"Crash Pricing" Setting In As Distressed Home Sellers Capitulate | Nick Gerli, Reventure

The housing market correction started four years ago when home sales and buyer demand collapsed to the lowest level on record, and we're still in that home buyer demand collapse. Actually, it's a depression of sorts in terms of home buyer demand. Whether you look at existing home sales, pending home sales, builder supply, or you look at mortgage applications, we're literally still at 2008-2009 lows in terms of demand. Now, the demand was low there for a while, and prices weren't budging because sellers were just saying, well, I don't care if the demand is low. I'm not going to cut the price. The shift I've seen in the last year, but particularly the last six months, is that more and more sellers are starting to run into distress, and I'm starting to find properties in some of these states that are down 100,000, 150,000 from what they sold for just a couple of years ago. Literally, crash pricing is now starting to set in on certain listings. Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money founder and your host, Adam Taggart. Very excited to be sitting down with real estate analyst, Nick Jurley, to get the latest on the housing market, and it's quite an interesting time. I'm going to let Nick go through all the details, but we're at the process where there's a lot that's still correcting and probably a lot of more room for the correction to run. But there are pockets of opportunity beginning to spring up in the housing market, and if time allows, which it should, we'll do a case study with a property that Nick himself has basically found at valuations that we haven't seen for years. So, Nick, how are you doing? Doing great, Adam. Great to be here with you. All right. Well, look, thanks so much for coming on. Did I summarize things here correctly? In other words, that the corrective forces are still finding their way through the national housing market, but we're starting to see in some early pockets areas of opportunity? That's exactly right. So, the housing market correction started four years ago when home sales and buyer demand collapsed to the lowest level on record, and we're still in that home buyer demand collapse. Actually, it's a depression of sorts in terms of home buyer demand. Whether you look at existing home sales, pending home sales, builder supply, or you look at mortgage applications, we're literally still at 2008, 2009 lows in terms of demand. Now, the demand was low there for a while, and prices weren't budging because sellers were just saying, well, I don't care if the demand is low. I'm not going to cut the price. The shift I've seen in the last year, but particularly in the last six months, is that more and more sellers are starting to run into distress, and I'm starting to find properties in some of these states that are down 100,000, 150,000 from what they sold for just a couple of years ago. Literally, crash pricing is now starting to set in on certain listings. All right. So, I'm very excited about this because I've been interviewing you for years, Nick, and a lot of the outlook during that time has been pretty negative, and I don't want to sugarcoat the fact that I think there's still a lot of negativity ahead on average for the national housing market. But we have been saying, man, we can't wait to get to the point here where we start to see some opportunity for people in the housing market. Again, sounds like maybe we're in inning one, but it sounds like you're starting to see some of that opportunity. Yeah. I mean, if you're in a state like Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Arizona, Colorado, as well as some other states, there's now the most supply on the market that we've seen since 2012 at the end of the last housing downturn. In every single one of these states, almost every day, I find a new listing with a seller taking a big loss, which you could construe as negative, but I would actually construe that as positive for buyers who have been waiting and saving money. Now, the thing to understand is that we are still in a bifurcated market, right? So, while the states I just rattled off are seeing declining prices, lots of inventory, and opportunity to buy at huge discounts in some cases, other states are still seeing home prices go up. Other states actually still have a perpetual housing shortage. And so, this is quite literally the most bifurcated the housing market has ever been. And in some ways, it's almost kind of useless to talk about the national housing market. And of course, we will talk about the national housing market, but it really depends on what's going on in your city, in your backyard, whether you're seeing prices that are going up or whether you're seeing prices that are going down, and whether there's actually buying opportunities in your area. Okay. Well, again, I just want to underscore, people have said to me forever, Adam, your housing analysts are always negative. Well, now we're starting to inject some, we're now able to start to inject some positivity into the story, folks. All right. So, let's talk about, Nick, and the, you used the term depression earlier to talk about the, again, the national housing market. Existing sales are basically at the lowest level ever, right? And that's kind of been the hallmark of this housing market that we've been in is people oftentimes use the word frozen. Like there's just not a lot of transactions going on. And what's been interesting about that is people have said, well, gosh, if the housing market is so bad, how come prices haven't corrected yet? And I think it's for two reasons. One that you mentioned earlier, which is that sellers were just stubbornly saying, look, I'm not lowering my price, right? I'm going to sit this out. There was the whole survive to 25 when the Fed would come rescue you and mortgage rates would come down and then every happy days would be here again, that didn't materialize. But another thing keeping prices up is, so when there's a dearth of transactors, who can transact? Well, the guys that can afford to do that, which are the wealthy. And so more of the transactions were at the higher end of the market, just kind of keeping average prices up. Now we're at a point where you're saying things are starting to thaw on the inventory side, where we're starting to see more and more inventory come here and more and more sellers starting to say, I didn't want to, but I think I'm going to have to start reducing my price because I may be entering a distressed state of some sort. So is that the biggest thing that's going on right now is still this increase in inventory, at least in the markets that you mentioned? For sure. I mean, that's definitely the prevailing trend. If you live in the Sunbelt or the Mountain West, inventory is still stacking up, still piling up. And really the thing I'm seeing is that if a seller in one of these markets bought after 2022, after both prices and rates went up, that seller has a much higher likelihood of being in a more distressed situation, having a high payment and being forced to sell. Right now, home buyers who purchase homes, of the few people who are purchasing homes, the average debt to income ratio is 40% right now for buyers purchasing homes and also refinancing mortgages. We've never seen those type of debt burdens in US history on mortgages. It's even worse than it was in the 2006, 2007 bubble. And if you don't mind, I actually just want to show your viewers a graph so they can understand why certain sellers, and we're going to show you guys a second, some of these huge price cuts, but why is it starting to happen? Okay, real quick, let me just ask this question. How much of a factor of this was the FOMO panic of COVID, where it was, hey, everybody's moving to all these places, prices are going up, I'm going to jump in before I get priced out. And you had a bunch of people who maybe weren't initially considering buying then, who kind of got forced into it. And it forced them to stretch for a house that was maybe more expensive than they should have been buying, but they just sort of panic bought because the narrative was, if you don't buy now, you're never going to get in. That's totally accurate, right? Especially people who move to different cities, people who work remote jobs. They plunged into the market at valuations, payment levels, and interest rates that they simply couldn't afford. And that's proven on this graph. Can you see this graph just to confirm? I can, yep. Okay. So what this graph is measuring is the debt to income ratio for new mortgage originations. This data is from Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae's National Mortgage Database, measuring all the mortgage originations in the US that they track. In 2025, 39.6% was the average back-end debt to income ratio for all mortgage originations. You can see the high in the 2007 bubble was 38.7%. So literally, when people buy homes today and refinance homes with mortgages, they're taking on a payment debt burden that's the highest buyers have ever taken on in US history, even higher than the 06-07 bubble. And this is actually being underwritten and approved by the US government. The US government is allowing this to happen. Fannie Mae is allowing this to happen. The FHA is allowing this to happen. There's this perception that all of a sudden, we have good mortgages being made now. There's this perception that there's no bad mortgages. That's all based on the fact that our government has simply loosened the lending standards over the last 20 years. 20-25 years ago, it would be unthinkable to get a government-backed mortgage, spending more than 35% of your income on mortgage interest and debt payments. Now, 50% is the high end of that range. And yes, they do underwrite the borrower. They do prove that you do have income. That is true. But they're proving that you have income on a payment level that is absurd. And this is now resulting in those people who are buying at these levels, which is almost everyone who is buying today, they are now running into distress. And I want to connect that graph to a listing I found in Texas so your viewers can understand actually what's happening. What I think we're going to see even more of in the future is people who bought with these high prices and high payments are going to end up selling in distress. And this is an example of a house in Forney, Texas, which is to the east of Dallas by about 15 miles. This was built in 2022. It's a three-bed, two-bath house, 1,900 square feet. It's on the market for $216,000, which is $116 a foot. That price point is what I would call like a 2017 price point, maybe a 2018 price point. $116 a foot is about a 30% to 40% discount to replacement costs today. Well, what happened here? The Zestimate history tells you what happened. This house a couple years ago was worth $370,000, $380,000 in the market. Well, today, what is it worth? It's listed for $216,000. And you can see the previous owner what happened. They bought it as a new build in 2022. Texas is a nondisclosure state. We don't know the exact sale price, but the pending sale price was $388,000 in November 2022. It's now listed for $216,000. That's a 45% decline in value. Let's look at the pictures here. Pictures make it look like a reasonable house, like a decent house, $216,000. Everyone told you a couple years ago this was impossible. This is what we're starting to see. Here's another example. This is a house in Atlanta, three-bed, three-bath, 1,400 square feet. This house was flipped about five or six years ago. You look at the pictures, decent house. Yeah. Decent house. Looks like a nice place to live. Sure. Looks like a decent kitchen. $189,000 for this house. We haven't seen houses listed below $200,000 in years and years. We're starting to see it. What happened on this one? Similar story. You can see it got flipped. It got purchased for $330,000, I believe, in 2023. $330,000 in 2023. It's now listed for $190,000. This is happening. I haven't even talked yet about all these listings in Florida that I'm finding. I'm finding in Florida also every day a new short sale, a new distress listing where the seller is taking $100,000 to $150,000 loss. This is the first time that we're actually really starting to see price points that are 2017, 2018, 2019 price points for sale on the market. This is actually something I did myself two or three months ago as well as you alluded to in the introduction. I also bought a house at about $160,000 discount to 2023 price points. I feel very confident in telling your viewers that this correction is actually happening and that there are huge opportunities to buy at discounts right now. Now, that doesn't mean that people should out and buy. I'm not saying that at all. In many areas, it's still way too expensive. However, we're starting to see the opportunity that I've been talking about with you the last couple of years. We're really starting to see that hit the market this summer. All right. That, again, is super exciting. Again, if you're a potential home seller, maybe this strikes fear in your heart. I'm not trying to rejoice in your challenges here. But kind of the central problem with the housing market over recent years has been its record levels of unaffordability. And that's just not good for society. So to have things begin to start mean reverting into hopefully more historic levels of affordability, that's only a good thing for the country at large. All right. So I've got a big question to ask you. But before I ask it, how much of this do you think is, yes, they bought at a level they probably shouldn't have, maybe it's a house they couldn't afford. Second, mortgage rates didn't come down the way that they were hoping. But this third part is, how much of it has been the surge in the cost of ownership over the past five years? When they bought the house, say, in late 2021, early 2022, it had a certain property tax and insurance cost and whatever the average cost of maintenance was. All that stuff's a lot higher now. And I don't think that's something that most of those people had in their calculus when they bought the house back then. That's correct. I think the statistic is that the payments of existing owners are up almost 40% the last six years. If you look at back in 2019, what an existing owner, existing mortgage holder, paid on their mortgage taxes, insurance, maintenance, first last year in 2025, 40% increase in payments. And this was from a Wall Street Journal article, actually, just a couple of weeks ago, had this data. And what that says is that, yeah, while there are still many mortgage holders who have a 3% rate, and that relative 3% rate is much better than the 6% rate in the market, yeah, they're still getting hit on insurance. They're still getting hit on property taxes. They're still getting hit on maintenance. And what I think we're going to see is just more of that pressure build over the next year, especially as more and more of the existing owner population converts to the higher mortgage rates. And that's the thing about this mortgage rate lock-in effect that I don't see a lot of other people talking about. They talk about it as if, oh, all these people have a 3% mortgage rate, and that's never going to change. Well, it's actually changing every day. We now have more 6% or higher rates in the existing housing market than sub-3% rates. I was just going to ask about that. I know we passed that milestone like a month or so ago, right? That's right. And every day and quarter and year that passes at this low sales volume, more and more of the low rates are going to get traded for the higher rates. And as that happens, you're just going to see more high payment pressure on the existing owner population, and you're going to see more sellers who are apt to actually cut the price and who run into distress. And I actually just want to show you the graph on this, because I think it's important for your viewers to understand. Because I see very frequently, people will say, oh, home prices will never drop because of all the people with a 2% mortgage rate. But if you look at this graph, this orange line, this is the percentage of existing owners with a 6% rate or higher. It's more than tripled over the last four years, and it will just continue to go up into the future. In the first quarter of 2026, it didn't go up as much as expected because the rates dropped into the high fives. You can see here, the sub-3% contingent just keeps dropping as well. And so we're just going to see more high rate owners replace the low rate owners over time, which means that the power of the mortgage rate lock-in effect is going to decrease over time. The other thing to understand about this is what it means for demand. So currently, at least in the first quarter of 2026, the market mortgage rate was 6.2% to buy a house for a new buyer. The effective rate for existing owners was 4.4%. So the market rate was still 1.8% higher than the effective rate for existing owners. But I want you to take a look at what it was like before the pandemic. Before the pandemic, it was the reverse. So from 2013 all the way through fourth quarter of 2021 into the pandemic, it was cheaper. You get a cheaper interest rate by just buying a new house. So I just want you to think about that. Let's just say in 2019, the effective rate was 4.5%, the market rate was 3.6%. Say you were thinking about moving, maybe. You would do it because you could actually lower your payment just by moving and buying a new house. You could also refinance. But I want you to think about the tailwind that this period was for buyer demand. From 2013 to 2021, you get a lower payment just by moving and buying a new house and assuming taking on a new mortgage. That situation is gone. And we had the peak lock in effect in the third quarter of 2023 when the market rates were 3.1% higher than the effective rate. And it's going down. Each and every quarter it's going to go down. But we're still a far way off from over here. And what I think that also suggests is we're not going to see a rebound in demand anytime soon. Because if you think about it, oh, I'm an existing owner. If I'm an existing owner with my 4% or 4.5% rate or 3.5% rate, yeah, why would I buy a new house? Why would I take on the higher rate? At the same time, if I'm a renter, why would I buy a house? Buying a house at the current rate and price is going to be probably a 40% increase in my monthly payment from renting. And oh, by the way, the prices adjusted for inflation in my income are in a record bubble. So why would I buy a house? So both of these things are just pushing down on the buyer demand. Throw in demographic weakness, right? The number of births in the US keeps plummeting. The number of deaths is increasing. We're basically, I don't know if frozen is the right word. I would just say disinterested with a massive amount of inertia explains the current American sentiment towards buying a house. There's just really no interest in it right now from a financial perspective, from a demographic perspective. And so I think we can just continue to see this low demand that we've now seen for four years. I think we could see it for another four years. Now it'll improve a little bit over those four years, but I don't think we're anywhere close to buyers jumping back in, which goes to the point about sellers. If we're nowhere close to buyers jumping back in, you're just going to see more and more sellers face the pressure of payments. And as more and more of those sellers come to market, you're going to see more and more situations like I've already shown you in this video, where seller bought at the wrong time, they run into some financial difficulty, they have to move, and they cut the price. So Nick, I sort of see this like an avalanche, right? Where you have a few little pebbles at the top, start it. And as they go down the mountain, they bring more pebbles with them. So the volume of the avalanche gets bigger and bigger as it's going down the mountain, right? And so to your point there, as you get sellers that are starting to list, as the remaining sellers begin to realize, look, the demand cavalry is not coming anytime soon, and the people around me are starting to list their homes, man, I don't want to be too late to this party. And by the time I list, prices are going to be a lot lower. So they start listing, and it kind of becomes this vicious cycle that keeps bringing everything down. If that is a good analogy, where are we in that avalanche? You're starting to see some deals, but are we still at the very first few pebbles? And do we have years left of more and more sellers joining the party? And I ask this more because if someone's looking to buy and they have time on their side, to your point, you're not necessarily saying jump in now. I might want to say, look, I'm just going to sit back and watch this movie. And maybe by the end of it, they're streaming deals. You know, it's a good question. I think if it turns into an avalanche, it really depends on the economy. And remember, right now, we've got great unemployment. Imagine if that goes up. Right. So I would say a spiking unemployment rate even to like six or six and a half could turn into an avalanche. Stock market correction could turn into an avalanche. But one thing I'm kind of shocked at in my dealings in the housing market, making offers, talking to realtors, talking to buyers and sellers. I'm still always shocked at how existing sellers are delusional. Like I could show a seller a listing in their neighborhood that sold for $100,000 less. They will find a way to try to explain how that's not relevant. Yeah. My house is different for a reason. Yeah. And if that seller has a 3% rate, they are not going to cut the price to that point. So this is where there is truth to the whole mortgage rate lock-in effect idea. Is it like, yes, the sellers with a 3% mortgage rate, literally their neighborhood could be collapsing in front of them. They're not going to accept that. They'll just hold on to their quote unquote low payment. But at some point, though, do you think they will when it's a big enough discount where they say, oh my God, this has moved without me. If I don't jump in now, it could price another 50%. I think if there's headlines, so like snapping them out of their delusion. So if there's headlines in the Wall Street Journal and CNBC about unemployment rates spikes, the US is in a recession, stock market down 30%, I think that wakes those sellers up. Without those headlines, though, those sellers are going to just stay in whatever little world they're in where they think their house is worth much more than it is. That's why I think in the near term, this is very much a story of city, neighborhood, and seller. And this is the key thing. You could be in the same city in the same zip code with the same forecast, same inventory. One seller has the 7% mortgage rate, one seller has the 3%. It's going to be a completely different story in terms of your ability to negotiate and buy a house at a cheaper price. That 3% mortgage rate seller is going to just reject any low ball, get offended. The 7% mortgage rate seller, they're going to be much more willing to negotiate. The 3% mortgage seller, their payment is worth more than the house. Their mortgage is worth more than the house. So they're looking at it from a completely different perspective. But if you don't mind, Adam, I think this would be a good segue. I just want to show maybe your viewers the case study. No, please do. Nothing's better than an actual practical example. While you're pulling it up, let me ask this question. If I want to find out what mortgage a homeowner is sitting on, is there a source for that? Or is it just best to go to your app or Zillow and find out when the house was sold and then just go back and find out what mortgage rates were at that time? Yeah, there's a great question. There's a source for that. Homes.com is one of the four big listings websites. They're the only one right now that actually will show you on a listing the mortgage information. So if you look at a listing on Homes.com, they're owned by CoStar, and you scroll down, they will show if there's a mortgage, what the mortgage is, how much it is, when it was originated, and an estimated rate. So Homes.com is a great source for that. Okay, great. And that's actually really useful. Not only what the mortgage was, but how much of it's left, too, is the person sitting on it. Exactly. Exactly. And so I would say definitely add that to your research toolkit. But let me actually share this case study because I want to show your viewers how real this is. And earlier this year, I actually purchased a property, taking advantage of what's going on here at a cheaper price, a price that I thought was too good to be true. And then I offered even way below that price, and I got the property at a screaming deal. $160,000 discount to 2023 pricing. $110,000 discount to 2021 pricing when it sold as a new build. So this property was built in 2021, sold for $440,000 in 2021, sold for $497,000 in 2023. I bought it for $330,000. Now, what's amazing about this is that if you would talk to a realtor, most realtors, most housing analysts, they would have said this was impossible. But I did it. And I just kind of want to show your viewers how I did it, explain to them how they can do it, too, so they understand actually what's going on in this market. So here's the case study. This is the house that I purchased. It's a townhouse in Atlanta. And it was built in 2021. This is in a great part of Atlanta. Five-minute walk to all types of menus and restaurants, Michelin star restaurants. This is a premium location. And you can see I purchased it for $330,000. Now, what's interesting is Redfin thinks that the estimated sale price is $413,000 to $500,000, which shows you a couple things. You can't always trust the value estimates, right? But it also shows you type of discount I got. This property sold December 4th, 2023, for $497,000. And it was listed before that at $520,000. I ended up purchasing it for $330,000. Now, $167,000 discount, that's 34% off 2023 pricing. As I said before, it also sold in 2021 for $440,000. So 25% discount below the price five years ago as a new build. So this price point is like a 2017, 2018 price point that I bought in 2026. It's like you were able to travel back in time and buy the house then. Correct. Now, what's interesting is this owner, previous owner and seller met the criteria we were just talking about. They purchased in 2023 at kind of a peak price with a higher mortgage rate. I was able to look up the mortgage information of the owner before purchasing it. I knew what rate they had. It was a higher rate. I also looked at the listing history here, right? So like this property was on the market for a while, right? This property was like on the market for six, seven, eight months, and they had done numerous price cuts. So this is the other thing, right? You're not gonna be able to get this discount on every listing. But if you look at a listing where a seller bought at a peak price with a high mortgage rate, and then it's been on the market for six months with numerous price cuts, that's information telling you the seller is willing to play ball. And here's the interesting thing. The lowest this was ever listed at was $410,000. They cut it to $410,000. I bought it for $330,000. What that means is I originally offered $315,000. I offered $95,000 below list price because I knew that there was a bit of a distressed situation just by the fact pattern. I knew looking at the data on ReVenture app that this zip code was forecast to drop and had high inventory. And so yeah, I made that offer, and I ended up getting it for $330,000. And I think there's just a couple interesting lessons in this case study. One is list price. Ignore the list price. If there's a listing in your neighborhood that's been on the market for more than six months, sellers cut the price, and you suspect there might be a little distress, ignore the list price. Don't even pay attention to it. Come up with your own fundamental analysis of what you think it's worth to you and submit the offer. Because I'm telling you folks out there, there are sellers who are willing to sell houses at much lower than what they're listing for. The problem is for these sellers is that they're afraid that if they list that low that, well, what if it doesn't sell that low, right? Then they're really in a big bind. So there's almost this disconnect between actually what a seller is willing to transact for and then what it's listed for. And I think a lot of buyers give up. They see a list price that they think is too high on a house they like, and then they just think like, oh, OK, that's too high. Don't think that. Think what would you offer for it? What is it worth to fundamentally speaking? I did a kind of an investment analysis on this property. I was like, what would the cap rate be? What would the rental cash flows be? What would I feel comfortable with on the price? And that's how I based it. And ultimately, this is most available, these type of discounts, in housing markets with high supply, where prices are already dropping and where they're forecast to drop by more in the future. You kind of need that combination there. And if you combine that with a seller on the market over six months, multiple price cuts already, and then has a higher mortgage rate, that's the formula increasing your odds of getting six figure discounts in this market. All right. I so appreciate you sharing all that, Nick, because it's just based in reality. It's super practical. So thank you on behalf of everybody watching this video. And congratulations as well. Thank you. Yeah. And I know that, I mean, I've been interviewing you for years. I know that you have been heading your radar out there for good deals whenever they were going to start to happen here. And it sounds like they are starting to happen, and you actually successfully transacted. So congratulations. I'm curious here, when you put in your lowball offer of 315, was there any explanation of that to the sellers? Okay, I'm pricing it this low for reasons X, Y, or Z, to kind of show them you had kind of a bulletproof rationale, or did you just give them a number and they either would take it or not? Great question. There was actually a couple steps before that that I think are important for anyone hoping to do this. Number one is you have to establish credibility and professionalism immediately. So I got, in this case, I purchased it in cash. So I made sure I had all my bank statements and liquidity statements ready to go. And I sent them to the listing agent prior to me touring the house. So immediately, the listing agent knows I have the liquidity to close. Now, if you're not purchasing in cash, that's fine. The equivalent would be your pre-approval on your mortgage for the amount that you want to buy it for needs to be there. And then your liquidity for the down payment needs to be documented. That would be the equivalent if you're buying with a mortgage. If you send that to the listing agent right away, it immediately establishes that you're serious, that you're credible, and you want to close. The other thing I said is like, yeah, hey, I want to close. I could do a quick close. Here's the liquidity. They immediately know that you mean business. The next thing is, after I toured it, yeah, I did the math. Here's what I'm willing to offer. And then I cut it a bit from there. I texted the realtor, and I was just like, hey, I'm running the numbers here. Would love to make an offer. It's probably going to be well below list price. Do you still want me to make an offer? I said that first. So you kind of prepare them a little bit for where you're coming in. And then they got back to me, and usually they'll say something like, well, how far below list price? In this case, she was like, yeah, sure. How far below list price make the offers? And then, to answer your question, I made the offer of $315,000, and I said, here's my offer. Just so you know, I'm basing this off rental cash flows. And I modeled it out with the rent and trying to get to an x% cap rate. They rejected the offer, countered at $400,000, which I rejected. Then they asked me to make another offer I didn't. And then two weeks later, they came back to me at $365,000. And then I countered at $330,000, and they accepted it. So a couple other interesting lessons there. Expect to have your offer rejected. That should be expected. If you're actually doing this seriously and making offers far enough below list price, expect to have it rejected. But the key point is to establish yourself so credibly up front that they maybe do a counter. And if they do a counter, it's a win, even if it's way off from what you want. Because it shows they're willing to change the price. If she'd just been like, oh, sorry, no counter at $400,000, it's over at that point. So expect to have your offer rejected. And then if they counter, even if it's not even close, that's a win. And then just be ready to walk away. Just be ready to walk away. Nick, when you said earlier, you let them know you were looking for a quick close, did you put any sort of exploding time frame on this? Like, I want to get this deal done in the next two weeks, or if we can't, don't worry. Did you give them a sense that you were walking away if they couldn't make up their mind quickly? No, no. I didn't put a timeline. I didn't put a timeline on myself. I did that more for them, because I knew they probably wanted a quick close. I think it was three weeks was the closing time frame. Okay, so you were using it as a carrot. Yeah, it's a carrot. It's a carrot for them, right? Part of this is you have to kind of get in their head, understand what they want, which in all of these cases, if you find a distressed seller in a market where prices are going to drop more, they want liquidity, they want certainty of closing, they want to feel like if they go with you, the deal is going to close, right? So you really got to focus on establishing that. And again, I just want to give a caveat, this is not going to be available everywhere, right? This might be a good time to just talk about some markets where prices are still going up. Like if you're in New Jersey right now, or Connecticut, or Illinois, which are three of the states with still a massive housing shortage, it's going to be much harder to actually effectuate this, right? Because the realities of the market in those states is going to mean that there'll be another buyer, right? Yeah. So let's actually talk about this. And if we can, maybe pull up your app as relevant while you're talking for two reasons. One, because I'm sure there's a lot of data that'll clarify your points. But also, if there's anything in the app that you used when searching for target markets that eventually led you to Atlanta, I think it'd just be useful for the audience to know where those tools exist. Yeah, sure. So right now, what we're looking at here on ReVenture app, this is a program I developed for home buyers and investors to better understand the market, hopefully help them get these discounts. We're looking simply at the home value growth year over year by state. These areas in blue have declining values. Florida's down, Texas is down, Georgia's down 1%, Arizona's down 1.5%. Now, when you see minus 2% across a state, some people say, oh, it's only minus 2%. It's not the way to think of it. Minus 2% or minus 3% at a statewide level inherently means that there's listings selling for 30% less because of the variation in different neighborhoods and cities. And so in all of these states in blue, I think there's opportunity. Now, in these states in red, like New York, Wisconsin, Illinois, values are up 5% year over year. Connecticut, they're up 4.8% year over year. You're just going to have a harder time. However, the one data point we really look at is the one-year price forecast. So this is our forecast of where values are heading over the next 12 months by state. This is, I think, the more germane data point if you're looking to buy because you want to understand what's going to happen after you buy. And this is also telling you what's happening now and what's going to happen after you buy in the next year. And so if you see a big downward forecast like in Colorado, 6% in a year at a state level is a huge downward forecast. Washington, we're minus 6% as well. That's telling you there is opportunity. But the interesting thing is, when you zoom in and we just look at Atlanta, so look at the difference that exists by neighborhood, so I spend a lot of time in Atlanta now. Just so everyone knows, I live in Nashville full-time, but I spend a lot of time in Atlanta as a result of this. And I'll talk to homebuyers and they're like, Nick, what are you talking about? It's competitive. There's bidding wars. They're often in these northern suburbs like Buckhead or Sandy Springs, where values are still forecast to go up. There's still a shortage of supply. So we measure all these different supply and demand dynamics, assign a forecast based off that. So if you're looking at these areas in red and you want to buy in these areas in red, you need to reframe your expectations. There will be no 30% discount. And if you are really serious about buying in these areas in red, you probably better buy now if you were going to buy in the next year, because it will likely be more expensive in a year. But if you're in these areas in blue, like minus 9% forecast, minus 6% forecast, that's telling you that there is lots of opportunity. A lot of it's also related to inventory. So you look at how much supply there is on the market. You see the zip code, it's actually down from a year ago, but still up significantly from long-term average. You look at the days on market. Days on market is trending up. So you look at these metrics, that all feeds into where the market's heading and how successful you're going to be negotiating a discount. So I would say that price forecast is really like the number one thing you've got to focus on in terms of dictating to you where you can find opportunity. The blue is good if you're a buyer. It means opportunity. The red, I would say, is bad if you're a buyer. It means prices are going to go up. But you need to kind of use that information for your situation to know what to do. And of course, there's huge variation also by metro area. So you're going to want to understand this data, metro county, zip code level. And that's ultimately what I did here on purchasing this home. That is so cool. So let me ask you this at a higher level. So if somebody's living in one of those, I know that the real answer is it's going to depend upon really your zip code. And folks should really be paying most attention to that. But if you live in Connecticut or Illinois or New York or whatever, do you see those states not having to go through the correction that the rest of the country is going through? Or do you think eventually things will pull down in there too? It's just going to take longer. It's a great question. I go back and forth on this because I think in the short term, these markets are going to go up more. I mean, Illinois has four of the top eight home price growth markets in the US. Upstate New York, Albany, Rochester, Syracuse, booming. Connecticut, booming. I think in the short term, you have to expect that these markets are going to go up more. I understand they're not coming down because there's not nearly as much inventory. What's driving the rise? Is there actually industrial booms going on in some of those areas? Is it a jobs thing? I wouldn't call it a boom. I would call it a normalization. So if we were to look at migration, let's just look at domestic migration. So let's actually start with Florida because maybe it's helpful to see the counterpoint. So in Florida, you could see domestic migration, Americans moving in, is down 93% in the last couple of years. And this is explaining partially why Florida's market's correcting. It's just fewer people moving there. But let me just make sure people are getting this. Because somebody might say, but Nick, people are net moving to Florida from the New Yorks of the world. But you're saying it's the rate at which they're moving that markets here, right? You can see, yeah, going back to 1990, people are always moving to Florida. What matters more for the market is the rate or the level. So in 2022, we had 311,000 net moves to Florida, net moves in minus out. That was only 23,000 in 2025. That's the fourth lowest level in the last 35 years. That's obviously not good for Florida's market. The prices were indexed to that level of migration. Now the migration is down. But if you think about what the opposite of this is, it means that the losses in a state like Illinois are going to improve. So yeah, so this is the other side of it. Illinois technically in 2025 still lost people due to migration. But it was the lowest loss in 35 years. So it's not so much that Illinois is booming in terms of people moving in. It's that something is happening where fewer people are moving back. You look at a state like Ohio, it's actually kind of interesting. Ohio, for the first time in 35 years, is now heavily in positive territory in migration. Now, 11,000 plus 11,900 isn't a huge surge. But for Ohio, that's a lot. And I think Ohio's housing inventory was kind of based off these levels of negative migration. If you then introduce even slightly positive migration, you're going to have home prices go up. Wisconsin's another one. Wisconsin was heavily negative for like 05 to 2021. Now it's positive, not majorly so, but it's positive. I think even Michigan now, Michigan's positive. Michigan was negative every year going back to 1991. Michigan in 2025 was positive on domestic migration. So it's a combination. Lack of home building. They don't build homes. The existing inventory is low. Homeowners there don't really move. So there isn't a lot of new supply. And then you bring some people back. Maybe some people who moved during the pandemic are moving back. Maybe there is something to the manufacturing on-shoring. I was going to say, that is a real thing. And we're starting to see that here in the housing data. That's right. That's actually a great point, Adam. This housing data is actually showing you live maybe some type of regional shift in the economic might in different parts of America, which I know a lot of people in the South are going to hate to hear. But I'm telling you, here in Nashville, it's insane, Adam. All I hear in Nashville is everyone's moving in, 30,000 people a year, 400 people a day. People just spout these things left and right. Oh, Oracle is going to move here five years from now. When I lived in Austin, I lived in Austin in 2020. You heard all of this, yeah. I can never forget this. I want everyone to understand what it was like. When I moved to Austin in 2020, it was August 2020, right when everyone was moving to Austin. Joe Rogan, all these people were moving to Austin, right? And two things happened. And you were having all these, I mean, Meta and Google, they were building all sorts of massive campuses there. That's right. Meta built a campus, and I think they then subleased like a year later. Yeah, they built the whole thing and then moved nobody into it. Yeah. That's right. But there's two major events that occurred when I lived in Austin. The first was Oracle moved their headquarters to Austin in December 2020, which is funny because they're now moving it to Nashville after moving it to Austin. Oracle moved the headquarters to Austin. And then I think like six months later, Tesla moved their headquarters to Austin and built the Gigafactory in Austin. And I just remember everyone telling me in Austin in 2020 and 2021 how much it was going to boom because Oracle and Tesla were moving there. And I was like, guys, I don't know about that. The metrics don't make sense. Locals can't afford it. I don't think this migration is going to last. Lo and behold, Austin is now down 26% on value. And actually, it's kind of interesting. What are some markets where it might be a good time to buy? Austin might be one of them. As you can see here in Austin, how much the correction has already happened in terms of home value? 26%. Now, we still think values are going to drop in Austin in the next year. So it's going to be peak to trough, probably 30% to 35% drop. But for the first time, Austin's market is now undervalued on our metrics when we look at home prices to income. All right. So that's below the 0% line there? Correct. Austin is now undervalued. So Austin's corrected so much that actually the fundamentals of the home value to income ratio in Austin, which is how we come up with this, you can see the 20 plus year home value to income ratio is now below that long-term average. It's actually at, where now there's still downside. If I'm buying in Austin today, I'm looking at this forecast and saying, I'm going to make sure to buy at a discount to list price. But fundamentally speaking, it's getting to the marker of where it's a good time to buy. Another market that's really interesting like this is downtown San Francisco. Downtown San Francisco, San Francisco County, is actually at one of the lowest home value to income ratios in the last 20 years. It already corrected. Actually, soon after the pandemic, values went down in San Francisco County. You can see now they're starting to trend back up in the last six months due to the AI boom. And now we have a positive forecast in San Francisco. So we actually think values in San Francisco are undervalued with a positive forecast. So downtown San Francisco would be another market we're saying, hey, you should if you're waiting to buy. Market's undervalued. Forecast is flip positive. You're not going to really gain much by waiting. But if we look at this overvaluation rate, we could see most counties in the US are still heavily overvalued in red. The ones in blue are the ones that are undervalued. So yeah, I would say that overvaluation rate is the other metric to really look at. Fundamentally, is my market overpriced or underpriced compared to the long-term norm? And then where is it heading in the next year? All right. Super helpful. And folks, I just got to underscore the ReVenture app is a phenomenal tool, especially if you are looking to transact in the market, either as a buyer or seller, potential investor, whatever. And we didn't dial through the ReVenture app all that much in this discussion, Nick, but we've done a lot in the past. There was just so much detail there in that app. But anyways, super useful tool, folks. I'm in the house hunt right now, as I think I've let folks know. A little bit unwillingly, but it's just because the place that we rented when we came here to Reno got sold out from under us. Somebody sold their house here and just loved this one and made an unsolicited offer to our landlords and they took it. So we're looking, we love Reno, so we're going to end up buying here. I don't know if we're going to end up buying by the time we need to leave. We might rent for a little bit somewhere else, but we're going through all this right now and the ReVenture app has been really useful in this process. I don't know. Should we just do a quick look at Reno? I don't know if that would help you. Why don't we take a look at Reno? Because we've talked a lot about markets at the extreme, right? Markets where forecasts would go down, forecasts would go up. Reno's kind of interesting, very interestingly shaped metro area, actually. Is it Washoe County? Washoe, yeah. Washoe County. So we actually have a flat forecast and you can see Reno just the last four years have been kind of like bouncing slight, like ever so slight buyer's market, but not really enough to really bring prices down meaningfully. There was kind of an initial, there was like an initial correction in Reno in 2023 when the rates went up, and then it's really just kind of hovered around the same marker on value for the last year and a half. And so, yeah, you can see basically since the last four years, it really hasn't changed in terms of value. It's very kind of down the middle market. That's interesting. You could view that as a negative or a positive if you're a buyer. Like as a negative, it means that like you're not going to see crazy, crazy discounts, but it also does mean there are probably some sellers in that market who are looking to, you know, get a deal. What I think is interesting is there's actually a lot of regional variation in terms of our forecast in Reno. You know, some areas we think are going to be 2%, very expensive homes here to the southwest, other areas to the northeast we think are going to drop. I don't know, was there a particular part of Reno you were looking at, Adam? Yeah, we're looking at the expensive one, which has the highest one-year growth forecast. That one right there. Yeah, yeah. But to your point, there is a lot of differentiation about Reno. Like there are places where it's definitely headed down and there are places where it's definitely headed up. Interesting. Yeah. Well, good luck with that search. Thanks. I mean, one of the problems I have is with low inventory, no matter sort of what's happening locally, there's just always the steady stream of Californians, especially now fleeing the fear of the wealth tax there, who are ready to come in and kind of snap up whatever's on the market. So it's got some unique idiosyncrasies like that. But anyways, folks, it's a super useful app. And like I said, I've been using it a lot, Nick. I really congratulate you on what a phenomenal resource you've built there. All right. Well, look, we're going to start wrapping it up. But here is one question I've been waiting to ask. Everything that you've shared with us about your expectation for the housing market and the bifurcated nature of it and all that stuff, this is all going on while the markets have been continuing to hit all-time highs for the past couple of years and while unemployment remains low. How much would the picture change in your mind if we ended up having like a real bear market, you know, 20 plus percent correction in the stock market and or if unemployment started rising, let's say to your point there of say 6%, how much does that change the game in your opinion? I think it changes it meaningfully because the market clearing price today to bring demand is way lower than the aggregate list price, right? So the reported sale prices that you see from like the NAR and all these companies, like that's kind of a suspension of disbelief. To actually transact at a normal level of demand, prices are going to have to be like 20%, 15 to 20% lower on average. But that's not happening, right? Because across the entire market, because the existing sellers are in this fantasy land, right? They're in this fantasy land where they think their house is worth much more. They think their finances are great. They love their low mortgage rate. They look at their Zestimate. They're just in that headspace. I think if you introduce a stock market correction, it does a great job of piercing that mentality, piercing that mentality of invincibility and just bringing people back to reality. And so I think a stock market correction would, I don't know, maybe kind of fairly quickly cause prices to reset in a lot of areas. And especially for people who own second and third homes in different pockets, especially for people who own high priced homes, I think a stock market correction might be one of the best things we could see for the housing market in terms of actually bringing lower list prices and bringing demand back in. Okay. And obviously folks, timing of the next ones, nobody really knows. But as we cover in this channel a lot, there's a lot of potential pins that could pop the current AI bubble. So just know that as you're a buyer, especially if you have patients on your side, there is the potential option value that a market downdraft could really bring housing prices down a lot faster. Now, obviously you got to protect your income and your own assets during that period. So there's no guarantee that's going to be net net good for you, but it's just something to keep in mind in your calculus here. Nick, it's been fantastic. For folks that would like to follow you and your work, where should they go? Yeah, you can follow me on the ReVenture Consulting YouTube channel, also ReVenture Data on Instagram. And to access the data I showed you guys in this video, go to www.reventure.app. We have some data points for free. Other data points like the price forecast are behind a paywall for $39 a month. So yeah, head to ReVenture App if you're a serious homebuyer and investor and want to make a more informed decision. All right, fantastic. And Nick, when I edit this, I will put the links to all those resources on the screen. I'll also put them in the description below the video. But just a reminder, folks, that ReVenture App is such a great tool. And if you're looking to buy a home, 30 bucks a month for a couple of months while you're doing your home hunt, and given what it could save you in terms of making the right decision, I mean, it's a banana's value. It's so, so good. Hi. All right, Nick, it's always so fun to see you on here. Thanks so much for coming on. Congratulations again on the property. And thank you so much for walking us through that case study. It was really helpful. Yeah, of course, Adam. Thanks for having me. All right. Hope to have you back on soon, buddy. Everybody else, thanks so much for watching.