Transcript
Dave Meyer (0:00)
The great stall is here. And the housing market in 2026 is shaping up mostly the way we expected, at least so far. Things are changing. There's a war in Iran. Gas prices are rising. The labor market is weakening. And the housing market will react to all this in ways that can introduce new risks, but can also create new opportunities for real estate investors. In today's March Housing Market Update, we're going to dig into the most recent housing market news and help distill it down from overwhelming to digestible. Things you can actually do to grow as an investor. In this episode, we're going to cover home prices, affordability and inventory. We'll also talk about how you can potentially save money on property insurance, new risks that have been introduced into the market, and the best opportunities where investors should be focused in March 2026. Hey, welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer, investor chief investment officer at BiggerPockets and housing market Analyst. Today we're doing our monthly housing market update because you probably already know this, but things in the economy are changing rapidly. We're seeing bigger regional variances. The economy is sending mixed and I'll be honest, sometimes scary signals. It could be a lot to take in. But don't worry, I got you covered. I've read all the news, I've analyzed all the data. Today I'm going to help you focus on what's important and ignore what's just noise. First, we're going to talk about the state of the market. We'll look at prices, inventory affordability and transaction volume so you know exactly where things stand today. Then we'll do a deep dive into insurance prices. I'm going to share an update on my risk report to help you understand what risks exist in this market. And then we'll end with the fun stuff, opportunities that are emerging in today's market. Let's do it. First up, we're talking about home prices and really not much has changed here in the last month with prices. We're still in our weird, flattish slow correction. It's what I've been calling the great stall, and that has been coming true. Prices are up nationally somewhere between a half a percent, one and a half percent, really, depending on who you ask. So they're up nominally. That means not inflation adjusted like the price you see on Zillow is going up a little bit, but they're actually coming down in what I think is the more important number, the inflation adjusted number. This matters for investors in terms of your return, but it Also matters for overall housing market affordability, which we're going to dig into next. Hint. Basically, prices are going up slower than incomes are rising, which makes affordability a little bit better. But of course, regional differences are huge. Right now we're seeing total differences between markets in the west and the Southeast than what we're seeing in the Midwest and in the Northeast. As of right now, 40% of markets are now seeing declines. I'm guessing you can guess where those are. It's mostly on the West Coast. And in the Southeast, states like Florida and Texas, Louisiana, California, all seeing declines, some huge in Florida and Texas. But elsewhere, the declines are mostly modest in those 40% of markets. And then the are still markets in the Northeast and the Northwest that are going up. But I think the key thing to call out here is that even in those markets that are growing, the rate of growth is decelerating. It is slowing down from where they've been over the last couple of years. Everything in terms of prices is really starting to slow down. And that's one of the key takeaways from the report that we have for you here today, is that if you're underwriting deals, if you're analyzing your portfolio, I would discount appreciation in almost every market from where it's been over the last couple of years. I think we are going to see continuing slowing for the foreseeable future. So that means if you were seeing 5% growth, it might go down to 2 or 3 this year. It might be flat this year. If you saw flat last year, I would count on declining prices in those markets now. It doesn't mean you can't invest, as we're going to talk about later, that means opportunities you can buy at a discount. There's going to be more deals on the market, but you got to do your underwriting and anticipate that lower appreciation. I think that's the main key. From our pricing update here today, moving on to our sales volume update, because in any market we need to look at prices and volume, the total amount of things being sold. That's how you get to a healthy market. Like a healthy market for housing is where appreciation is a little bit above the pace of inflation, let's call it three and a half percent. That would be great in my mind. And, and where you'd see five, five and a half million home sales per year, that's probably what a good number would be. And the good news for February, that's last month we have data for, is that home sales went up a tiny little bit. So that's good. You know, I want to be encouraged where we can, but it is up from one of the worst numbers we've seen in a really long time. In January was actually down to 3.9 million. So way off from that five, five and a half million that we want to be at. I said this last month, but I thought the January numbers were a bit deceiving. They're kind of a blip because they had those. All those crazy blizzards. And so things just slowed down a little bit. So we did see bounce back to what we been seeing for basically the last four years. We've been at 4 to 4.1 million. That's an annualized rate for home sales for the whole year. And we've basically been there since 2022. And I'm glad to see it bounce back because I know a lot of people were concerned in January, like, is it going down? It was at 3.9. Is it going to keep going down? We're back to where we were for the last four years, and unfortunately, I kind of think it's going to stay this way. I think even though affordability is getting a little bit better with the labor market is where it is, people are nervous that I don't think we're seeing a lot of buyers coming off the sidelines. That is true. Even though mortgage rates dropped from, from 7.1% a year ago to about 6% right now. Even with that improved affordability, that hasn't changed. People are wary of the housing market right now. So I think, yeah, it's going to stay slow. But there is good news in the housing market, and that is around affordability. I am stoked about this because if you listen to the show, you know, I'm all about affordability. I think that's what drives the housing market, especially in these kinds of times. And the. Those are the markets, I think that are going to perform better. And that has largely been true since I've been saying this for the last three or four years. And the good news is that affordability continues to improve. This has been going on for months, and it keeps getting better, little bit by little bit. Now, there are different ways to measure affordability. I kind of think there are three different variables that you need to think about. One, of course, is home prices. That's the big one. But mortgage rates matter and incomes matter. Right? You have to look at all three of those things in some relation to each other to measure affordability. And affordability basically means how easily can the average person buy the average priced home. And to talk about that today, I'm going to focus in on one metric. It's one that I like. It's a good metric for affordability. It's basically, it's called the payment to income ratio. It's basically your monthly payment on your mortgage, your principal and your interest and you compare that to the average income from the average American in it has been getting better and it's been consistently falling for a couple of years now. Actually, when you look at it that way, it is now about 27% the average person's mortgage payment. It's about 27% of their household income. That's not the best it's ever been. It's certainly not where it was during COVID or the 2010s, but it's not bad considering the fact that most budgeting experts recommend 30% of of your budget should go to housing. And so we're at 27%. That's pretty good, right? That's better than where we've been over the last couple of years. It's basically where we were in a lot of the 2000s. Yes, much higher than it was in 2010, but that was unusually low. So even though we're not yet at quote, unquote, normal affordability yet, it's still good news. Now, if you're wondering what's driving it, is it a crash? No, we just said home prices are actually up nominally 1% year. So it's definitely not a crash. Even though for years people have said affordability is so bad there's going to be a crash. Well, the first part of that sentence is true. Affordability is really bad. But there is another way that affordability can get better. It's the great stall. It's what we've been talking about. Affordability can improve by some combination of wages going up, stagnating home prices and falling rates. And that, my friends, is exactly what has been happening. Home prices, maybe they're going up a little bit on paper, but like I said, they are not going up as fast as inflation, nor are they going up as fast as wages are going up. Meaning that relatively people are gaining more income faster than home prices are going up. That improves affordability. I just said earlier that mortgage rates have gone down 1%. That improves affordability. It's not as dramatic as a crash, but these little changes sustained over time can improve affordability. And that's what we're getting. In just the last year, the average mortgage payment has fallen nearly $200 a month. That's great, right? If you're talking about buying a rental property, that's $2,400 more per year in cash flow if you were going out to buy the exact same same property. We're going to talk in a little bit about how you can save even more money if you do the right things with insurance. But that is an improvement in affordability that can meaningfully change which deals actually work for you when you're going out and buying. So although the housing market is far from perfect, this is a real improvement. In fact, about one in six markets now are at historical affordability levels. As crazy as that sounds, that's actually pretty good compared to where we were the last couple of years. We were at zero basically a couple of years ago, zero of metro markets were near their affordability ranges. You know, historical affordability. Now we're at 1 in 6. It's better and it's trending in the right direction, even though we do admittedly have a long way to go nationally. So that's where we stand affordability. But next let's talk about where we're going because we've talked about where prices were, but I think most people listening right now want to understand what's going on in their market where prices might be heading. And for that we're going to look at inventory. We'll do that right after this quick break. Stick with us as a host. The last thing I want to do or have time for is to play accountant and banker. But that's what I was doing every weekend, flipping between a bunch of apps, bank statements and receipts, trying to sort it all by property and figure out if I was actually making any money. Then I found Baselane and it takes all of that off my plate. 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