Housing Market Standoff: Are You Prepared for What’s Next?

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Michael Zuber (0:32)

Welcome to the frozen housing market. Folks, you and I had been talking about the tough housing market for several months now. But now we've got folks like the almighty Goldman Sachs talking about the frozen housing market and really asking one question. Who blinks first? The story goes, will it be buyers or sellers? Now, of course, I will give you their opinion first, followed by mine. And as you might suspect, mine is a little bit more nuanced because I know what all of you are doing. But according to Goldman Sachs, the housing market is frozen because rates have gone up one full percentage point since February. Ninety percent of borrowers have rates below today.

Today's rates means no one is trading. Now, in my vernacular, that is called the move up buyer, where you sell one and buy another. This is not really news. This has been going on for relatively three and a half years. But it's good for Goldman Sachs to finally catch up. And again, where Goldman goes next is these rates, these high rates are not only hurting buyers, but it is also starting to hurt listings. Now, of course, we are heading into the winter, which is the seasonally slow period. It will be very interesting to see where active inventory goes on a week-on-week, but also year-on-year basis, as this market just is stuck. Also, of course, with higher rates means fewer qualified buyers. Now, is this just frozen, or is this falling, or crashing, or whatever? And the answer there at Goldman Sachs is no. Now, they did go on to say that there may be some locations, we'll call those buy boxes, where inventory is exploding, but generally speaking, this market is not going to lead to a housing crash. Now, back to the opening question, and my opinion, the frozen housing market, who blinks first? I actually think that's the wrong question.

I think most of you, frankly, all of you, shouldn't give a rip about what is going on at the macro. It's only for geeks and idiots and nerds like me who look at existing home sales nationally, who are looking, you know, who have been doing this for 30 years, and this is just a fun puzzle to put together. For most of you, you should go find your seller. You should go find your motivated seller, because you don't need a nation of sellers to blink. You only need one person to blink. You need one seller who maybe has time pressure. They want to recognize the sale in 2026 Maybe it's a seller who's been on the market for 200 days and is not, and their agent's not holding open houses anymore. Maybe the seller's, you know, taken three price drops. Maybe they're getting divorced. Maybe they've already moved and they're carrying two payments. You have to do the work. Trust me, in every buy box around the country, there is at least one motivated seller, and it is your job to find them. As Graham Stephan said last week on Twitter, now is the time.

The seasonally slow period is the time. And again, again, folks, I will remind you of this fact that I have shared every year that we have been recording content together.

80% of my deals were done between Halloween and Valentine's Day.

It's the seasonally slow period. It's when everybody checks out. When people start, you know, stop doing the daily discipline, they worry about Halloween and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas and then New Year's and then and then and then.

So again, you should not care about the national frozen housing market. You should not care about who blinks first. You just need to do the work, write the offers, follow up 17 times, and go create your deal of the decade or deal of a lifetime.

Trust me, just believe, just believe. And again, let me be very clear for you out there that say I'm some housing bull.

I don't want anyone in my world doing an average deal.

This is the time to get your deal of a decade or deal of a lifetime. Don't settle for average. Any idiot can do an average deal, and we are not idiots in this family. So please do the work, find your amazing deal. And then, hey, tell me about it. Let me celebrate your win, and we'll go on from there. So we got a lot of stuff coming up. We got some economic news that will be critical. We got some earnings reports, FedSpeak, and we got a top 10 list from Grant Cardone. Grant Cardone talks about 79% of millionaires are self-made. Here are 10 practical ways to do it. We'll probably close with grants. We'll close on a positive note. So let's get to the economic numbers first. Starts out on Tuesday. Big news for this channel, existing home sales.