U.S. Housing Market Cracks: Homes Selling Below Asking Price in 38 Major Cities

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is InvestTalk from KPP Financial, helping investors make sense of the markets one day at a time. Here's your host, Luke Guerrero.

**Luke Guerrero** (0:16)
Hey there everybody, and welcome to the Thursday, August 13th, 2026 edition of InvestTalk.
I am your host, Luke Guerrero, and I'll be with you over the next hour or so as we dive in to the market, talk about the stories that matter, and most importantly, answer your finance and investment questions. To that end, before we talk about today's market performance and run down those show topics, let's tackle this caller question now.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:47)
Hi, I'd like to get your input on AeroVironment, Inc.

**Luke Guerrero** (0:55)
AVAV is AeroVironment, Inc. It is a defense technology company that doesn't just focus on air or land or sea, but does all of the above plus space as well as cyber. Now, it is a, let's see, how big is this guy? It's an $89.8 billion market cap company. It's had quite a bit of a rough year down 21.69% year to date. That's coming off of a pretty solid performance going back to 2021, where this stock was up 38, 47, 22 and 57% respectively.
Now, the most recent quarterly earnings, earnings look great. Honestly, revenue was up to 641.6 million. That's up 133% year over year. A huge beat.
EVA Demargens looked pretty solid at 22%.
Full year revenue looked solid. Bookings looked solid as well. So what's really going on here is diving deeper than earnings. You got a bit of impairment issues. You have material weakness, disclosures. You have three consecutive bottom line misses from Q1 to Q3. Q4 is the earnings we were talking about, but most of the drop off in this stock's price wasn't in the past three months because it's actually up 17.67% in the past three months and still down 25.66% over the past 52 weeks. So this most recent quarter was more of a reversal in some of the trends we have been seeing here. And honestly, when you look at companies like this, I care about backlogs, about bookings. This company is $2.7 billion in bookings. The huge drop off has moved it towards a more reasonable valuation. When you look at price to book, it's trading at 2.2 times as near its low over the past five years. Valuations have become more reasonable at a time when every NATO ally is trying to rebuild its arsenal. This is kind of a picks and shovels play on the idea that drone warfare may at some point replace this armored warfare. And that record backlog shows exactly that. So given everything that's going on, given how much of a proof statement I would say the Iran conflict has been about the changing of the way that wars are fought and therefore where demand will be going forward, I would be okay entering not a full position here because you only have one quarter after three disappointing ones until I see another full quarter of positive performance. That's probably when I would want to enter the full position here. Either way, I do like this company. Hopefully, what we saw in Q4 continues into the next quarter. That is AVAV, AeroVironment, Inc. Thanks for the call. We had a great show yesterday. Justin looked into why the S&P 500 is near-record highs, and more importantly, is that sustainable in 2026?
He also answered a listener question on ticker GSK, which is GSK PLC. It was an ADR. If you happen to miss yesterday's episode, I encourage you to check it out, and remember the best way to never miss an episode of InvestTalk is to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Now onto today, where my main focus point is about cracks in the US housing market, because what we've been seeing recently is that home selling is below the asking price in 38 major cities, and there's a report to this effect that shows homes are selling in 38, not just 38 cities themselves, but 38 of the 50 biggest cities. So is this a signal that potentially the long dominant seller's market may be finally turning? Take a look at that and what these shift might mean for real estate as an asset class, for home builder stocks, and mortgage sensitive portfolios.
We'll also touch on ACA premiums, up 41% in the past two years. And now 63% of insurers are proposing a 10 to 25% increase. So what does that mean for healthcare stocks? What does that mean for you? We'll also touch on margin debt, because we have seen a record level of that. Net credit balances are at a record. 1.5 trillion, that is up 49% year over year. And should we have time at the end of the show, we'll touch on private credit liquidity and how all these redemptions may be more emblematic of a mirage rather than a liquid market. We also have some voicemail calls ready to play, including one on drip programs, or I guess that would be saying programs twice. So drips and another on Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, or REGN, as well as some questions that came in from the comment section of the InvestTalk YouTube channel. And hopefully we are from some of you live throughout the show. Headed into a break. On the other side, I will talk about today's market activity.