang through my kid telling me, hey, I got to go pick him up from school here in just a bit. So sorry for the distraction there. So I think they're all kind of lining up in that way. We can pivot here to the ones that are a rosier on my end. I'll just lump these two together, the California Association and the National Association of Realtors. California Association of Realtors are saying 6% interest rates for the bulk of next year. They don't expect them to drop into the fives. National Association, same thing, 6% average interest rates. Although that is a rosier picture than we're at now. We are not at 6% interest rates. We're at more like six and a quarter. And again, we can't quote rates. Depends on your personal credit situation. We're just averages. But I haven't had a 6% rate come across my desk this year. Have you? Nope. Nope. Close. I think we did one recently. And again, it's all relative to some of the things you talked about, loan to value, credit score, debt to income ratio. There's a lot of moving parts that determines the interest rate. And I do think that periodically we're going to get, and it's impossible to time this. We might see these little spikes in the mortgage-backed security or the 10-year that gives us a couple of days or a week of a lower than typical rate. But then it tends to find its way back very quickly. Yeah. And that's what happened with the client you're referring to. They just hit a sweet spot in the market. And Dave and I cannot time the market. But what we can do is say, hey, buddy, I'd lock this interest rate in because it's one of the best ones I've seen all year. So where a few weeks before that, you might've said, ah, float for a week or two before locking. Who cares? But then you see that rate and you're like, nah, go ahead. Let's lock this. So that kind of advice from a trusted loan professional who's keeping their finger on the pulse, like Dave is, who can say this is a standout rate for the year. You might get those little things. But it is impossible to time it. But it is good to have educated folks on your side who can help you take advantage of it if you get lucky enough to hit one of those. Right. And so if you decide to buy a home, you typically have about a two and a half week window from the time you go into contract to lock in that rate. So we're talking, you know, you know, 12 business days that you're like really seeing what rates are doing. And it's just not worth sometimes like, you know, crossing your fingers and hoping that it's going to get significantly better. So in that 12 day window, I will advise you where you're at, what we're likely to see, and then, you know, help you make an educated decision with what's coming down the pike in terms of economic data. Yeah, exactly. Now, here's where things get a little too rosy, in my opinion. California Association of Realtors is calling for a 3.6% appreciation of home values next year. Obviously, they're talking in California, but National Association of Realtors says, hold my beer. I'll go one better. We're going to see 4% appreciation nationally next year in home prices. I don't see the market mechanics to see either the 3.6 or 4% myself. That's what they're saying. They vary wildly in terms of volume. So sales volume increase for California Association of Realtors is 2%. NAR, the National Association of Realtors, is saying we're going to see a 14% bump in sales volume. They're saying, well, the inventory is going to stay low, interest rates are going to stay where they are, but your prices are going to go up and everybody's going to start selling houses again. And I think those numbers are pandering more to me and Dave than they are educating you as a consumer. I think those are two rosy numbers, and I wouldn't hang my hat on those. I think NAR, I mean, I think Zillow and Redfin and Fannie and Freddie had much better numbers there. So I think those numbers are based on this being a confidence-based economy, and we want to make all you confident that this is all going to be rosy and great and better, hope that that means you'll just go out and ignore the numbers and start moving houses so it actually gets better like that. I think it's a confidence play. I don't see it really shaken out that way. So I think, in my opinion, Dave, those numbers are a little specious. Yeah, 100%. And I think what we talked about, and for us, we've been talking about this for a long, we were super busy during the pandemic or after the rates came down. And then we were really extremely slow. And now I find that we're seeing ourselves in just a normal market. And I think that's okay to be a normal market, and we don't need to predict 14% sales volume increase. Now, is that a significant increase when you're basing it on a super low period that we've had? So it's all a little bit relative, but I think with anything, we just want to see stable, moderate movement and normalcy. Yeah. And that's a good point, Dave. And I probably should have made that point more clearly in regards to Zillow and Redfin, and their 3% to 4% increases in sales volume next year. And that really essentially is nothing. That's because 2025 has been the lowest sales volume in the last 35 years. So when you're getting a 4% bump over the lowest number in 35 years, that's really a nothing burger from a data or a number of transactions on the ground kind of perspective, which is why I think NAR kind of tried to bump that into the double digits to try to make it feel statistically relevant. Although I just don't see that happening on the ground. Yeah, I think you're right. And you and I, we talk about this, we read all this information, we have all this data, but we live and breathe this every day. And so the biggest indicator is what our buyers, our borrowers, our sellers, folks that are looking to potentially refinance, that's our barometer. That's our kind of best case of really what's going on in our market. And so we are seeing some, definitely some increases in volume, but nothing crazy, but just a nice stable, steady increase, which is nice to see. Yeah. So I think you have one more for us, the Mortgage Bankers Association. Why don't you give us a quick wrap up of what they say, and then you and I'll give our predictions for 2026 and what we think's going to happen. Yeah, they're a little more pessimistic than Fannie and Freddie. They're expecting throughout the year to be 6.4 through 2026. Total originations and volume is expected to increase, they're saying, by 8%. But again, back to what you talked about, volume was so low in 2025 that percentage of increases that may seem large, but comparatively speaking, pretty gradual. So that's really, again, they're talking about economic factors and expectations of a weakening job market in the foreseeable future with unemployment rising to 4.7 by mid-2026. And some delinquency rates on government loans are expected to increase, putting pressure on servicing costs. So there's some other things that make it not look so rosy for them, but I think somewhere in the middle, and I'm more in line with Fannie here in terms of where we expect to be. All right, well, what's your final take? And it's super risky to put our stake in the ground anywhere with things being as volatile as they are in the economy. But give us your wrap up, what do you see happening in 2026? For the year, Rich, I expect first quarter to be right where we're sitting. I think there's still some things we're trying to figure out with some trailing data, the economy, but I expect us to be low sixes interest rates, somewhere between six and a quarter and 6.4. And then I do think that at some point, if we have some stabilization, stabilization in the employment rate, that we will see rates come down and touch the fives in the first half of the year. And then when I say five, it's 5.9. So that's my six-month outlook, which is obviously beneficial for me. I get a lot busier phone rings a little bit more when that front number changes. But I still, I would anticipate that from an affordability standpoint, we need to see some reprieve, as long as that doesn't drive up demand to make supply even worse than what it is today. Yeah, I know. It's hard to wish for what we need, which is we need a 20% to 40% price correction in the market, which would, that would really open up affordability. But if we did that, because of our supply problem, it would swing back to where we're at and then shoot past it. The prices would skyrocket. So that stuck position, it's like, even if you ask for what you need, you're going to get what you don't need because of the supply problem. And so this gradual prediction by everybody, I think, is the best case scenario right now. We need things to stay calm long enough to solve the supply problem and to have wage growth hopefully outpaced. Now, the number from the mortgage bankers association with the increasing unemployment seems to track what we're hearing. We don't have good government data on unemployment because of the shutdown. We'll see when we get that data and how accurate it is. But I think that is a problem for us moving into next year in terms of those unemployment numbers because as those go up, that weakens the argument that wage growth is going to outpace inflation and outpace real estate prices. If there's too much pain and suffering in the job market for people, we're not going to see that wage growth that we need to gradually increase affordability here. So we're going to have to keep an eye on that for people. And we'll report back to you as we get some accurate job numbers where we think. But I think that's the number from the mortgage bankers association that worries me the most in terms of wiping out any chance we have at this moderate affordability play here by wage growth outpacing real estate prices. Yeah. And it dampens consumer confidence. And we know this is a confidence-based business. And people need to feel good and stable, at least for the foreseeable future. Yeah. Oh, OK. That's what I was going to do. I'm going to give my wrap up here. My take on 2026 is that pretty similar to Dave's. I think we're going to see rates bouncing around between that 6 and 6.5 mark for most of the year. I'd like to say I see I'm hitting the fives, but I'm not feeling as confident about that. We'll see. Maybe I owe you a beer at the end of the year. We'll see how that shakes out. But the 6 to 6.5 range feels normal real estate volume. I see it being a grind like it is now. I see it being a challenge for buyers to find what they're looking for because of the low inventory. I see it being a challenge for sellers to get the prices they want because of the lack of confidence in the job market and the reset of buyers' expectations that's already occurred. And so I think these predictions of 1%, I'd see 1% or less on that price appreciation. I hope they're right that the economy will stabilize and wage growth will outpace that and we get a little bit better there. But like I said at the opening, our market really feels like a junior high dance, right? Girls on one wall, boys on the other. And nobody's feeling brave enough to get out in the middle and do their best running man and tangle it up and be the first ones to make a compromise here. And so we have sellers' and buyers' expectations that are just really wildly far apart right now. And until a few of them head off into the middle and start dancing and start compromising, we don't start to get closed sales with lower prices that provide comps to justify lower prices at the next listing appointments and for the expectations of the marketplace to actually start systematically ratcheting down. So we are in the first 20, 30 minutes of a junior high dance right now. Everybody's on the sidelines and we need some people to start hitting the middle and compromising before we see anything happening here in the market. Yeah. Really good, good analogy there. And I'm not going to be that first one that's in the dance floor in the middle. So I may never get off the wall. But maybe we need more on the line for our predictions. Maybe we're going to have to say that if your prediction misses, you have to do a running man on the end of the year pod next year. And if mine misses, I do. I'm not committing to that, but maybe we need more skin in the game. Certainly not committing to that, but we might have more views than we've ever had. And my yes, yes, that's true. But my kid might find it and use it against me as much as possible. So yeah, that's right. Thank God camera phones didn't exist when we were kids. Yeah. All right, guys. I think that's a good place to wrap it. I hope this has given you some good perspective on what the full breadth of the marketplace is thinking about, about 26, what Dave and I are thinking about about 2026. So you can start to figure out what and how and when you might want to wade into the waters of the housing market. As usual on this show, we're not giving you answers. We are trying to help you make the highest quality real estate decisions you can from the comfort of your couch by giving you the highest quality information we can. Hopefully this did that for you. Thanks for sticking around with us to the end, and we'll see you on the next one. I'm Rich Curtis. And I'm Dave Miller. Thanks guys. Bye now.