This Change JUST KILLED The Spring Housing Market

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]It appears to be that 2026 is the year where home sellers are finally going to get the message and the wakeup call about the reality of what's happening with real estate right now. Because on the surface, a lot of sellers are still way too confident. But that confidence is breaking very fast. If you look at the current home seller data, 83% of sellers still believe they're going to get their asking price for their home or higher.

[00:00:31]And let me just tell you why that's funny, okay? Because first of all, nobody ever pays full price, right? Like hardly ever. Yes, you do have situations where that does happen and there's bidding wars. People pay over asking price. Very small percentage of transactions out there. The reality is last year in 2025 about 90% of the listings that were on the market did at least one price cut. Meaning that they initially listed too high and had to find out through being on the market that their price was too high. And the fact that 83% of sellers right now believe that they'll be able to get their price or higher is wishful thinking at best. And only 12% believe that they will sell below asking price and less than 5% say they don't know what will happen. And that tells you that sellers still believe it is a sellers market out there. But the reality is only a handful of markets in the United States are actually still sellers markets. But it's kind of interesting at the same time because about 40% of sellers also believe that they expect they will have to cut their price or offer concessions in this current spring housing market. And that's up from 30% this same time period last year, which is a pretty meaningful jump. So, even though a lot of sellers are still expecting the best case scenario, more of them are starting to get realistic with the fact that, yeah, I'm probably going to have to cut the price. Almost half of them think that they will have to, but in reality, far more than half of them will actually need to do it once they list and realize that it's not happening. So, a lot of sellers have been watching the market over the past year and they've been seeing homes sit longer on the market and they're seeing price cuts become more and more common. And one of the reasons that sellers are more confident they'll be able to get their current asking price is because more sellers are now coming to market and pricing their homes accordingly, closer to a realistic selling price from the get-go. And that's why so many of them are actually more confident that they'll be able to get their asking price for the home because they're asking a realistic price and that makes a huge difference. And today I'm walking down 102nd Street here in Miami Shores. So the good news is for everybody, sellers and buyers alike, is that seller expectations are starting to get closer and closer to reality. It still hasn't completely caught up, but the fact that it is getting closer like this is a real strong positive sign for everyone. Sellers are starting to understand that they need to list their home appropriately and those first two or three weeks on the market are crucial in actually making the sale happen and not have to do a dramatic price cut. The other thing that I believe that is changing seller mentality right now is a lot of them are having a shift in why they are selling. This is huge because about 41% of sellers say that they're listing in order to make a profit, which is up from 36% last year. Meanwhile, the share of people moving for lifestyle reasons like changing neighborhoods has dropped from 46% to 41%. And 39% are selling because they want more space.

[00:04:01]So, what this shows us is sellers are becoming more financially motivated to sell than they were a year ago. You know, a lot of them believe they're actually going to get more money than they would have a year ago. And depending on the market they're in, they could be correct, but they also could be very, very wrong because there's been plenty of markets that have gone negative year-over-year. So, a lot of them still believe this expectation, like, well, I just took my home off the market last year. I'll just try again this spring. And I have some news about that here we're going to cover in a little bit about how bad this spring housing market actually is. And here's where seller expectations still miss the mark. Okay, 47% of people still describe this current housing market as a sellers market. 33% say it's balanced and 27% say that it's leaning towards buyers. But when we look at the actual data, only 26% of the top 50 metro areas in the United States are actually sellers markets right now. So what people think and what's actually happening in the housing market shows us that people's mindsets still haven't caught up with reality and the data.

[00:05:14]It's getting closer. More and more people are starting to catch up with it.

[00:05:19]But we can see that judging by the data and the mindset, there is still a departure. And I think the reality is home buyers more than home sellers are educated about what's going on in this current housing market. Because if you think about it, more people have been sidelined as home buyers than home sellers. A lot of sellers believe they still hold all the cards, so they haven't been as in touch with the news cycle and the most recent updates on what's happening with real estate because they don't have to be. Versus somebody who's been wanting to buy for the past 2 years and was beat out by bidding wars, but now they're starting to see the inventory climb and the climate start to change. With more listings and more price cuts, buyers just seem to be more informed and more ahead of the curve. You know, when a home sits on the market without showings, that sends a clear signal to buyers that something is off. And once you see more listings like that, buyers start to understand like, "Wait a minute, I do actually have some power here, whereas a couple years ago, I didn't." Now, some sellers are still repeating the same old playbook from last year. And the mentality is that well 35% say they would cut the price if their listing doesn't sell within the first month or so. 34% said they would wait it out. And 29% say they would still pull the listings off the market.

[00:06:46]So here's some good and some bad news here. The good news is that the vast majority, about 70% of current home sellers are willing to cut the price or at least keep the listing on the market and be open for offers and negotiation.

[00:07:03]And only 30% say that they would pull the listing off the market. So, you have fewer and fewer sellers who are thinking that, "Yeah, I'll just pull it off the market and try again next spring or in the summer or whatever because they've already seen this cycle repeat for the last couple of years and realize that this playbook isn't working anymore."

[00:07:23]54% of sellers say that they're researching prices in their area. And roughly half of them have made repairs or cleaned out and decluttered their homes. And 44% have already identified improvements to make before listing their home. So this is also a sign that sellers are starting to understand what buyers want out of their home as well in order to increase the odds of it selling. So, I think overall this home buyer and home seller sentiment on where the market currently stands and where they think things are at is getting better. You know, is there still a big divergence between what's happening in reality versus what people expect and think? Yes, there is. But that gap is closing more and more as the years go on because they're starting to realize that, hey, uh, you know, listing high and waiting for multiple offers to come in doesn't work anymore. Most buyers aren't competing anymore. Certainly, taking the listing off the market and trying to fool everyone into thinking there's a new listing doesn't work either. Like all these old school tactics that have been used for many decades to try and get homes sold are not fooling buyers anymore. People know about this stuff thanks to channels like mine. I have exposed a lot of these things as well as other real estate channels out there. All the information is public data now. You know, for the most part, you can go on Zillow or Red Fin and see the listing history of any given property. You see what they were trying to get a year ago or two or three years ago in some cases. how many times they've cut the price. And that gives you an idea how desperate they might be or how out of touch with reality they might be. And the reality is guys, existing home sales still continue to decline right now. You know, we keep seeing things get worse and worse with the amount of closed sales actually happening. Existing home sales decrease by 3.6% 6% month overmonth in March, which is a big deal because it went down from February to March. And March typically signals the beginning of the spring housing market. And for it to already be down by 3.6% in the first month of the spring market is not a good sign for activity to pick up through the rest of this spring market. According to Lawrence Young, who's the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, he's blaming this uh spring slowdown on lower consumer confidence and softer job growth. Now, usually I don't agree with anything he says, but I think in this case he actually is pretty accurate. You know, people are feeling pretty sour about this economy right now. In fact, consumer confidence just pretty much hit an all-time low. with how bad this job market is, who has the confidence to go out and buy or the money for that matter. And the reason why this most recent decline in home sales is important is because the month overmonth sales actually fell in all four regions of the United States. You know, we've been hearing a lot about how the Midwest and the Northeast are still very resilient, still hot sellers markets, but the fact is home sales are declining in these hot markets as well. This has also led the National Association of Realtors to recently downward revise its 2026 housing forecast. They now expect existing home sales to increase 4% this year, down from their previous forecast of 5%. Which is still extremely bullish because even Zillow and Red Fin believe that the housing market this year is essentially going to be flat. We might even see fewer sales than last year. And so far, I am definitely on team we're going to see fewer sales this year. You know, the last three years in a row have essentially been the worst housing markets on record in terms of sales figures going all the way back to the early 90s. And I see 2026 just continuing that trend. They're also still extremely bullish on where home prices are going to go. They believe home prices are going to rise 4% this year in 2026. Guys, that is just absolutely moronic. I think, you know, the fact that the National Association of Realtors thinks that prices are going to go up that much with sales as sluggish as they are and home buyer demand as low as it is is crazy. The only way they're going to end up being correct about that is if we still see a lot of transactions taking place on the high end of the market because that skews the median home price higher and higher even with fewer transactions taking place. And of course, they're blaming their decreased sales forecast for the year on increasing mortgage rates. Yeah, that must be it. If home sales stay at this current rate right now that we just saw in March, we are going to have a seasonally adjusted annual rate of only 3.98 million home sales, guys. Like the last couple years, it was at least over four. Now we're down into the 3s. If it stays like this, what's going to improve the situation?

[00:12:39]You know, people are paying extremely high gas prices, extremely high costs for everything else. What's going to get people back in the market? At the same time, we have about 1.36 million units for sale. And that inventory is up 3% from February and up 2.3% from a year ago. Even with all this stuff going on, guys, home prices only went up 1.4% year-over-year. Median home price as of March was 408,000.

[00:13:06]A year ago, it was 403,000.

[00:13:09]And most of those gains are due to what happened on the high end of the market.

[00:13:15]You know, when you have homes, more homes transacting that are $800,000, $1.5 million, $3 million, that pushes up the median price and makes it look like real estate across the board is getting more expensive when in fact that's not the case. And here's how we know that to be the truth. because the housing affordability index continues to get better year-over-year, meaning that homes are becoming more affordable for buyers. So, these small increases in median home prices doesn't have a real impact on buyers purchasing power because people are making more money.

[00:13:48]And home prices in more areas than not are falling quite a bit. Check this out.

[00:13:54]The housing affordability index was 113.7 in March. One year ago, it was 104.2.

[00:14:03]So, year-over-year, affordability improved across all four regions of the United States. In the Northeast, it went up 4.1%. The Midwest went up 5.3%.

[00:14:13]In the South, it went up 10%. And in the West, it went up a whopping 12.7%.

[00:14:19]And this is what I've been telling people, that the conditions to be a home buyer are continually working in your favor, guys. We're also seeing the sales figures both for single family homes and condos continue to fall. Single family home sales went down three and a half% month over month. Condo sales went down 5.4% month over month. Here's something else that we need to pay attention to. Home sales have been falling in all four major regions of the United States.

[00:14:50]We've all heard the stories about how the Northeast and the Midwest are the most resilient housing markets in the United States. But guess what? Those two regions of the country are actually leading the sales decline that we just saw in March. Take a look at this. In the Northeast, sales are down 8.5% month over month. In the Midwest, they're down 4.2% month over month. In the South, they're down 3.1% month over month. And in the Western United States, they are down 1.3% month over month. So, these strong areas are starting to get hit with big sales declines. So, what this tells me after reviewing all of this data is that the housing market conditions still continue to favor buyers. Month over month, things still continue to improve in the favor of buyers. And I think this is fantastic because this is what I've been calling for for years now on this channel. And the fact that we're finally starting to see it happen and play out is huge positive news. Let's take a look at this house here that is for sale. Just looking at the listing history of this house and what it sold for in the past tells you everything you need to know about the insane inflationary world that we're in right now. In 2005, this house sold for 743,000.

[00:16:15]Then in 20 2017, they listed it for 900,000, ended up getting $845, so not too far away from their price. But as you can see, this house only went up about $100,000 in value of what one person was willing to pay compared to the next in 12 years, guys. 12 years. So the last time this sold was in 2017. Now it's 2026, 9 years later, and they want 2.35 million for this house. Basically triple what they paid for it 9 years ago. So the seller expectations, like we were talking about the beginning of this video, are still very far out of whack.

[00:16:58]Some of them are starting to get the hint. Some of them are starting to get closer to reality. But in many cases, it is still just completely blown out of this world and out of proportion. as you can see here. But here's something else that current homeowners need to be aware of because a lot of people over the past couple of years have been leaning on their home equity in order to carry them through the everinccreasing cost of living, guys. And people have done this since the beginning of time since you could actually borrow against your house, right? But now things are starting to change and that's going to start getting more difficult and more dangerous as well. Home equity lines of credit. Okay, these have been one of the hottest financial tools over the past couple of years. Originations actually jumped 16% year-over-year. And the reason for this is people are struggling to keep up with the cost of living and they're borrowing against their house to make up the difference. Okay? And the reason why somebody would do this instead of refinance is simply because when you get a home equity line of credit, you get to keep your existing mortgage terms, which could be highly favorable over refinancing at in today's climate. But the problem is this has turned a lot of home equity into someone's emergency fund, into their renovation fund, or into their debt consolidation fund. All of which are not great uses of home equity. But something is starting to change in the home equity lending space. Lenders are starting to change the rules. They're starting to add restrictions to this and they're starting to reduce their flexibility. In fact, many home equity line of credit lenders now are starting to require mandatory upfront draws. Instead of borrow when you need it, now you must immediately take 50 to 100% of your home equity line of credit upfront. This is a huge departure from where things used to be because before you would get one of these home equity lines of credit and then you would just kind of borrow it as you need it, right? But now they're forcing you to take at least half or all of it right off the bat, which means you're paying interest immediately even if you don't need the money yet. So why are lenders starting to do this? Well, it's because of the rising mortgage delinquencies. You know, people want to pretend that this stuff isn't happening.

[00:19:27]People want to pretend that, oh no, the housing market's still stronger than ever and there's nothing to see or nothing to worry about here. But the lenders know, they pay attention to this data that the mortgage delinquencies are going up and they're also seeing home prices starting to fall in many markets across the country, which means that these lenders have less confidence in home equity values. So, they're starting to protect themselves by forcing borrowers to draw funds early. That means they can start earning interest immediately. Hopefully, this will act as a deterrent for people taking out these home equity lines of credit unless they actually need them. Now, it's typically non-bank lenders who are moving the fastest with these new terms.

[00:20:12]Traditional banks are still slower to make these changes, and you might still be able to get a traditional home equity line of credit with them. But one thing a lot of people don't realize with these loan products is that as the housing market continues to deteriorate and prices continue to come down, your HELOC lender can actually freeze or reduce your HELOC at any time. This actually happened back in 2008. And what they do is if home values drop enough, then your available credit can disappear overnight and they can even require you to pay the loan back in full right away. And if you can't do it, guess what that means? Time to sell the house even though you weren't planning on it. So this new home equity line of credit structure is something you want to look out for if you're a current homeowner who's going to be looking at trying to leverage one of these loans sooner than later because things are changing. doesn't mean you won't still be able to get the traditional home equity line of credit like you could before, but those options are starting to dry up and it might only be a matter of time before all lenders switch to these new loan terms. And this creates extra risk for people taking on these loans because first of all, it forces you to take more money upfront.

[00:21:31]So you might have to borrow more than you actually need. And since you have to start paying interest right away, this turns a heliloc into a much more volatile and risky type of loan than it used to be. And if you're thinking that your HELOC is going to be your emergency fund, just understand as more markets continue to lose value and home equity continues to slip, then what happened in 2008 is a lot of these HELOCs were just frozen overnight, which essentially leads to a situation where you lose access to borrowing that equity overnight. So, this should never be used as an emergency fund replacement like a lot of people actually use it for. And I think what we're going to see happen is now that we're already in the middle of April, guys, like we are already well in to the supposed home selling season and we're already seeing things decline as much as they have been. We are on track to seeing yet again the worst housing market in recent history in terms of sales figures. And we're also going to continue to see more and more sellers get with the program. And it's because after years and years of this situation continuing to be the same, any of them that are realistic about selling are going to realize that, yeah, I have to do this now. I have to lower the price if I want to have any shot of getting this place sold. Otherwise, it's just never gonna happen. And listen, if you are a seller, it doesn't mean you have to give your home away. You know, a lot of sellers are still sitting on a ton of equity. It just means maybe knocking 10 or 15% off the price to a point where a buyer feels that it's actually worth the value and that could be enough and you still walk away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit. So, this situation still is a win-win for everybody. Personally, I'm pretty happy with the way the housing market is turning out right now. Are conditions ideal to be a buyer? Not really, but they are so much better than they used to be and conditions still continue to improve and it's still not a bad time to be a seller either if you've accumulated a lot of equity. I think this is the most balanced we've seen real estate since before the pandemic. So, don't forget if you need a buyer's agent or a sellers agent, I can hook you up with somebody 100% free. All you got to do is use my link down in the description below, fill out the quick form, and somebody from my team will contact you ASAP. And not only does it help you, but it helps the channel, and I appreciate it. So, make sure to give this video a quick like if you enjoyed it. And feel free to check out my next video on the screen right here because I'm sure you will like that one as well. and I will see you in the next