The Strongest Sign for the Housing Market in Years

Dave:I’ll say it. We are in a full on buyer’s market for real estate. Sellers are watching their homes linger on the market longer and that means you now have the leverage to pick up great deals and to negotiate hard. This may not be the trend you’re hearing about in the headlines, but the data does support it and now is the time to take advantage before everyone else gets the message. I’ll share how I discovered this crucial recent shift which regions are seeing the most positive trends and what you can do about it all in the BiggerPockets June housing market update.Hey everyone, it’s Dave. Welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast. Today on the show, we are doing our June housing market update and this is going to be a great episode. I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised by some of the information that I’m going to be sharing with you. I know a lot of the mainstream headlines and narrative about the housing market is overwhelmingly negative, but I actually think there are some encouraging trends that real estate investors should be taking note of and should be using to guide your investing decisions. So I’m going to start the episode today by laying out the big important stuff upfront, what’s going on a national level, the kind of stuff that impacts everyone. But then we’re going to go into a regional update or I’m going to share some trends that are going on across the country to help guide your decision making on your specific portfolio and your next deal.Then we’ll move on to our risk report, something we do every month where we talk about potential stress in the housing market, because that could create risk in your portfolio or it could create a national crash. So we’re going to keep our eye on what’s going on there. And then we’ll end the episode by talking about what this means for you specifically. Let’s get into it. So first up, let’s talk national big picture stuff going on in the housing market. The headline I want you all to take home today is it’s actually doing okay. I know that’s not what everyone’s saying, but that is actually correct. You heard it right. The market is doing okay. Is it great? No. Is it the healthy kind of market we wish we had something back in the 2010s? No. But is it falling apart? Is something disastrous happening in the housing market?Absolutely not. That is not happening by a long shot. Instead, the big picture in the housing market right now is that we are in a classic buyer’s market, which does come with risk, but also means a lot of opportunity for people who know what to look for and who understand what’s actually going on. So that’s the headline, but I’m going to share with you some data to back up what I’m saying here. Prices on a national basis year over year, which is how we should be looking at housing market data are basically flat. The Case Schiller, which is really good data, it lags a little bit, but that has us at less than 1% growth year over year in terms of pricing at 0.7%. And flat pricing is exactly why I’ve been calling the period we’re in right now The Great Stall because we’re in it.All of the market conditions that I’ve been talking about for years that are going to stall out home prices are happening. And flat prices is kind of exactly in line with my headline, right? Is it the best thing ever to happen for real estate investors? No, of course not. We’re not getting the appreciation we saw for a decade or more, but it’s also not falling apart despite what people are saying. So prices pretty stable and stable for real estate investors is good. Same kind of story with inventory and inventory is a super important metric. It’s actually personally I care more about what’s going on in inventory trends week to week, month to month and prices. I know prices are that sexy thing everyone wants to look at, but inventory is such an important number because it helps us understand the balance between supply and demand in the housing market.And when inventory is moving rapidly, that means a big shift in the whole market might be coming. And what’s happening with inventory right now is it’s also really flat. We actually see that it’s down 1% year over year according to housing wire and the fact that it’s flat and actually a little bit down is crucially important. Flat inventory tells us that the balance between supply and demand is relatively stable. We are not all of a sudden seeing tons of people leave the market as buyers, we’re not all of a sudden seeing a ton of sellers enter the market and flooding the market with inventory, which can push down prices. We’re not seeing any of that. In fact, what we are seeing is a great stall. We’re seeing inventory level up and although there is opportunity for inventory to get better in my opinion, again, this means stability.We are not seeing wild swings in inventory and for investors, stability is a good thing. The other thing you should take away from this is that inventory being down a little bit is further proof that a crash is highly unlikely. If a crash was going to come, we would see inventory going up. That would almost certainly happen either because the market was being flooded with homes or demand was leaving the market, but inventory stable, which means supply and demand dynamics and prices are likely going to be relatively stable for the foreseeable future. And there is other data that supports this too. It is not just the inventory number. Trust me, I look at everything and I’ll just share with you quickly two other things that give me conviction about this that the market is stabilizing right now is one, new listings, the amount of people who list their properties for home for sale is up but just a little bit.Again, if there was going to be a crash, we would see that going up rapidly, but instead we’re seeing a few more people list their home for sale, but nothing crazy and it’s really in a historical context not really that high. And then secondly, perhaps I think most importantly and most encouragingly demand in the housing market, the amount of people who want to buy homes is actually doing pretty well. It’s actually up. We’re seeing more people entering the market right now than we did a year ago. I know that is contrary to the narrative that is being projected about the housing market, but listen to this. Pending sales, the actual amount of transactions on real estate in any given week up 17% year over year. More people are buying houses right now than there were a year ago. So all these people saying that buyers are running away from the market, it’s just not true.It is patently false. You can look this up anywhere. That is not true. We also see this backed up in mortgage purchase applications. The number of people who are going to their bank and asking for a loan to go out and buy a new home, not refinance, go out and buy a new home, that is also up year over year. So don’t let anyone tell you that demand is gone. Is it good in any historical context? No, it is not the best demand we’ve ever seen. It’s actually pretty low. But the thing I’m trying to convey here is that even though we’re not in a great market, it’s not getting worse. It’s not really changing all that much right now. I think people are getting used to where we’re at. Instead of sitting on the sidelines and waiting for mortgage rates to come down, I think people have accepted the new reality that we’re in, in the housing market.And although I still believe in the great stall and this is going to take a while, probably years for it to get back to a healthy level, the stability that we’re achieving makes decision making for investors a whole lot easier. And we’re going to talk about that more later in the episode, but that’s the main thing that the data is telling me. Before we move on to the regional stuff that I want to talk about, just two other things that I think are notable in terms of the national market that are also encouraging for investors. Number one is that days on market is going up. This, again, similar to inventory, helps us understand the balance between supply and demand in the market, but it also helps us understand who has the negotiating leverage when you’re going out and transacting on a property. When days on market, which is just a measurement of how long, it’s very literal, how long a property sits on the market before it’s put under contract.When those are really low, the seller has all the power, right? Because that indicates that buyers are bidding on anything that hits the MLS and that sellers have a lot of negotiating power. When days on market go up like they are right now, that tells us that buyers are gaining power. And as a real estate investor, that is something you should be taking note of because that means that when you approach a new deal in a stabilizing market, you can be more aggressive about what you bid. And by aggressive, I don’t mean bidding high. I mean, you could be aggressive in your low balling. So make sure I’m not paying more. I mean, you can be bold in the kinds of offers that you are willing to write in a market with days on market rising and that’s exactly what’s happening. And to back that up, last piece of data here I’ll share is that according to Redfin, right now there is actually 500,000 more sellers in the market than there are buyers.And this is exactly why days on market is going up and this is exactly the kind of opportunity that real estate investors should be excited about. This is what tells us we are in a full on buyer’s market. Now buyer’s market does not mean everything’s great and you should go out and buy everything. It absolutely does not mean that. It means that you as a buyer have the negotiating power. You have leverage. You have the ability to be picky and to negotiate and to pick only the best assets to add to your portfolio and to be patient. The combination of a more stable market, but better negotiating leverage is an opportunity investors really should be taking advantage of and to me is good news. The market does not need to be perfect. Stability and leverage is a great place to start building your strategy from.And after the break, I’m going to share some regional trends and how you should go about looking for your next deal depending on what’s going on in your region. We’ll get to that right after this quick break. Stick with us.Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer. Today we are going through our June 2026 housing market update. Before the break, I shared some national level trends that market is pretty stable. Pricing’s pretty stable. Inventory is pretty stable. Demand is actually up right now and that stability creates a good foundation for investors to make decisions off of. But obviously real estate is local. And so let’s talk a litle bit about some regional trends and then I’m actually just going to give you some examples about how to bid on different properties, how to look for different deals depending on the dynamics in your market. So right now, most of the markets are pretty flat. If the national market’s flat, it follows that most markets in the US are pretty close to flat. There are a couple kinds of markets that are actually doing well right now.The first are affordable markets shouldn’t be surprising. This has been my thesis for four years, that the markets that we’re going to do well in a rising interest rate environment are the ones that have really solid affordability where the average person in that market can go out and buy a home and that has been correct. We’re seeing strength mostly in affordability because affordability drives the housing market. The other thing that is working right now is kind of the opposite. It’s like super expensive AI finance centers. We’re seeing a lot of growth in areas around New York. We’re seeing a lot of growth in San Francisco in particular. And I say this a lot on the market and I’ll say it here, can we just stop betting against New York and San Francisco? I wouldn’t have invested in them a couple of years ago and I’m glad I haven’t over the last couple of years because they have struggled, but I hate hearing people be like, “Oh, those cities are dead.New York is dead. San Francisco real estate’s dead.” No, it’s not. There’s some of the biggest, most powerful economies in the entire world. The real estate will come back residential at least in almost all circumstances and we’re seeing that a lot right now as well. Now, I think for us for real estate investors, those are probably not markets we’re investing in. They’re way too expensive. They don’t cashflow. It’s very hard to make them work here, but affordable markets are still working. And so take note of that. When you think about where you’re investing and what you’re going to do, ask yourself if you live in an affordable market. If you live in the Midwest, if you live in the Southeast where affordability is good, you can probably bet that housing market activity is going to pick up. If you live in a super expensive market, it’s probably going to remain challenged for the next couple of years.Just as an example, the markets we are seeing that are the hottest right now that are seeing the highest year over year growth according to Redfin, number one, San Francisco, 11% year over year growth. That is massive, but that is driven probably by the AI boom and excitement around there. We have a lot of IPOs going on there. A lot of people are going to become very rich, that is probably driving up the market there. But the second hottest market in the entire country is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which fun fact, not a lot of people know this. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the single most affordable housing market, not in the Northeast, not even in the United States, but in the world. If you look at the price of a home compared to the average income, Pittsburgh has the best ratio in the entire world. And so it is no surprise to me that Pittsburgh, even though it’s not the sexiest housing market, is seeing growth because it’s affordable.After Pittsburgh, we see St. Louis, another highly affordable market. Newark, New Jersey, affordable, Jacksonville, Florida, affordable. Then we go to Nasdaq County, New York, not affordable, but New York, like I said, had some other stuff going on. After that, Baltimore, affordable, Chicago affordable. Cincinnati affordable. So you see these are the hottest markets. And if you’re in some of these markets, even though they’re affordable, you’re going to have to adjust your strategy a little bit based on that. The markets that aren’t doing well, it’s a combination of affordability and oversupply. Those are the markets that aren’t doing well. Either they’re super expensive like Seattle. That’s one of the worst performing markets in terms of home prices last year. It’s down but only 1%, but it’s probably because it’s relatively unaffordable. But you also see markets like San Antonio and Orlando up there because they’ve just had a lot of supply.Even though there are good dynamics in those markets, they are relatively affordable, at least San Antonio is. It’s because there’s just too much building there. So these are the factors you need to be thinking about when you’re going out and thinking about your next deal. What’s the supply look like? What does the affordability look like? But before we get into some examples here, I just want to call out that Orlando, our second worst market in terms of declines, decline 2.2%. It’s pretty darn close to flat. So again, even the ones that aren’t doing well aren’t doing terrible. San Antonio is the third worst. It’s down less than 1%. So flat is the name of the gain, but I do want to just show that there is some regional variance, but that variance is shrinking. Two years ago we saw Austin would be like down 8% and Milwaukee would be up 11%.Huge difference in the best and the worst performing markets. That gap is really closing. We are seeing much closer to flat. We’ll see some markets down one or 2%. A couple are up above five, 6%, but the majority of them are clustered around flat but are trending slightly positive. So let’s talk about what this means for you. First and foremost, go out and look up the data for your market. You can do this for free. You could do it on Redfin. You could do it on HousingWire. I highly recommend those two. You could do it on Realtor or Zillow. It’s totally free and there’s really easy tools. So you have no reason not to go and do this. And the things that I want you to go look at are first and foremost inventory. Remember I talked about why that’s so important. You want to see not just where inventory is, but what the trend is.Is it going up? Is it going down? Fast or slow. That’s something you should be able to do. Second thing, look at days on market. I explained that earlier. If it’s going up, that means you have more leverage. If it’s going down, you have less leverage. Look at those two things and look at price trends. You should also understand if prices are going up or down in those area. Now, before you make an investment, you want to do a lot more research, but if you just understand those three things, you can sort of figure out how to approach your next offer or what kind of deals you should be looking for. And I’ll just give you a couple of examples of what I mean by this. So if I was in a market like Orlando, I mentioned that earlier. This is a market where prices are down, but inventory is also falling.So that’s the combination we’re talking about. We’re seeing prices are down. So you’re thinking, okay, this is slow market. Maybe I can be aggressive. But inventory is falling. Days on market are falling. That tells me that even though they’ve been in a correction to Orlando, sellers are starting to respond. They are responding appropriately because we’re seeing less people start to sell. And that means a bottom is forming. When we see that days on market are going down, inventory is going down. That means buyers are losing their leverage. They still might have relatively good leverage, but it’s declining day by day. And so to me, the strategy here is that you should try and go out and buy sooner before sellers can fully adjust. Take advantage of some of the stress that is still in that market right now. If you like the overall fundamentals, the window of maximum leverage of when you’re going to be able to have the most power over sellers as a buyer, that window might be closing soon.It’s not like today or next week, but like you can just see in the trends that that window is closing. So this might be a good time to go write a lot of offers. Still need to buy below market comps. I’d still try and get things well below list price in these markets. But it seems like if you like the underlying fundamentals in Orlando, good time to go out and get a good asset below market price before things get reset and the balance between supply and demand comes back together. So that’s what I would do in a market like Orlando. But if I’m in a different market like Seattle, an expensive market that’s in a decline, I would treat that totally different. I would only in Seattle buy really, really good deals at steep discounts right now and I’m going to be super patient because prices are only down 1%, right?Actually less than Orlando, not really that bad. But active listings inventory is up 13% and it’s trending higher. So this tells me even though prices are only down 1%, prices are probably going to go down more. The balance between supply and demand is moving towards buyers. Sellers are going to be in a weak position and their position is getting even worse. So that doesn’t mean that Seattle’s market is going to crash, but it means your leverage as a buyer is likely going to increase because active listings are up and days on market are up. This tells me there’s going to be more motivated sellers. There’s going to be a little bit more stress into the market. So that means good deals are coming, but you can also afford to be patient because that trend is still emerging here where six months from now it might even be worse in Seattle.Prices might be down more. And so that doesn’t mean you can’t buy now, but it means that I would be very aggressive in my low balling. I would have to take things 10, 15, 20% off local comps before I bought it because otherwise I can just wait. And so the only reason you shouldn’t wait is if you get a screaming deal and that’s the kind of deal you should insist on if you’re in a market like Seattle where conditions are moving more towards a buyer’s market. Last, I’ll give you one more scenario like buying in Chicago, which is one of the hottest markets I mentioned, top 10. So what we’re seeing here is that prices are up 5%. That’s good, right? That’s above the rate of inflation even. So that’s rare right now. And that trend is likely to continue because active listings pretty stable, right?Days on market going up nationally, they are down in Chicago. So this means that in this market, buyers don’t have that much power. It’s not like Seattle where they’re gaining power or in Orlando where they have power, but it might be going away soon. This is a market where sellers still have a lot of power. And so this means I’m not going to be able to go out and low ball on market deals as much as I could in the other kinds of markets. So instead of doing that, I think the strategies you have to use are either be patient and offer on a lot of stuff because that still can work. There’s still going to be motivated sellers. There’s still going to be some inefficiencies in the market that you can take advantage of. You could still look for things that have been sitting.You could still find things for value add, but you also might want to look off market here because it’s just going to be harder to find really good deals at deep discounts in a market that’s still really hot. This is still a balanced market, if not a seller’s market. And so that should change your approach. Can you still buy in Chicago? Absolutely. Are you going to get a 10% discount on an MLS deal? Probably not. Maybe you don’t need it because if prices keep going up, maybe you don’t need as steep as a discount, but this is kind of the thing that you should be thinking about is that deals are probably going to be a little bit thinner in markets like Chicago or Indianapolis or places like that, but that might be worth it to you because there’s more likely to be appreciation in the next couple of years than in a market like Seattle or Orlando.So this is the analysis you should be doing for yourself. Again, Redfin Housing Wire. You can do this stuff for free, but use this stuff to formulate a strategy to take advantage of the stuff going on in the market. Also, one more thing about the Orlando market. If you want to go check out deals in this market where there are good deals, you should come to BPCon because that is where the BiggerPockets Conference, BPCon is this year, this October 2nd through 4th, great time to go check out a really interesting market and you will get my full analysis and my predictions for the 2027 market before anyone else. I am going to be doing my keynote where I give my forecast for 2027 there in Orlando. You should really check it out. You can get tickets right now. There are actually still early bird tickets available just I think for a couple more days.Go to biggerpockets.com/conference to get your ticket today. We got to take a quick break, but when we come back, we’ll be talking about our risk report. Don’t want to miss that. Stick with us.Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer. This is our June 2026 housing market update. Next up, we’re going to talk about our risk report. This is something we do every month to keep an eye on just general risk in the market. Now, you can probably tell from my tone over the course of this episode already that I don’t see a ton of risk of a national crash, but I want to just share with you the data because I do think it’s important to be transparent about what I’m seeing and where there are potential signs of risk and also be reassured by some of the data that shows that that risk is overall pretty low. When we look at risk in the housing market, the main things I want to look at are one is inventory. So I already talked about that. We’re not seeing that rise, so that indicates lower overall risk.But the other sort of forward-looking thing you need to look at to project if inventory is going to go up or there’s going to be broad-based declines on a national level are the state of mortgages. Are people paying their mortgages on time or are delinquencies going up and what’s going on with foreclosures? And so during the risk report, I always share this data every month and what I’ll tell you for this month is the national delinquency rate remained entirely unchanged in April. That’s the last month we have data for. I know this is June, but we don’t have May data. In April, it stayed at 3.35%. So overall, delinquency rate looking pretty good. In fact, the delinquency rate remains about half a percentage point or 45 basis points below where it was in January 2020 before all the data got turned upside down. So has it gone up in recent years?Yes, it has gone up from what I believe are artificial lows from COVID when there was a lot of programs put in to push out foreclosures and push out delinquencies into later years and that kind of worked. I think we should acknowledge that that worked, but of course when those programs expired, there are going to be rise in delinquency and a rise in foreclosure. And so it’s gone up a little bit, but from artificial lows and it’s still below where we were in 2019, early 2020, when no one was worried about delinquency rates or foreclosure rates, right? We’re below that. So that is the big headline and to me signals overall low risk. The other thing that we’ve seen that I find super encouraging is that early stag delinquencies are down. And this is just super important because even though we’ve seen overall delinquency rates go up a little bit, I explained some of the context there.The fact that early stage delinquencies are down tells us something super important. It confirms the thesis, the idea that why it’s gone up in recent years is more about stuff that got pushed out from COVID because early stage delinquency is going down means there are not many new people starting to fall behind. We’re still working through a backlog of people who fell behind a while ago, but we are not seeing a lot of new people enter the foreclosure funnel, right? That’s really important. It’s really encouraging, in my opinion. And it’s also really different from what we’re seeing in other parts of the credit market. If you look at student loans, credit card debt, auto loans, delinquency rates are going up, but mortgages, no, they are not going up. They’re actually staying stable. Early stage, it’s going down. That’s good. You want more good news? Because I got more good news for you.The cure rate is also up. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Cure rate is basically how many people were delinquent or falling behind but get paid up and current. That actually went up and it went up a lot. The average recently has been about 45,000 mortgages a month are cured. Last month it was 62,000. That’s more than a 30% increase in the cure rate. So encouraging picture in terms of overall stress in the housing market. Of course, that can change. That’s why we do this every month. So I can tell you if it’s changed, but it’s changing right now for the better. It is actually looking better than it was a month ago or two months ago or at the beginning of the year. And so I think I’m very encouraged by that. The one area I will say that is not looking as good, but I’m honestly not concerned about is that overall foreclosure activity is up.So delinquencies are kind of like, it’s kind of a long funnel, right? It starts by going late on your mortgage, then you get seriously delinquent, then you go into pre-foreclosure, then you go foreclosure, then it’s sort of a funnel. So the later parts of the funnel are up a little bit. The overall foreclosure activity is up. It actually went up a lot year over year at 32%. So that sounds like a lot. You’re going to see that on social media. Let me just tell you, you will hear people say foreclosures just went up 32% and they are right, but keep this in mind, foreclosures still below 2019 levels. So again, no one was worried about it back then, so why would you be worried about it right now? So overall risk in the market for a crash remains relatively low. Is it higher than it was in 2022?Sure. Yes, it is. But right now I see zero evidence that a crash is imminent and I stand by what I’ve been predicting for several years now, which is that we were in the great stall. Prices are going to be close to flat, up 1%, up 2%, down 2%, something like that on a national basis this year and we’re probably going to be in that kind of market for the foreseeable future. So even though calling it the great stalt does not sound like the sexiest thing ever, there’s opportunity here. The market isn’t great, but it is not terrible. And as an investor, you can invest in In any market, what I think you should be looking for is stability and predictability. This is what allows you to make good decisions and that is why I’m encouraged by this. Not because I think all of a sudden you can buy anything and you’re going to make a ton of money.No, it’s because it’s more predictable. Your underwriting gets easier. Knowing what deals are good and what you should buy is becoming easier. Negotiating with sellers is getting easier. So take advantage of that. Majority of deals are straight up trash right now, but that’s fine. The ability right now, the opportunity right now is to go out and score a really good deal. Go buy something well below what it’s going to be worth five years from now and you’re going to be very happy and those opportunities really do exist. The key is to understand your market. So go out and look at active inventory, look at days on market, look at price trends, and formulate a strategy to go get a great asset in a great location in your local market. If you can do that, you do that all day in any market. That is how you succeed as an investor.You don’t have to time the market perfectly. You just have to adapt your strategy to what’s going on in the market. Hopefully this episode has helped you do that by providing you information about the national market, information about your own individual region and how to get more granular on that on your own and by explaining that overall risk of a massive decline in the housing market remains relatively low. If you can understand that, you can succeed in this market. That’s our episode for today. Thank you so much for watching this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer. I’ll see you next time.