Home Prices Poised To Fall Nationally As "No One Wants To Buy" | Melody Wright

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**Melody Wright** (0:56)
No one is interested in trying to buy a home right now.

**Adam Taggart** (1:05)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money, I'm Thoughtful Money founder and your host, Adam Taggart. We're very fortunate today, folks, to get an update on the housing market, and there is a lot to update us on. And thankfully, we've got Melody Wright here to make sense for us. It's been a little while since she's been on the channel, so very glad she's come back. Melody, how are you doing?

**Melody Wright** (1:22)
I'm doing great, Adam. Thank you for having me.

**Adam Taggart** (1:25)
Well, thank you. So yeah, I was realizing, it's actually been a little while since we've had you on the regular channel. Obviously, you spoke at the Thoughtful Money Spring Conference, and I think what you told us then really feels pretty prophetic, at least based upon the data that I've seen since in the housing market. But just to refresh folks, if they hadn't watched your past couple of videos, you've obviously been kind of concerned for a while about the direction of the housing market. But you were reluctant coming into 2025 to stick your neck out and say, I actually think we're going to have a national price decline. Once the year started, you saw some data, you got a bit more emboldened. You said, you know what, folks, I'm calling it now, prices are going to start heading down on average nationally this year. From what I can tell, it seems like momentum is only building to the downside here. Am I seeing the data the correct way?

**Melody Wright** (2:18)
Yes, Adam. I think more importantly, the narrative has changed, right? And so something about this cycle that's so important is that a lot of it was driven purely by narrative and not so much the facts. And so the idea or the fact that actually Redfan, Zillow, all these people are pivoting to price declines, that to me is more important than anything else. And also, but yes, I track the data. Don't get me wrong, it's critical, but what's the signal that's saying they're going to let it go. And this, I really feel like this is a signal. And you can even take someone like realtor.com putting out an article yesterday saying that investors were distressed selling. You read the article, there was no mention of like what kind of price cuts they were doing, anything like that. No mention of the distress for the investors. So, but the headline was important. And so I think that that is really critical right now as we're seeing a complete narrative shift and while people like Zellman and others are kind of towing the line saying, it's going to be a mild correction or just a little bit. I think they're doing that to play it safe as they've sort of been playing all along. But when you look at the fundamentals, this isn't going to be a mild correction.

**Adam Taggart** (3:43)
It's interesting that you mentioned Ivy. I've had Ivy on the program in the past, not as often as you, Melody, but I do try to get her on at least once a year. And I'm trying to remember the last time she appeared. It wasn't super recently. I mean, it was probably at least six months out. And Ivy, I appreciate that she's in a little bit of a challenging position. She's very visible, but she has lots of different clients and her words carry a lot of weight in a lot of different areas. So she has to kind of pick and choose her words carefully. But I remember that last time I talked to her, really feeling like she was a lot more pessimistic about the future than she had been previously and was making that more open. I kind of remember at the end of the conversation being like, Ivy, I feel like I got to buy you a beer. So I can imagine that even though she's still maybe having to pick and choose her words carefully here, that she's probably really publicly stepping into maybe the vibe that I was picking up there.