Coming Wave Of Distressed Sellers To Tank Home Prices Worse Than The GFC | Melody Wright

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**Melody Wright** (0:54)
You're going to see distressed sellers come more to the market as well. So it's, you know, it's just, there's so many things happening at once. Everybody's focused on rates, like you say, but that is not, you know, that's not going to be the solution and the supply is going to come. And so will I think the correction in home prices. And so yes, I fully believe these corrections will happen. And I believe that they'll probably be more stark than what we saw in the last cycle.

**Adam Taggart** (1:31)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money Founder and your host, Adam Taggart. Welcome you here for a special discussion with housing analyst, Melody Wright. Melody, so wonderful to see you. Thanks so much for joining us.

**Melody Wright** (1:42)
It's good to see you, Adam. Thank you for having me.

**Adam Taggart** (1:45)
Oh gosh, it's always such a pleasure. I can't remember how long it's been, but whatever it's been, it's been too long. It's always too long, Melody. You're one of the people that people are always asking me week after week, can you get Melody back on? So thanks so much for coming on. We'll talk more about this later. You're also going to talk at our spring conference in a month. So thank you again for doing that as well. Melody, if you don't mind, I'm going to start by putting you on the spot a little bit, and not in an aggressive way. But the last time you were on this program, you made the comment that you thought that the housing market correction that you see starting to unfold will likely be worse than the correction we saw in the great financial crisis, and that prices could go down.
I think the exact words you said were like by around 38 percent, and some markets around 50 percent. There was a lot of minority, but there was a lot of people who gave you a blowback on that. I think the majority of them interpreted that comment is that you thought prices were going to get cut in half within a year, which was not what you were saying at all, as I understood. You were saying by the time it's all played out. I just want to give you a chance to respond to that blowback.

**Melody Wright** (2:55)
Yeah, so that was the last time we talked. That was when Newsweek picked up the interview and didn't reach out for comment. They just did their own interpretation of the interview.
That was in the headline that home prices to drop 50 percent in a year. That's not at all what we said. Every time you and I talk, we talk how long this will play out. And I do believe this is going to the difference between the last cycles. This is going to play all the way out because of the Silver Tsunami, because of our demographic picture. But it could take many, many years, not within a year. But I think that that was just meant to get some good discussion around the Thanksgiving table, because I reached out to them immediately to get the correction. It took them a couple of days to do it. And then, you know, Unusual Wells tweets it out, not corrected, gets over 8 million views. So anyway, that was a little bit of a crazy time.

**Adam Taggart** (4:00)
Let me apologize a little bit for being the instrument of that. But again, you were very clear in what you said. They just misinterpreted it or misheard it and ran with it.

**Melody Wright** (4:09)
Or, yeah, or like the alternative. That's right.

**Adam Taggart** (4:13)
Drive eyeballs and collect.

**Melody Wright** (4:14)
Yeah, exactly. But so I still believe that. And it's going to be, of course, dependent on which location. But we are going to correct to a point where your median income can afford your medium home price, home sales price. And so there's a lot of activity right now trying to throw some more spaghetti at the wall to keep that correction from happening.