2026 Home Price Prediction

Will home prices go up or down in 2026? We have seen a historic run of home price appreciation with values rising year after year, even as mortgage rates have remained high. But will that continue next year? Or will we see prices flatten or even decrease in the year to come? Today, I'm giving you my 2026 home price forecast. Hey everyone, excited to have you here for what is simultaneously both my favorite and least favorite show of the year, predictions about the next year. I genuinely enjoy and love the data analysis and research that goes into making these predictions. And since I started doing this back in 2022, I've been pretty accurately in calling the direction of the housing market. But at the same time, it's a little nerve wracking and difficult to put these predictions out in public, especially this year when there's less data available due to the recent government shutdown. But despite those limitations, I choose to make these predictions for you every year because having an idea of where the market is heading, even if it's not 100% accurate as no forecast is, this is still crucial as an investor because you invest differently in a rapidly appreciating market than you do in a flat or a correcting market. And don't get me wrong, you can invest in any kind of market, but you do need to plan accordingly. And that's what I'll help you do today. By the end of this episode, you'll know where the market is likely to go, what things to watch for in case things start to change, and how to build your portfolio accordingly in 2026. Let's do it. So making predictions about the housing market is difficult because the housing market is driven by so many different variables. On one side, you have all these things that impact demand. How many people want to buy homes? These are things like demographics, immigration, cultural shifts, domestic migration, investor activity, and so on. Then you have this whole other set of variables that impact the supply side, like the lock-in effect, construction trends, a longstanding shortage in homes in the United States, and so on. But to me, and I've been on this trend for a while now, affordability is the number one variable driving the market these days. Now, why this variable among all the other ones out there? Well, we have hit an absolute wall in terms of affordability. We are near 40-year lows. And by the way, if you haven't heard this term before, in context of the housing market, it just means how easily the average American can buy the average-priced home. And that's at 40-year lows. It hasn't been since the early 1980s that it has been this difficult for the average American to buy homes. Now, this is really crucial, because what has not changed is that people do want to buy homes. There is still desire to buy homes. But when you look at demand, this economic term, demand, it's not just desire, it's desire and the ability to pay for it. We still have the desire side. The issue is that most Americans just cannot afford it. And in my view, if that doesn't change, if affordability doesn't move, not much is going to change in the housing market. But if affordability improves, so will the market. So affordability, this key thing, is actually made up of three individual variables. We have home prices. How much do homes actually cost? That should make sense. We have mortgage rates, because the majority of homes are purchased with a mortgage, and so this matters a lot. And we also have wages. How much are people earning? So those are the three things, and we're gonna break each of them down one by one. So the first factor in affordability is mortgage rates. I did a whole episode about that, but the TLDR was that, although I think they can come down a little on average, next year, I don't think they're going to move that much. So I think it could modestly help affordability, but it's probably not going to be the thing that really changes the housing market. The second one is wages, and real wage growth can improve affordability. Real wages, if you haven't heard this term, is basically just a question of, are incomes rising faster than inflation? If the answer to that is yes, you have positive real wage growth. If the answer to that is no, you have negative real wage growth. But luckily, right now, one of the bright spots for the economy in recent years, since 2022 or so, is that we have had real wage growth. Wages in America, incomes, are growing faster than inflation, which means your purchasing power is going up. I hope that will stay up, but I think it's going to slow in the next year. We've seen inflation up to about 3%. The job market is definitely weakening. That reduces leverage and salary negotiations, and I think wage growth will slow. But the thing about the housing market and how this relates to our strategy as investors is that even in the best times, wage growth takes time to really impact affordability. So, although wage growth does really matter, it's probably not a big factor in 26. So, if rates aren't going to change that much, in my mind, in our base case, and real wages are not going to impact affordability that much, does that mean that the housing market is doomed to have another year like we had this year, where things are pretty slow and stuck? Maybe, but we still have one more variable, which is housing prices, which is why my base case for next year is for home prices to be flat, or maybe down just modestly. If you want some actual numbers, I like to predict a range and a direction, because I think as real estate investors, it actually hurts us to obsess about, is it up 1% or 2%? I think we actually should just say, hey, it's up modestly, it's down modestly, it's flat this year, it's going to go up a lot, there's going to be a crash. Those kinds of directional indicators, I think are what's really important. And what I see is that home prices in 2026 are going to be between negative 4% and positive 2%. You could call this flat if you want, I am personally leaning more towards the negative side right now. Again, we don't have data from the last couple of months, but the way the trends are going, I think if I had to pick where we'll be a year from now, I'd say negative 1, negative 2% year over year growth. So you might be surprised hearing me say this, because all previous years I've said we've been flat or up, because I genuinely believe that, and that was what actually came to be. But this year I see that changing. I just want to say, having these kinds of declines, this isn't crazy. Seeing modest declines in prices isn't a crash, it's not even unusual, it is a normal correction, and I should probably mention a buying opportunity. And that said, I am a little more pessimistic, I think, than other forecasters. I see Zillow at plus 1%, some others are near flat, but most of them are modestly positive. But we're all still generally in the same range. Honestly, being plus 1%, minus 1%, it's kind of flat. So that's what most people are saying, and I think the takeaway here, whether you think it's plus 1% or minus 2% is the same. Appreciation is going to be slow at best, it might be negative, we can't know right now with the little data that we have, but we have to not count on appreciation. I think that's the main takeaway for us as real estate investors. Maybe we'll get 1%, that would be great, maybe it'll be negative 1%. Honestly, whatever, if you're counting four flat or you're not counting on appreciation when you're underwriting your deals, you can still invest in this market, but that's the main takeaway I want you all to have right now is that you should not assume you're going to get appreciation in 2026. So that's my belief about what's going on in terms of nominal prices. It's gonna get a little wonky, but stay with me. Nominal prices means not inflation adjusted. This is the price that you see on paper, this is the price that you see on Zillow. People are split on whether that's gonna be up a little bit, down a little bit, but what almost every forecast that I believe in that I think is reputable, all of them agree that real prices are going to be negative. And again, real in economic terms just means inflation adjusted. So every forecast I see believes that compared to inflation, home prices are going to go down. So even if prices on paper go up 1%, but inflation stays at 3%, then real home prices have declined 2%. Real prices are down. And even though I'm saying, I think the most likely scenarios that nominal prices are down next year, I feel much more confident that real prices will be down in 2026. That much seems pretty clear to me. So that's my base case. It's what I've called the great stall in recent months. Have you listened to the podcast? And it's still what I think is the highest probability of happening next year. Because affordability is too low. Rates will come down a little bit, I think, but not that much. Wages aren't really gonna help us one way or another. And prices, if they flatten or modestly decline, that's how we get into the stall period where affordability gradually gets restored to the housing market. That is the base case. But I should say that when I make these forecasts, I like to be honest about my confidence level. And I just wanna say that this year, it is lower than previous years. Last year, I felt really confident about what I said was gonna happen. I was pretty accurate. This year, I think the great stall is probably a 50-ish, maybe 60% probability, which means that we have a 40 or 50% chance that something else could happen. So what else could happen in the housing market? To me, it still all comes down to affordability. As you'll remember, my base case is saying affordability, not gonna change that much. It's just going to gradually improve. But what happens if it goes up a ton? What if affordability gets way better? What if it goes down and actually get worse? Are there scenarios where affordability really does move more than my base case? Yes, absolutely, that is possible. I don't think it's the most likely thing to happen, but I want you to understand all of the different scenarios that could play out next year. And to me, there is one really big X factor that I am gonna be keeping a very close eye on next year because it could cause what is known as a melt-up, basically a huge surge in home pricing. So when I'm asking, could affordability get much better and send prices up, yes, there are a few routes to that, but to me, the most compelling one, the thing I'm gonna watch most closely is something called quantitative easing. I went into this a lot in the episode predicting mortgage rates. So you can listen to that again, but if you missed it, it's basically the Fed using one of its emergency tools to get mortgage rates down into the mid or low fives, maybe even lower, we don't know. Quantitative easing, it's basically they go out and frankly print money to create demand for mortgage-backed securities and bonds. This pushes down yields, that pushes down mortgage rates, and that could increase the demand in the housing market a lot, which could potentially push up prices. Hopefully that makes sense, right? Because I don't believe, regardless of what happens, the Fed cuts rates a bunch of times, I still don't think without quantitative easing we are getting to the magic mortgage rate that we need in the United States to unlock the housing market. Research by Zillow, John Burns Real Estate, a couple different economics firms have all gone into this, and they say that the magic number you need to get to to get people off the sidelines, to free up inventory, to restore transaction volume to the market is like somewhere between five and five and a half percent. I just don't see that happening next year without quantitative easing. So the big question for 2026 in the housing market to me is will there be quantitative easing? And frankly, I think the chances of it happening are going up like every single week right now. The Trump administration has continued to prioritize affordability, particularly in the housing market. And as we've seen other parts of the economy start to falter and weaken, like the labor market, I think the chance that the Fed dips into its toolbox to stimulate the economy continues to go up. Now, I don't think this will happen right away in 2026. I think the earliest it will probably happen is in May because President Trump, he actually, the other day, said he already knows who he wants to name Fed chair, but he can't do that until Jerome Powell's term is up in May of 2026. So that's when we would probably seriously start looking for this to happen. I don't know if it'll happen on day one, but it might happen sometime after May. So if that does happen, and I call this the upside case. You know, you have your base case, which is what you think is most likely. Is there a more positive case? That's usually called an upside case. So my upside case for us, we get quantitative easing, affordability improves, and then what? In that case, I think we see prices go up somewhere, maybe between 2% and 6%, maybe up to 7% if they really get rates down into the fives. Maybe up to 7% if they get mortgage rates down in the fours, but that seems unlikely. And that's what I see happening. Now, I know a lot of people are saying if there's quantitative easing, if the Fed cuts rates, we're gonna see a explosion in appreciation. They're gonna go up 10% again, like during COVID. I don't buy that personally, because we know that when rates went up, not only did it drive down demand, but it drove down supply as well, right? That's the lock-in effect. That's why prices haven't fallen, because low affordability doesn't just impact demand, it impacts supply at the same time. Both of them are low right now. So in my opinion, if rates come down, yeah, it's gonna bring back demand, but it is also going to bring back supply, right? This will break the lock-in effect. So more people will be listing their properties for sale. More people will be looking to move. And so in this quantitative easing scenario that we're talking about, I think the real winner is going to be transaction volume. We are going to see more homes bought and sold. That will help. And there will likely be upward pressure on prices, but not like COVID. That is unusual. Seeing 10% appreciation might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing that we don't see again for generations. Of course, if they drop rates down to 2% or 3%, maybe that will happen, but I think that is not the case, even if there's quantitative easing. So I would expect positive appreciation in this scenario. Good appreciation, really good for investors, but nothing crazy like COVID. The other thing I should mention is that if this happens, it will probably happen amongst a backdrop of a slower economy. So people may not want to make huge economic decisions like buying a house when they're fearful about their job. So we have to temper our expectations for what might happen if there is quantitative easing. Now, I told you my base case. I think that's about a 50, 60% chance of happening. When we talk about the upside cases, quantitative easing, I think it's getting more likely. I actually think it's about a 30% chance that this happens. And we'll talk about how to account for that in your own investing in just a minute. But I also want to talk about downside, because yes, there is a chance that affordability gets better. There is also a chance that affordability gets worse. How does that happen? Well, it probably happens if inflation stays high. If inflation goes up, it's been going up four months in a row, it is nowhere near where we were in 2021, 2022. So people overuse the word hyperinflation a lot in this country. 3% is not hyperinflation. Four months in a row of growth is not hyperinflation. We are nowhere near that. But if inflation continues to creep up and mortgage rates go back up, I think there is more downside. I'm not saying that's going to be a full-on crash, but I think there's more downside below 1% to 2%, right? Could a crash happen and it really get bad? Sure. But on top of rates staying high, what we need to see is forced selling, right? We've talked about this on the show, but the thing that takes a correction to a crash is when homeowners are no longer able to afford their mortgages, and they are forced to put their homes on the market to avoid foreclosure or as part of a foreclosure. Now, right now, delinquencies, they're up a little bit, but they're still very low by historic standards. They are below pre-pandemic levels. But what I am saying is that there is no evidence that a crash is likely at this point. If people's predictions about AI just destroying the labor market come true, and we see unemployment go up to 10%, yeah, there is a chance that there is a real estate crash, but that still remains unlikely. I think even in this scenario, maybe prices drop 5% to 10%. I have a really hard time, even in a downside case, imagining more than a 10% drop in 2026. It seems just extremely unlikely to me. But the chance that we see 5% declines, 7% declines, low, but I'd say it's maybe a 10% chance because we just don't know. There could be some black swan event that we don't see coming that negatively impacts the housing market. We always have to remember, even though we can't predict them, we have to remember that these things exist. That is part of being an investor, and we can't just ignore them and pretend that they don't happen. They are out there. So the question then is, what do you do? How do you use this information where I've just said, yeah, I have a base case, but it's maybe 50, 60% likelihood. There's a 40% chance that something totally different happens. How do you invest in that kind of market? How do we invest when there are multiple likely outcomes? There's no right answer to this, but I will tell you how I am doing it. I am first and foremost preparing for the great stall. I think that is the most likely scenario, and the whole idea of making forecasts is to not get paralyzed by all the different outcomes, but to have a plan, but to remain somewhat flexible. So I'm going to plan for the great stall because I know this might seem counterintuitive, but I actually think it could be a great time to buy. If we are in a scenario where prices are flat or going down on average, that means you can get great assets at a discount. Now, of course, in these kinds of scenarios, there's also the risk that you might buy a property and the value of that property goes down more once you buy it. But in the great stall, the downside risk of that is not so great. And if you use tactics like buying deep or value-add investing, you can mitigate that risk. Now, seeing this opportunity and wanting to pursue that, at the same time, I am protecting myself against those possible declines in values. Like I said, I am going to underwrite super conservatively. I am being very, very picky right now. I am being patient. I will only buy sure things, only buy excellent assets, things I would want to own even if prices went down for a year or two after I bought them. Those things absolutely exist, 100%, and they will become easier to find and buy during the great stall. That is one of the benefits of this market, is that more opportunity will exist. And by doing this, by pursuing great assets that I can get at a discount, but while simultaneously protecting myself against downside risk, I am also positioning myself to take advantage if that melt-up happens, right? This is the way that you are actually planning for all three scenarios, right? You plan for flat, you protect against downside, but at the same time, you need to make sure that you are in the market in case the upside case happens and to take advantage of the growth that could come from that. This, to me, covers all the bases and it's entirely possible. So let's talk a little bit more, just specifics, about what this looks like. I am going to focus only on assets that I want to hold for a long time. I want to take a long-term mindset. When I look at a property right now, I'm thinking, do I want to own this five years from now? Do I want to own it 10 years from now? And if the answer to that is no, I'm not really interested in it. Even if I think it's going to go up in the next couple of years, maybe there's something great happening in the neighborhood or you're buying it below comps, for me, I only want to buy things that I'm going to hold onto for a long time. That's like the number one thing. Number two, I want cashflow within a year to make sure I can hold onto it for five or 10 years. Now, we've done a bunch of episodes about this recently. I really recommend you listen to them, but you need cashflow positive within the first year. One year is really not some magical number, but I basically mean at stabilization. A lot of times now, when you go out and buy a property with current rents, the current condition of the property, it's not going to cashflow. Well, if you're going to do value add, if you're going to upgrade them, if you're going to bring rents up to market rate, that's when you need positive cashflow. If you can't get to positive cashflow after stabilization, do not buy it. I know some people say appreciation's more important. I don't think so in this market. I just told you, I don't think appreciation's coming next year. So make sure you get cashflow so you can hold onto that property so that when appreciation does come, because it will come back, when it comes back that you're in the market, you're already making cashflow, you're getting those tax benefits, you're getting that amortization, you're in the market, and you're comfortably holding onto them, that's what cashflow does for you. Next, I am adjusting my mindset to care less about short-term returns. Some people might disagree with this, that's fine, but I am saying I still need cashflow, I still need the tax benefits, I still need amortization, so I'm not saying I'm getting no short-term returns. Those three things alone should probably beat the average of the S&P 500 by themselves without appreciation. So you can still get 7%, 10%, 12% without appreciation, not to mention value add. But by expectation for appreciation, market appreciation where macroeconomic forces push up the price of housing, I have very low expectations for that for the next few years. I have low expectations for rent growth over the next few years. I could be wrong about that, but I don't want to account on that, I don't want to assume that because no one knows. It's super uncertain. I'm sorry, I know some people are gonna say it's gonna go up, it's coming back next year, we don't know, and that's okay. If you buy according to the way I am telling you, by being patient, by being picky, by having conservative estimates when you underwrite your deals, you can still find great deals, but you have to follow an approach similar to this. I'm not saying you have to do everything exactly the same as me, but having this kind of mindset will help you in this era of investing. This is the approach that I am going to pursue. Now, I understand that some people are thinking now, why not wait? If there is this flat period that we're going to be in, why not wait? I mean, you could, but what if that upside case happens and you miss out on it? That wouldn't be good, right? The value of real estate is being in the market for a long time. So if there are good deals that produce cash flow that are gonna produce a seven, eight, 10, 12% return as good as the average in the stock market in a bad year, you're gonna get that in a bad year, and you can buy properties that you wanna own for 10 plus years. Why would you not buy it now? You'll still get cash flow. You'll get amortization and tax benefits. You'll be able to do value add and all of that, even if appreciation is slow. You'll also start paying down your mortgage, which means that your benefits of amortization get better year after year after year, and you'll be learning and growing. So to me, this approach gives you a little bit of everything. That's how personally I am going to approach a year where there is frankly a lot of uncertainty. As I've shared with you, I think the most probable outcome is the Great Stall. That's what I'm planning for, but I just wanna be honest with you. I don't wanna pretend I know everything. I wanna be honest that there's probably a 40% chance that something else happens, that there is a melt-up, or 30% chance is my rough estimate of that, or a more significant client. I think that's really only about a 10% chance, but it is still absolutely there. Even with all of that uncertainty, there are very proven ways to invest in real estate and to continue moving yourself along the path towards financial freedom if you are willing to set your expectations appropriately, to be patient, to be conservative in your investing that will benefit you over the long run and even in the next year. So that's my approach, and hopefully this helps you as you start formulating your own strategy and tactics heading into 2026. That's what we got for you guys today. I would love to hear your forecast. What do you think is most likely to happen in 2026? Please let me know in the comments. Thank you all so much for listening. We'll see you next time.