Housing Market 2026: There Are No Buyers Left

Sellers are panicking in a way that might surprise you as they list their property and they're not getting any offers. Their property is getting stale. Some of them are even going to the extent as turning it into a rental property because they're so far off in the numbers. Let's dig into what is going on with a new realtor.com report that came out and all the data that backs it for what we're seeing on the ground in real estate. Here's the truth that the media is not telling you. So look at this. This is a report from realtor.com. 83% of sellers think that they will get full price on listing their house. So you can see not 11.9%. I'll get less than my asking price. So there are people who are being realistic because in some markets you can negotiate seven, 8% off. I'll get my asking price 46.4%. They think they're just going to get the price they listed at. I'll get more than my asking price. People really think they're going to get a lot more than their asking price. This actually only happens about 10% of the time. And then 4.7% of people say, I don't know. So we're seeing that 83% of sellers think they'll get full price. But the problem is they're so unaware of what's happening because the market has changed so much that 90% already had to cut last year, cut their price in order to actually make the sale. And that's what's happening in the housing market right now. So 70% are willing to negotiate now, which is good because they list their house on the market. They see that they get no offers, no showings. And then when that final buyer comes actually in and makes an offer and it's 10% to 15% lower than the list price, the sellers are waking up and becoming more realistic. We see this happen when a seller lists a house, it generally takes eight to nine months for them to wake up and realize that the market is no longer what it was in 2021. And so 40% now expect the price cuts in this market which is up from 30% from last year. So sellers are starting to wake up. They've been unrealistic for three years now. Now that rates are higher, we're still pricing properties at basically 3% mortgage rates. Rates are now up to 6.5%. And sellers need to be aware that every increase in interest rate of 1% decreases purchasing power by about 10% and in return decreases their price. So we can see prices drop 20 to 30% over the next couple of years due to in just mortgage rates moving up along the curve. And that means that we need to see prices come down because we live in a payment economy. Now here's what we're seeing locally. Locally, we're seeing prices basically get slashed every single week. You can actually see it right here. It says price change 2,486. Well, we only have about 8,000 listings. So we're getting about 33% of listings are getting a price cut every single week. And new listings coming to the market are outpacing the closed sales. And that's inventory that continues to stack every single month, every single month. And what's so crazy now is that we're seeing these tons of expired. So these are sellers that tried to list their house. They couldn't sell it. And for some reason or another, they fired their realtor and took their listing off of the market. Now a lot of these come back onto the market in another 30 to 60 days because the sellers try to manipulate the numbers to make their listing look like it's brand new again. So they can take it off for what we call a 31-day reset rule. Well, we can see that because all this stuff is public record. The realtors can see that. Now the consumers can actually see that information too. So they can see what it was previously listed at. So that trick doesn't really work as much anymore. But you can see that this is a huge problem across the board. There's many listings that are actually coming back on the market because people are canceling because the condition of the house is not good. So we're starting to see a lot of these issues pop up in the market getting worse every single week. And this is not just happening in Jacksonville, Florida. It's happening throughout the marketplace. About 75% of the markets across the country are experiencing something similar to what we're seeing on this hot sheet right here. Now when we look at the sales, they're basically down. The number that just came out is the national existing home sales are down 3.6% in March. And what's crazy about that is we usually see a massive bump in March because that's the beginning of busy season, right? People get their tax refunds back starting in mid-February. They use that for their down payment on their sales. We usually see this massive busy season go all the way up until August. Once school starts in August, the market generally tends to tank. But right now we're seeing one of the worst really bad start to the spring housing market. And so look, we need sellers to understand that they need to price their house accordingly. So now we have more sales and more inventory. And by the way, the reason why people are starting to sell their houses is changing. 41% of sellers say that they're listing the house to make a profit. Only 39% are selling because they want more space. So the reason why people are selling in this market is changing. A lot of sellers are saying, hey, I want to take my chips off of the table and reallocate that money into something else. And this is part of the reason why we see sales are down is just because it's so unaffordable. People are trying to unload their property. And again, people want to move to get more space, but then they have to give up their low interest rate. And that's what we talk about with the lock-in effect, right? Why would you give up your 3% mortgage rate where you are now to go to the next place and then have a 6.5% interest rate unless you're able to purchase cash or something like that. And so buyers are slowing down. We're just grinding along the bottom for the number of existing home sales. So you can see this, it's happening across the board. This is a great chart just shows how much it's declined all the way from 6.4 million now to 3.91 million. And we've been just grinding along the bottom ever since the Fed raised the interest rates in March, 2022. And all regions are declining, right? So there's conversations in the Northeast where they're saying, hey, we're not seeing issues here. Well, they're saying, well, we have a decline in the number of closed sales because we have a lack of inventory. And that is actually partially true because there's so much not in my backyard folks who basically just don't want to build. And so they don't have as many affordable units or starter homes. So people are leaving the Northeast and they're actually moving to the Midwest. They used to come to the South, but now the South is completely mispriced. There's no longer the affordability of housing prices versus the wages. So we're seeing all regions decline, but they're declining for different reasons. In the South, it's declining because we just have an affordability crisis. In the Northeast, it's because they have a lack of inventory that's at affordable price points. And then obviously the Midwest is even slowing down. This is the surprise here, but that's also partially because they're missing a lot of inventory. Part of the reason why we're seeing a lot of these issues in the marketplace is because the builders built in the wrong price ranges and overbuilt in some area at the luxury price range. And now those people are no longer moving to those areas. So this is a huge story here about how the market is changing and it's changing across the board, but for different reasons. And while we watch demand fall, we're also seeing supply rise. So look at this, and this is pressuring the market. Existing and new home sales supply are moving up. You can see the blue line here, our new home month supply, and then the existing home sales supply. So right after the Fed raised interest rates, we start to see this supply bump and they're starting to trend upward every single month. Now you start to see some of this month's supply of new homes fall. Why? Because you're seeing the builders basically give massive concessions to get their product moved. The builders see all of this inventory stacking up and they don't want a 2008-type crisis again. We're getting to the level of inventory when you look at the total supply of new construction, single-family homes coming on, and even multifamily that's just stacking on the market. So they're giving out $50,000, $70,000 incentives to buy down interest rates. They're giving you golf carts. They're giving you whatever they can to buy their overpriced house, but they won't reduce the price. They're very sticky on price because they reduce the price of one house, they have to reduce the entire community, so they try to do anything except for the price because that's more permanent and they don't want to drive prices down while they're still trying to sell out their community. And so this is what drags out the market. And also what we see is this doesn't show up in actual home prices declining. So this is because the concessions aren't taken into account. So if you were really to look at this, prices would be negative if you actually considered the concessions in the net price of the product that's being sold because they're giving so many incentives away. And that's why we're starting to see the inventory turned down because we're actually seeing the builders cut prices and give these massive incentives. Now the affordability index is near an all-time record low. It's improving though. So this is really important. So while affordability is a massive problem, we are seeing better improvement now versus last year. And there's improvements we're seeing in the south, the west, the midwest, and the northeast. Number one thing is mortgage rates have come down about 30 basis points from this time last year. So affordability is getting a little bit better because of mortgage rates, but also because of the price cuts. So you can see the regional improvements in the south. It's 10 percent better affordability, the west 12.7, the midwest 5.3, and the northeast 4.1. The big issue though is if mortgage rates stay at this level or go higher, which is very possible, you could see the issue completely mean revert. And basically we would see prices have to come down a lot more if we saw, for example, interest rates move up one percent from here. But this is how you know that the market is shifting. The buyers are gaining power because the sellers are having to give the concessions, they're having to give the upgrades to the house, and they're having to do the price cuts. What we're seeing right now is that forecasts are going much lower. So Zillow just updated its annual forecast as of April 2026. NAR is revising down its forecast. Everybody's revising down their forecast. And so you can see this one comes from Zillow. Typical home value growth. They're expecting now 0.3 percent annually. So they were way higher than this previously. The original price forecast was 2.1 percent growth, and now they're down to 0.3 percent. You can see their existing home sales. They expect to be up 0.5 percent year over year. So just a little bit better existing home sales from the National Association of Realtors says 1.6 percent. Well, NAR's was originally 14 percent for the closed sale. So all of these rosy outcat basically views for this year have basically been revised down significantly. Look at this rent growth. Only 2 percent now people are expecting. And multifamily rent growth, only 1 percent. A lot of the underwriters for multifamily and single family expect 4 percent price growth every single year. And of course, this is national data. In the Sunbelt, we're seeing rent prices actually come down 10 to 20 percent across the board. So it is very local and very regional of what is happening in the marketplace. But the story is prices are coming down. This is going to provide great relief to the next wave of buyers. And by the way, if you need a real estate agent in your market and you're looking for a top agent, most agents suck. They have no idea what they're doing. They have no access to the data. They don't study anything. You want the top agent in your market. Reach out to me. I'm happy to get you in touch with one of the best of the best throughout the country. Just let me know. I respond to every single email. So if you need that help, drop a comment below and drop a comment below. Are you seeing this in your area where the forecast was rosy and now it's changing? I'd love to hear where you're coming from and what you're seeing on the ground. Drop down below. So and then from Zillow, again, the original forecast was 2.1 percent. Now we're also it said separately in a more recent update, 0.7 to 0.9 percent range of price appreciation. I actually believe if the mortgage rates start to move up, we could see negative across the board here across the United States and definitely we're going to be negative in the state of Florida. Now, what's causing a lot of this is we're seeing record low consumer confidence impacting the sales. People still think we're in a seller's market, but it's just not true. So this is actually a stat that came out. Forty seven percent of people think the market is a seller's market, but this is just not true. Only 26 percent of metros are still seller's markets right now. And it's mostly in the northeast because they didn't build the right product in the right area. And there's a lot of restrictions from the locals of where people can build and what they can build. And so there's a massive disconnect right now between what people think is going on and what reality is happening. And that is why this channel exists, is to show you what's really happening. Now, what's crazy is this consumer sentiment is dropping so rapidly, but we're seeing all assets at all time highs. Well, this is because we have this massive wealth gap in the United States where the top 10 percent, their assets continue to inflate and inflate every single year, while the bottom 90 percent, they're grinding along their workforce. They're looking for affordable housing. They're looking for starter houses. The next generation of buyers are completely priced out. They're having to get down payments from their parents. They're scraping together their two nickels to make things work. And so, obviously, the consumer sentiment from the consumer, not the wealth aggregators, is dropping while everything else hits all time highs. And so there's not only a disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street, there's also a disconnect between sellers and what they think they can get for their house. And so right now, we're seeing a really interesting market where people think one thing and then they show up and the exact opposite happens. I'll tell you a story. There's sellers out there who are listing their house and they think they're doing a great price and their agent doesn't tell them what's actually going on. And then they do their first weekend. The first 48 hours are the most important and they get no showings, no offers, nothing. And they call their agent and they're like, what in the world is happening? And then the agent tells them what to do. Well, you need to get those first 48 hours right. Otherwise, you're going to miss the window because 98 percent of buyers see your house in the first 48 hours online. So if you're not pricing it correctly, and this is especially true if you're in the Sunbelt and your house is not in mint condition, then you are completely missing the boat here. So you're going to get a lower sales price because you mispriced it from the beginning. So absolutely think about pricing it right from the beginning. And of course, we're starting to see this across the board. OK, this is a great chart that came out from Redfin. There's now 44 percent more home sellers than there are home buyers. And as you can see, ever since the Fed raised the Fed funds rate and that influenced the mortgage rates and we went from 2.5 percent to 6.5 percent, you just see we just had this massive cycle upwards of there just being a ton more people who want to sell. And we'll continue to see this moving up, especially going into the end of the year, because we're in busy season right now and this is happening. Just wait until November of this year. You'll be crazy surprised at how high this chart can actually go. But right now we're seeing more homes being for sale, fewer buyers. The affordability is getting better because of the concessions and incentives and price cuts. The sellers are finally starting to break. And this took a lot longer than people thought. People thought prices would come down a little bit sooner. But real estate's an illiquid asset. It takes time to cycle these problems through and see the distress that's going to come through the market moving forward. We do not have any sort of housing shortage. How can you have a shortage when there's so many more sellers than buyers? That doesn't even make sense. We don't have a shortage. We have a misallocation problem, right? So we have where they have the pre-supplied mid-level luxury that was overbuilt. And then we have very little workforce housing that was built and very little starter homes that were built because there's just not as much margin for the builders to build there. And then also the local governments and the not my backyard people just try to push these type of projects out and not do them in their area, which is unfortunate. And the sales are declining across all regions. Inventory is rising. Affordability is improving. 90% of listings need a price cut last year, and we expect that it's going to move up even more this year. And only 26% of markets are still seller markets. So this is the information that you need to know so you can make the best decision. And again, let me know what market you're in and what you're seeing because every market is very micro and different. And we try to put the pieces together. So here's what's really happening next. So one of my colleagues, Melody Wright, she's fantastic. She's been studying the real estate market. She drives around and sees what's actually happening on the ground, not somebody in their ivory tower or somebody who is paid. Just most of the reports that you see out there are actually paid to write what they need because they sponsor a builder or developer or mortgage company or title, etc. So watch out for those websites and these narratives of the shortage. But what we're seeing now is that high housing costs are pushing foreclosures to a six year high. And obviously, Florida leads the nation in foreclosures. But homeowners were comfortable with the monthly cost when they bought their homes. But all of a sudden, a year later or three years later, the mortgage payment jumps beyond that percentage that they had accounted for when you add an insurance and taxes. So this is what people keep saying on the homeownership side, right? It doesn't matter that much. So Melody Wright says homeowners were comfortable with their monthly cost when they bought their homes. But all of a sudden, a year later or three years later, that mortgage payment jumps beyond that percentage that they had accounted for when you added insurance and taxes. So a lot of people argue that, hey, rents go up every single year, that's why it's bad to rent, you're not paying down anything, et cetera. But the problem is when you also buy a house, your payment changes. A lot of people don't understand. Your payment is not fixed. Your interest rate might be fixed, but insurance and taxes move up. The cost of repairs has moved up 50%. You have to actually maintain your house and it is quite expensive every single year. You can see a one to 2% drag every single year that you own your house for repairs, maintenance, et cetera. And then you have to keep it upgraded to keep up with what the pricing and what the market wants. So we're seeing actually these housing costs that have been creeping up every single year are pushing foreclosures to a six-year high. Now, a six-year high doesn't really mean much because we had basically these workout programs where if people were distressed, they could go to the government and they could basically make their payment on the back end of their loan and just lump it and push it down the pipeline. But now we're seeing those programs have many more issues to be able to jump through hoops to actually go through those workout programs. And that's why we're going to start seeing at the end of this year, many more foreclosures and more foreclosures continue to roll in moving forward. So homes with foreclosure filings jumped 26% in the first quarter, partly reflecting rising property taxes and insurance premiums. And that's a story I think that's worth following. And here's what comes next in the sunbelt, right? We're already seeing a million homeowners who are underwater, right? People who bought in 2022 to 2025, prices of them can come down. Maybe they bought around a new construction area. That's where we're seeing the most distress. They owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth. And this is the highest level we've seen in three years. And we're going to see this move up every single year as we see prices mean revert and correct and come back to normal. So this isn't a headline from 2008. This is happening right now. The story of housing is changing at the moment. Prices are falling, people's equity is evaporating and leverage works both ways. There's a lot of people who say, well, I can get massive returns because I only have to put 3.5% down and then my wealth compounds upwards every single year. Well, if you buy it the wrong time and you have to ride the wave down for two to three to, even in some cases, 10 years, then you just had all of your equity evaporate and the leverage works against you just as it was working for you when you had appreciation. So housing risk is creeping back quietly. And the part that most people are missing right now is that the rental price is declining, makes it extremely challenging for investors to come back into the market because they were about 30% of the marketplace for buyers, especially in the Sunbelt area. And now they've basically evaporated and becoming net sellers. And this could really drive down the next wave of sellers that come into the market and depress prices. So look, number one, if you need help with real estate, definitely reach out. I'm here to be a resource for you. My information and my emails down below in the description. And I'd love to hear from you. What are you seeing on the ground in your market? As always, you can subscribe to my sub stack. I talk about things there that I can't talk about here on YouTube. And I do a live video every Thursday or Friday around noon. So be on the lookout for those videos. And I answer every single question from the audience. So appreciate you watching and I'll see you then.