The Housing Market SUCKS

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]I was going to make my usual video today about the housing market. You know, the ones where I pull up the articles, I break down the headlines, and I react to all of the housing market drama, but today I'm not doing that because honestly, the housing market just sucks.

[00:00:14]Look, as a real estate agent here in New Jersey, I'm living it every day. Not just selling homes here in Jersey, but I also work with a lot of agents around the country, referring people who want to buy or sell. and the stories I am hearing compared to what's going on in the Northeast. We got two different markets going on. And let me tell you, it's frustrating. It's confusing and it's a little bit concerning.

[00:00:39]Now, you know, I've been talking about the housing market here on my channel for about 3 or 4 years now. And I'll be honest with you, I had high hopes. I really thought 2026 we were going to see some improvement. I had hopes that there was going to be more inventory, more balance, more opportunities for buyers.

[00:00:56]That is not what's happening right now.

[00:00:58]Instead, what we have going on in this country is we have a market that's split in two. For the last few years, as we know, the South and the Southwest has really started to cool off. And in some cases, you could find a good deal. There have been price declines going on for a few years now. And yeah, that sounds great. Those areas are seeing corrections. And why is that? Well, remember during CO builders went crazy and built all of these homes and they flooding the housing market with new construction. And now that supply, it's it's catching up. And as we all know, the Red Fins and the Zillow of the world are have been reporting that we've been seeing price cuts in states like Texas, Arizona, and Florida. And even Georgia has been seeing some price cuts. But here's the problem. Even with prices going down, homes are still unaffordable.

[00:01:48]Why? because people are just losing confidence. The interest rates are still higher than they were a couple of years ago. And I keep telling everybody, you cannot expect these interest rates to come back down into 4% or less. I don't ever see that happening again. And let me tell you, you don't want to see that happen again because like what happened during COVID, it's going to drive the prices up. So, we really don't want that. But having the rates between 6 and a half and 7% that really did a number on people. And even though now they're down to like the low sixes and even 6% in some cases, the monthly payment is still too high for a lot of people. So this is preventing buyers from jumping into the market. So while buyers may see a 20,000 or $50,000 price reduction, that's not enough because it comes down to the monthly payment. if the interest rate is still high, that $50,000 reduction still isn't a deal to them.

[00:02:43]Now, I can speak from my own personal experience. I'm trying to sell a property in Delaware, bought a vacation home. I've been trying to sell this place for 6 months. I have done so many price reductions on it. Why? Because there's so much new construction. It's really hard when you have a condo that's almost 30 years old to compete against a brand new build. I get it. a lot of areas down south, these homeowners are facing the same thing and the buyers just don't want to bite yet. So, that doesn't mean that this is a healthy housing market in these areas. It's more of a confusing market because the buyers just won't don't want to jump in because of the interest rates. Now, we go over to the Northeast and in some parts of the Midwest where we're still seeing bidding wars, the affordability crisis is even worse in these areas because we are still in the sellers market. Now, let's talk about New Jersey. As you all know, I serve New Jersey that this is wormer real estate agent and the COVID pandemic housing market has not left this state at all. We are six years out of COVID and we're still seeing bidding wars. I had high hopes that this year it Jersey was going to get a little bit better. And I will say beginning of the year I was seeing things happen where it felt like, hey, we could be coming back to a more normal market. No. No, let me show you an example of what some houses are selling for here in North Jersey.

[00:04:10]Okay, so we have this house here. This is in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. You see the sale price? 2.133 million. That's what it sold for. You want to see what the list price was for this house? It was listed for sale back on October 30th of 2025. The list price was 1.695, 695 a,695,000 and then it sold for $2,133,000.

[00:04:33]A $438,000 over bid that they overpaid for this by $438,000.

[00:04:44]Okay, it gets better. Wait now. This property, this home is in Montlair.

[00:04:49]Montlair is a very, very hot town. So desirable. People in New York City want to live in Montlair. The sale price on this house was $810,000. Now, that was a it's a nice modest home. It's cute home.

[00:05:04]You want to see what the list price was on this one? The list price on this one was $649,000.

[00:05:11]Okay. This sold for $161,000 over list. Okay. $649,000.

[00:05:18]that, believe it or not, that's more like a a price range for most firsttime buyers in New Jersey. $649,000, but they went $161,000 over a list. Again, it's a really cute home. It is, but for $649,000.

[00:05:36]Like, I'm just I'm speechless over that one. Now, here's another home in Montlair. This one sold for $1.475 $1,475,000.

[00:05:46]What was the list price on this one? The list price on this one was $979,000.

[00:05:54]Uh-huh. So, this one sold for almost $500,000. $496,000.

[00:06:00]So, just about $500,000 over list price.

[00:06:03]But wait, I saved the best for last.

[00:06:05]This home in Glenn Ridge. Now, Glenn Ridge is a town just outside of Montlair. It's right next to Montlair.

[00:06:11]Yes, it is an affluent town. Okay. This house sold for $2,499.

[00:06:17]Okay, $2.5 million. Wait till you see the list price on this one. This house was listed for 1,549,000 and it sold for $2.5 million. Okay, so $950,999 over list price. But let's just call it a million. Okay, at this point, what's another 50 grand? just about a million dollars over list price. This is what's happening in New Jersey. Now, not every town is experiencing sales like this.

[00:06:51]It's we're talking about the Glenn Ridge, the Monontlair's, Ridgewood, New Jersey, in Bergen County. We're seeing homes sell for a couple hundred to $300,000 over list in that town. Now, these towns are very desirable for those who live in New York City, want to have New York City feel. A lot of people who live in New York City are buying in these towns. Why? because it's accessible to New York City. Now, as frustrating as this market is, and but if you find yourself that you have to buy a home, you have to sell your home, and this makes you nervous, the best way to get through it is working with a really good real estate agent. And I refer people to really good real estate agents every day. And if you need to be connected to one, all you need to do is just scan this QR code or click that link down below in the description box.

[00:07:38]you fill out the forms and I'll get back to you within a few days with a real estate agent in your market. I'm going to be honest with you, I have never seen homes sell like this for this much over list price. And I will tell you, a lot of those deals were cash.

[00:07:53]Scary thought, I know. And why is this still happening? Because we still don't have homes for sale. We don't have enough homes for sale here in New Jersey. We don't. So homeowners are still sitting on their low interest rates or no they have no mortgage at all and you have high income buyers that are competing for these homes and right now cash buyers are dominating the market.

[00:08:16]So the biggest problem here in New Jersey is that first-time home buyers are just getting squeezed out and I got to tell you that's really sad to me. my experience right now and what I'm dealing with, I'm practically fighting.

[00:08:29]I'm begging listing agents just to please consider my client's offer, you know, and I and I feel like I have to remind them to say, "Look, it's not always about the price. It's about the person." Because time and time again, and especially in my experience, when I've listed homes the past several years, people are going to come in and overshoot and really over bid to try and secure the home. And then what happens?

[00:08:52]They'll flake out. They'll do the home inspection and decide, "Yeah, no, you know what? I want to have this repaired." Or, "Do you know what? This isn't what we thought it was going to be." And they'll back out even though they put in the contract that they signed that they were going to limit inspections to structural and environmental. Yeah. They tend to find a way to back out of those deals. So, just recently, I was able to get my client's offer accepted, and we weren't the highest offer. It was a miracle, but we went in with really good terms. I went in and talked to the listing agent to find out what is it that's important to the sellers. And even though I knew my client was, it was going to be a stretch. It was going to be a stretch, but you know what? We went in and did it. I also got my client to get her loan through underwriting. So, she was walking in not just with a pre-approval letter. She was walking in with a conditional commitment on her loan. She was approved for her loan. All she needs to do now is appraisal and title. That's it. It's little things like that that can push us over the edge to get the seller to consider the offer. And thank God in this case it did work. But I'm having to do this every single time I am submitting an offer for a client, going to bat for them. Like I said, practically begging to just please have your seller just consider it. Don't look at just the number. Look at the whole picture of our offer. Look at the whole package. And talking to real estate agents around the country, in some areas, they are blown away when I tell them what I'm experiencing in New Jersey right now. And in some markets like Louisiana, Florida, Arizona, and those agents tell me that it's been really slow for them. And the homes are sitting and prices continue to go down and no one's buying. So this is concerning. You know, like I said, we have a market that is divided in this country and the White House reported recently that we are short 10 million homes. 10 million homes in this country we need. What are we doing about it? I say time and time again, the only way this is going to improve is that we add more homes. Homes stopped being built right after the great financial crisis because builders lost their shirts and they did not want to get back into it. So now we're still paying that price. So, something has to be done and get more homes built for the American people. This is the only way it's going to work. I think this is the only way we're going to get somewhat of a balance back into the housing market and lowering interest rates to below 5%.

[00:11:30]It's not going to work, guys. It's not because what's going to happen is going to bring more buyers in and it's going to create bidding wars around the entire country and homes will become even more unaffordable. So yeah, most of the country we are in a correction, some were not. We're still in the COVID pandemic market, but my hope is that that will change eventually and things will start to calm down. But I don't know when. That's what's really concerning to me. I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel. So I don't mean for this video to be all doom and gloom.

[00:12:01]I wanted to just share my experience, my frustration as to what's going on. And my hope is that things will get better.

[00:12:10]But we got to stay the course. We have to stay the course. And if you're in a market or you're thinking about buying a house in the future, start saving your money now. Please put it away as much as you can. Please get your credit in order. Please make sure your credit is good. And if it's not, clean up that debt. Pay it off. Pay off your student loans as much as you can. Pay off the car loans. Do what you can to keep that credit clean because that's just only going to help you get a better interest rate when you go to purchase your home.

[00:12:38]So, if you want more information about what I've been talking about so far this year in this housing market, you can check out this playlist right here.

[00:12:45]Thank you so much for watching me today to get your dose of real estate reality.

[00:12:49]My name is Jackie Baker and I will see you next