Price Cuts Arrive, Market “Softening” Continues

Dave:There are big shifts happening in the housing market. These are shifts towards a type of market we really haven’t seen in years, and although changes can catch some people off guard for knowledgeable and informed investors, it actually creates opportunity. So today I’m sharing with you my May housing market update to catch you all up on everything investors need to know to build and manage their portfolio successfully. Hey everyone, it’s Dave. Welcome to our monthly update on the housing market. We’ve been doing these now for a couple of months as the economy and the housing market continue to be very volatile and this month is no exception. We’ve got a lot going on and we’ve got a lot to get into Today. We’re going to spend most of our time in this episode going deep into what I believe is the biggest theme in the market right now, which is just this general market softness that we’re observing and you’re probably feeling, but it’s important to think about what market softness even means.Yes, prices are weaker almost across the board. In some markets that means declines, but in other markets it just means slower growth. And this type of shift, this move towards a softer market from a seller’s market to a more balanced market can create some fear, especially in the mainstream media, but it can also create opportunity if you understand what’s going on and how to adjust your strategies. So we’re going to go deep into this idea today, but we’ll also hit on a couple other topics like what’s going on with mortgage rates, and I’ll share with you some important new rent trends that investors should definitely have on their mind. Here’s our May, 2025 housing market update. So our first story today is about the market softness, and I’m calling it that because it’s not like we’re seeing across the board declines in pricing, but we are seeing generally just lower price appreciation.We’re seeing the shift of power go from a strong sellers market like we’ve been in for the last couple of years to one that I think we could call more balanced. Some markets are different than that. We’ll get into some of the regional trends in just a little bit. Some are in a buyer’s market, but I think for the majority of the country we’re moving from this seller’s market to a balanced market, which just means prices are going to be a little bit softer and there’s going to be a little bit more wiggle room in negotiations, which is a good thing. So how does this show up? When I talk about the fact that there’s more market softness right now, how do I know that that’s happening and what does it actually mean for you as investors? So there’s three things that I’m sort of tracking.One is that there’s this big difference between what sellers want for their homes and what buyers are willing to pay. We’re seeing increasing inventory, there’s just more properties for sale on the market and we’re going to see softer prices. Those are sort of the three things that tell me that we’re in a softer market and also the three things that you as an investor need to keep in mind when adjusting and formulating your strategy to deal with this changing market. So let’s talk about each of those three things. The first, like I said, was this difference between what sellers want for their property and what buyers want. And of course there’s always a little bit of a divide here. Sellers always want more than buyers are willing to pay, but that gap is growing right now. So right now the median asking price according to Redfin is like 470,000, which is 9% higher than the 431,000 for the median sale price.That is the largest gap that we have seen since 2020. And that in itself doesn’t mean that prices are falling, it just means that there’s two different mindsets in the housing market right now. Sellers still think by and large on a national basis that we’re in this pandemic era where they could just ask for anything and buyers are going to pay it and buyers are like, nah, I don’t think so. We are not willing to go up to a median home price of 470,000 in the United States. We’re more comfortable at 4 31, and this just shows that sellers have been slow to adjust, which is why list and sale prices are diverging and this is going to have implications in the housing market. First and foremost, we are going to see more price cuts. This has to happen, something has to give. If sellers and buyers are so far apart, someone has to make an adjustment and my gut feeling here is that it’s going to be sellers, right?Buyers have been paying the prices that sellers have been asking for like five years now, and my feeling is that if they haven’t splurged on that home after five years, after three years of high interest rates, it’s not going to be right now when they’re like, oh yeah, I’m willing to pay up for a house. I think the reason that we are seeing this divergence is that buyers are pulling back a little bit and that to me means that sellers are going to have to ask for less. We are already seeing more price drops just to share some data with you, we nationally are at almost 20% price drops. We’ve seen that at some periods in the last couple of years in 2020 and then in 2022, but normally pre pandemic level we were at 14%. And so to see that we’re at 20% does have some implications.Now, it’s important to remember price drops are not a measure of whether prices have actually gone down. This doesn’t measure the median home price. It’s actually what a price drop measures is how well a property priced and the answer right now is not good. They’re not doing a good job. The big trend is that sellers are not pricing their properties well, and again, this doesn’t mean that prices are falling, but the perception of a change in the market, and I think that gives buyers more power relative to sellers because when buyers start seeing price drops in their market, they’re a little bit more patient, they’re a little firmer on their negotiations. That’s what I would do if I was in a market where there are more price drops. And even though that doesn’t necessarily mean the median home price will fall, I think it is a lead indicator that power dynamics are definitely shifting and that’s important.So that’s the first thing. Again, like I said, the reason I see the softness is the split between what buyers are willing to pay and what sellers are offering for. The second way that we see this show up is in terms of inventory. Right now we see active listings, which is just a measurement of how many properties are for sale at any given point. Those are up 14% year over year, and that’s a pretty big increase. It’s important to remember, as I always say here, is that it’s still well below pandemic levels, right? We are still not where we were in 2019 or 2018 or 2017, so we’re not in any emergency state, but things are moving back towards where we would expect them to be. And I’m actually not super convinced that we need to get back to 2019 levels in order for the housing market to shift to a buyer’s market.I think we might permanently be in a somewhat lower inventory era, but I think it does need to come up from here if we’re going to see prices actually decline on a national level. We do need to see this inventory go up even beyond where it is right now, and there’s no knowing whether or not that’s going to happen. But as of right now, this is why I am seeing some softness is inventory, active listings, days on market. These are measures between supply and demand and it’s just becoming more balanced. You see that in the active inventory, you see that in days on market or up three and a half days since last year, and this just tells us that we are moving from this really strong sellers market to a softer market that is more neutral. Last thing we need to talk about after talking about that spread and inventory is of course pricing.This is probably what everyone is here for and everyone wants to know about. The market is softening, but at least according to Redfin and all the other measures I’ve looked at, they’re all going to be a little bit different, but the trend is the same. That appreciation is slowing down, but Redfin for example, still has us up median home price in the United States at 2% year over year. So that’s good, right? Because prices are growing nominally, but there is some nuance to this, right? So there’s a couple of things here. One notice that I just said nominally, which means not inflation adjusted. When you actually compare the price of homes to the inflation rate, we’ve sort of crossed an important threshold. There is an important milestone that prices are now going up less than the rate of an, and to me, I know this might sound trivial, but to me this is an important distinction and I did an episode recently, there was an audio bonus if you haven’t checked it out recently on the health of the housing market and what makes a good healthy housing market.And one of the criteria that I came up with is that prices must be growing faster than inflation because I think that’s just important as an investor. At a bare minimum, I want my dollars to be preserved in terms of spending power and we’re going backward just a little bit right now. Remember, inflation’s like two and half, 2.3% right now. Redfin says prices are going up 2%, so we’re about even in terms of what is called real pricing, which is inflation adjusted pricing. So that’s one of the nuances to pricing that I think we need to cover. The other nuance that we need to talk about is of course regional differences because each market, each state, each city is going to be performing differently right now and going forward and we should talk about those nuances. But first, we do need to take a quick break. We’ll be right back. This week’s bigger news is brought to you by the Fundrise Flagship Fund, invest in private market real estate with the Fundrise Flagship fund. Check out fundrise.com/pockets to learn more.Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. We’re giving you our May housing market update. So far we’ve talked a little bit about market softness and we’re going to talk about regional differences, but first I should just mention what I personally think is going to happen here on a national basis, and my guess is that I think the market is going to continue to cool. We have seen pretty solid mortgage demand, which is great. They’re actually up year over year, but my gut tells me that it’s probably going to stay somewhat soft. I don’t think it’s going to come storming back. I don’t think it’s going to fall off a ton, but there are a lot of headwinds. We have tariffs uncertainty, we have stock market volatility, we have student loan collections, and even if the economy doesn’t go into a recession, even if it’s fine in three months, there’s a lot of uncertainty and people generally don’t make huge economic decisions during periods of uncertainty.And so my guess is that we’re going to see mortgage demand a little bit subdued over the last next couple months. Meanwhile, we’re going to see inventory continue to increase, albeit slowly. I don’t think we’re going to have any forced selling. I don’t think we’re going to have a crash, but I think some combination of economic distress right now and just normal life people wanting to sell their properties, that’s going to further move us from the seller’s market more into neutral and maybe to a modest buyer’s market in the next couple of months. I think in the next few months we’re moving towards those flat nominal prices that I’ve been talking about for most of this year. I’ve been saying that I think prices were going to go pretty much flat this year. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m planning my personal portfolio this way when I am underwriting deals, I’m not assuming any appreciation for the next year or two.I do think, of course the housing market always recovers and gets back to that two, three, 4% appreciation rate and I do expect that long term, but I think for the next few years, the wise thing to do as an investor is not assume that’s going to happen. And if you’re wrong and you get that appreciation, that’s great. For example, personally I am thinking strongly and probably am going to list a property that I own for sale in the next week or two. I’m doing some research on whether it’s the right decision right now, but I’m just looking at this property, it’s actually done okay. I just don’t think there’s a lot of juice left in it and there’s not going to be a ton of appreciation in this particular market over the next couple of years. Meanwhile, I think there’s going to be good deals because the market’s softening and there’s going to be opportunity.So I think I’m going to sell this deal and raise some cash and wait for better opportunity. Not saying everyone should do that, but that’s sort of how I’m thinking about it. Maybe culling a property that’s doing okay, but not doing great in pursuit of what I think are going to be some juicier kinds of deals coming in the next year or two as the market softens. Okay, so with that said, let’s talk about some of the regional differences in the metros right now. When looking at major metro, this isn’t every market in the country. Just looking at the top 50 major metros here, seven of them now have declining prices, and that’s a lot. I mean, it’s not crazy during normal times, but compared to where we’ve been over the last couple of years, it’s a lot. Number one biggest declines right now is Jacksonville, Florida, almost 4% declines San Francisco’s down two and a half.We have Austin and Dallas at 1.6 and 1.4, Oakland West, Palm Beach, Tampa, so all of the seven are in Florida, California, and Texas for our top 50 major markets. Personally, I think this is going to rise because if you look at a lot of big markets between zero and 1%, zero and one and a half percent, and I think some will turn negative a little bit. Personally, I don’t really see a big difference between West Palm Beach is down negative 0.3% difference between that and being up 0.3% doesn’t matter to me. All of that is relatively flat when you look at Jacksonville. Yeah, minus square percent that matters. San Francisco minus two point a half percent, that matters still in correction territory. This is not crash territory, but I think we’ll get a lot more markets that are in this flat territory. But it is worth noting that sort of the upside to the markets that are doing well is way bigger than the downside to the markets that are not doing well.Milwaukee’s home prices are up 12% year over year. It’s crazy that this is still happening. Newark, New Jersey, 11% Cleveland, nine and a half Chicago, nearly 8% Baltimore, 7%. So these are big regional changes and it does support my hypothesis that I’ve been saying for two years that affordable markets are going to do well and we are seeing this in cities like Milwaukee, Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore. These are affordable places where even though we are seeing some economic uncertainty, people can still afford to buy in these markets even with the interest rates the way that they are, and that’s keeping demand relatively high. So that’s that. There are big regional changes I think across most markets. We’re going to see overall softness continue. I think even the markets that are doing well, we’ll do well, but they’ll do a little bit less well. And I am planning my portfolio around a softer price appreciation for at least the next year.I might be wrong about that, that might be overly conservative, but given the level of volatility in the market, I think conservative is the way to go. That’s personally at least what I’m doing and I wouldn’t blame you for doing the same. Alright, let’s move on. From prices to mortgage rates, we’re going to only go over this quickly. I do want to get to the rent trends and I did recently do a whole episode about what I think the range for mortgage rates is going to be going forward, but let’s just do a brief recap. This is super important to investors. Big picture, not happy to say this, but my theory of mortgage rates for 2025 is proving correct and that rates are just staying higher than I think a lot of people were calling for. As of today, the median rate on a 30 year fixed is 6.9%.That is lower than January, which is great. It is lower than it was a year ago. Also good, but it’s not really enough to get the market moving. We’re not seeing a lot more transaction volume. And as I said, the market is softening and I’ll give you just the TLDR R. If you want more detail, go check out this episode I put out in my mortgage rate range I think two weeks ago. But basically mortgage rates, it’s time to bond investors, bond yields and bond investors, they’re fickle beings. They do not like uncertainty and until the uncertainty around the economy and trade slows down, we’re in for higher interest rates. The Fed has so far declined to lower rates. We just found out I’m recording this in mid-May. We just found out a couple of days ago that they held rates today, the odds are on the Fed holding rates in June.Again, I think there’s a slightly a slight chance they cut rates, but personally, if I had to bet on it, I’d say they’re holding rates in June again, and even if they do cut rates that might not do anything for mortgage rates, remember what happened back in September, they started cutting rates and mortgage rates went up. So remember that the Fed does not control mortgage rates. That is all about bond investors. And until there is less uncertainty in the economy, I would not be banking on bond yields falling. And I know this is not the news anyone wants to hear, but again, same thing with the price office. It’s just we need to be prepared. You can invest, you can adapt, you just have to be informed. You have to know what’s going on. And so it’s wise to not bury your head in the sand and just admit prices are probably going to soften.Mortgage rates are probably going to stay high at least for the next few months and just adjust your portfolio accordingly. Make your bids on the deals that you want to do accordingly. Based on these realities, how long is this going to happen? I don’t know, but I think at least three months. It could be longer. I say at least three months because we need to see trade deals in addition to trade deals. We need to see inflation data, we need to see what the fed is going to do. And without these things, it’s not going to change that much unless there’s some huge black swan event, but we can never predict those. So I think what we have to look at is the high probability thing is that mortgage rates are staying the same. There is some good news though because in some markets we’re actually seeing housing affordability get mildly better.And I know that’s crazy, but in markets where prices are dropping, it means homes are getting more affordable. So for example, in Jacksonville I said that that market is declining the most. The average payment that someone has to pay on their mortgage per month has gone down, not because mortgage rates have fallen, but because prices have fallen. And so the median monthly mortgage payment in Jacksonville is now down 4.2% year over year because mortgage rates are, they’re down a little bit year over year. But the combination of those two things has brought down mortgage payments and made it more affordable. Same things going on in San Francisco and Oakland and West Palm Beach. And it just sort of depends where you are in your portfolio. If you’re holding a lot of assets and not trying to buy, you probably don’t want to see these price declines, but if you’re in growth mode, this might be good news to you because housing is getting more affordable in these markets.Although we might see some of this market softness extend for months or maybe a year, we don’t know that increased affordability does create sort of opportunities. Personally, I get more interested in buying real estate in periods like this because I trust the housing market will rebound over the 5, 10, 15 year time horizon. I’m going to hold assets and this increased affordability just makes it easier to afford deals, first of all, and it gives you a lower basis so that if prices do start to accelerate again, that you’re starting at that lower basis and get to enjoy those rewards. So that’s all good. The other good thing I just want to mention about mortgages is that demand for mortgages, it’s still up year over year. Even with the softness that I’ve been talking about, mortgage rates have come down and people are still buying homes. The reason it’s softening is because there’s more inventory, there’s more listenings going up, not because there’s less demand. Alright, so we’ve talked about the housing market softness and we’ve talked about mortgage rates, which is one of the major reasons for the softness. But I want to turn our attention to rents, which we haven’t talked about in a couple of months because some stuff coming in that you should know about. But we do have to take one more quick break. We’ll be right back.Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast here talking about our May housing market update. And we’re going to turn our attention to rent data and what’s going on with rent pricing. And I want to just start by saying rent data is nuts. As a data analyst, I just find it so frustrating because I look at data all day and yeah, there’s different data on housing prices, but it’s mostly directionally the same. But rent prices, the way that people collect it and talk about it is just so different. Just for example, apartment list, great source of data, flat realtor, another good source of data. They say that rents are down 3%. Zillow another good source of reliable rent data up 3%. So it’s just like you have all of these different signals and don’t get me started about the way the Fed and the census collects data.That’s another crazy thing. So it’s kind of hard to get a precise answer, but when you average them all out and sort of zoom out and look at the trends, what I would call is that rents are flat right now. And so I just wanted to share that first and foremost at the beginning of this conversation because depending on what news source you look at, you might be hearing that rents are up, rents are down. But I think when you look at the aggregate sources of data, I believe that they’re sort of flat. So let’s just go with apartment list and use some of their data because I believe that rents are by and large maybe a point off here there, but they’re mostly flat. The other thing that they’re showing that I wanted to share with investors I think is important is that despite being flat, vacancies are starting to go up.Vacancy has hit the highest point in at least eight years. Their data, it’s good, but it doesn’t go back that far. It’s only to 2019. So we can’t really see using apartment list data, how vacancy compares to let’s say the months leading up to the great recession or anything like that. But we are seeing vacancies go up right now as of April, 2025, they are showing us a vacancy rate of 7% compared to let’s say July, 2020. During the height of the pandemic, it was about 6.8%, so very similar. But after the pandemic due to a lot of stimulus and a lot of the rules, we saw a vacancy rate go down to 3.8%. In a lot of ways this is getting back to normal in 2019, they had us at 6%, but we’re at 7%. I think this is a reflection of a couple of things.First and foremost, we need to remember that there’s a huge supply glut in the United States for apartments right now That has been going on for a while. We’ve talked about it on the show quite a few times, but it’s still happening and it’s still going to take I think another three, six, maybe nine months to work itself out. It could be longer if we go into a recession, if economic conditions stay good, we can expect that new apartments will get absorbed because people will be feeling good, they’ll be forming new households, they’ll be willing to pay a little bit up for that brand new apartment. But if economic sentiment stays as low as it is right now, and remember we’re seeing consumer sentiment at one of the lowest points. It’s been in quite a long time. And if that continues, I think this supply issue in housing is going to extend a little bit because people just aren’t going to pay up for that new apartment.And it probably means that vacancies are going to stay up and rent places are going to stay relatively flat. Just think about that. If there are a lot of new apartments on the market, how do they compete to get these people who aren’t feeling great economically, they lower prices or they offer more concessions? And that sort of spills out throughout the whole rental market. My gut is zooming out that single family residences and small multi-families will stay pretty steady. I think those tend to have higher demands even during periods of economic uncertainty. We see housing prices continue to be really high. And so for a lot of folks it’s a better financial decision if you are going to buy a house to rent a single family house in a lot of markets. Most markets right now, that is a better financial decision. Now a lot of people choose not to do that.I choose not to do that. I think a lot of people want the stability or the pride that comes in home ownership. Those things are important, but I do think demand for single family rentals is going to stay high. But what will continue to get impacted are some of those lower end properties. So if we look at class C properties, maybe even class B properties especially that are bigger apartment buildings, I think we’re going to see weak pricing there and higher vacancies because of the supply issues. But also because we have this other combination going on where there is lower immigration, we have deportations lowering the overall amount of households in the United States. We also have inflation eroding some spending power. We have the potential that tariffs are going to increase inflation, we don’t know yet, but there is a good chance that that is going to happen.And so I just think that folks unfortunately at the lower end of the economic spectrum are going to get hit by these things. And so apartments that are in the C or B class neighborhoods are probably going to have lower rent growth and they’re going to have higher vacancy. There’s also, I should mention this sort of open question about section eight. Section eight, if you’re not aware, is this federal program that provides rental assistance to low income people. It’s more than 9 million Americans and the Trump administration just recently proposed slashing it. It is still a proposal. We should note that. And it’s actually not up to the White House. Congress actually has to make that decision. But it’s important to note because this would impact a lot of low-income people and if they don’t have this federal assistance and if states don’t step in, I should mention that because Trump plan calls for states to fill in the gap that would be left by this decline in federal funding.So if this passes and if states don’t fill that gap, we could see literally 9 million people lose some of the financial assistance that they need to pay for housing. And that’s not to say that not all of them couldn’t fill that in personally, but I think you have to assume that inevitably some of these folks might move out and combine households. Some of them unfortunately might fall behind on rent. There might be an increase in evictions. There might be an increase in homelessness that comes around because of this. So that is something in the housing market that we need to keep an eye on. Again, it is just a proposal right now. I was reading about this and reading from people on both sides of the aisle think this is unlikely to happen, but if it does pass, I think there will be implications for the housing and rental market and it’s something that we should all be keeping an eye on.Alright, that’s it. That’s what I got for the May housing market update. Again, just as a summary, we are seeing prices soften. Some markets are still growing like crazy. Some of these markets in the Midwest, some in the Sunbelt, in the boom states from the pandemic are softening more. And my expectation is this softening is going to continue just reading the tea leaves, looking at what’s going on in the economy, mortgage rates, staying high, inventory going up. I think that’s going to be the trend. And I know mainstream media people are going to call out that this is crazy and it’s some disaster, but I think for people who are building their portfolio, this will spell opportunity. I personally am getting more excited to buy real estate right now. I bought a primary residence that I’m going to live in and do a renovation on, and I think I got it for legit more than 10% off than I could have bought it for maybe two or three months ago.And that sale price, if I was going to sell it two months from now, might be lower, but I feel like I got a really good asset and this is going to be a great investment for me. And that’s just at the beginning of this softness. But I do think we’ll see these opportunities present themselves over the next couple of months and maybe years. That said, I really recommend people continue to be conservative because you don’t want to assume appreciation in a softer market. And as I’ve said, I do believe rent growth is going to be strong in the next couple of years, but I told you in the beginning of this year at the upside era, I didn’t think that rent growth was going to pick up till 2026. And I still believe that. I think we have a few months to go to work through some of the economic uncertainty, to work through the supply issues, but I do think they will go up.But again, don’t count on a lot of rent growth this year. Still can find deals. I actually think you’re going to be able to find more deals, but just keep this all in mind. The key to being a good investor is to just change your strategy, to change your tactics according to what’s going on in the market, what’s going on in the economy, and hopefully these types of episodes can help you make informed, smart, profitable investing decisions. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m Dave Meyer. I’ll see you next time.