Latest / Dishin' Dirt with Gary Pickren / 2026 Real Estate Forecast: Rates, Prices & Inventory — What the Experts Say (And What They're Missing)

Transcript

2026 Real Estate Forecast: Rates, Prices & Inventory — What the Experts Say (And What They're Missing) · Dishin' Dirt with Gary Pickren

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is Ditch and Dirt with Gary Picker, South Carolina's only podcast dedicated to the real estate agent craft.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: And now the host of Ditch and Dirt, Gary Picker.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And greetings and welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Ditch and Dirt.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your often opinion native, but rarely wrong host, Gary Picker, coming to you from the beautiful downtown Columbia, South Carolina offices of Blair Cato, Pickering, Castellan, this, the second week of January 2026.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Before we start today, got a couple of huge announcements to follow up on from last week.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Announcement number one is tickets are now officially on sale for the real estate success summit on February the 11th here at the Synergy Building in Columbia, South Carolina.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to be a tremendous event for you.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: This year we're going to be concentrating on sales, sell, sales.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: The past couple of summits we've had have all been about marketing, how to do better marketing.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: This year we are concentrating on sales.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to have a better 2026, have more sales, overcome objections, leak more deals, this will be the summit for you.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to go to Vegas.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to go to New York.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to follow your brokerage out to some big event and some far-off land and spend thousands of dollars.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can buy your tickets and come to Columbia, South Carolina and see great speakers.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we have the number one real estate coaches in the entire industry as the keynote speaker.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: This year again, Krista Machure will be back.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Her topic is from strategy to sold the 2026 Realtor Growth Formula.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: What works, what's challenging, what's changing, what's converts, and you're going to have a great opportunity to learn from one of the greatest coaches in the industry, bar none.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: You need to go ahead and get your tickets, guys.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Tickets will be gone quickly.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: We have sold this event out every single year we've done it.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Last year, I think we sold tickets out either 10, 14 days, something like that.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because what brokers and team leaders are doing now is they're buying multiple tables.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think Thomas bought five or six tables last year all at one time for his entire brokerage.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to guarantee yourself a seat at this year's summit, you need to act fast.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how do you get tickets?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: You go to BlairKeto.com, you go to the toolbar at the top, and there's a toolbar uh tab there called the Summit.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Click on there.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: It gives you all the information you need to know about the speakers, what they're going to talk about, as well as a video from a previous summit so you can see what it looks like, and then the pricing for tables and for tickets.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have our running an early bird special right now,$59 gets you a ticket to the summit.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: That price will be$79 after January 27th.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Tables are$450 for a table of eight.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Tables will go up on January 27th to$600.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, last year we sold out very quickly.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to get there, go ahead and get your table, go ahead and get you a ticket.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever you need to do, you need to probably do it in the next week and a half or so, or you're going to miss out.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Once we sell all the tickets, I cannot add any more tickets.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: The space is going to be limited.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing, our second announcement, big announcement last week, we talked about a brand new companion piece to this podcast, Dish and Dirt, greatest podcast in real estate.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're now going to have a second podcast.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a 15-minute podcast.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: It will come out every Monday.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Dish and Data, AI Edition.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So starting on January 19th, that Monday, we'll have our first episode, Candace Coleman, who's an attorney here and I, are going to walk you through real estate AI.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to start on the most simplistic thing you can do, which is doing a property description using Chat GTP or Claude, and then taking that property description, converting it into social media posts, flyers, and other marketing pieces, and show you how simple it is.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So whether you're an agent who's already using AI, already know all this, or you're an agent who's never seen this, we all agree that AI is going to be a tremendous part of 2026.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: All the experts are saying AI is going to basically be a monumental change agent for this year.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably the thing that's going to change most in our industry will be the use of AI.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: We already see it happening.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: You need to understand how to use AI.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to start the most simplistic way of using it and then advance our way.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in a couple of months, maybe a year from now, we might even be talking about how you can create your very own virtual U or a virtual AI assistant, whatever it leads us to.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: But we're going to start 15 minutes every Monday, companion piece to dishon dirt.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Edition Data AI Edition.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So don't do not want to miss that.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: We'll put some links to everything in the show notes, and I'll be sending out some emails and reminding everybody about where to find that.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's move into our topic today.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about what the so-called experts think about 2026.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Last week, we talked about 2025, what they predicted, and how good they were in their predictions.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Surprisingly, they were fairly close to being accurate.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that was important.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you're going to have somebody, the expert class, as we call them, tell us what they expect for 2026, if their predictions are wildly off for 2025, then why are we going to believe them?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: The good news is what they predicted in 2025 was fairly close to being what actually happened.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: It would lend us to believe that their same predictions for 2026 should be fairly accurate.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I do think the places that I looked, the RedFens, the NAR, the Realtor.com, Zillow, these organizations put a lot of time and effort into coming up with predictions, and they are viewed as the leaders of the information of real estate, if you will.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's very important to them to get it right.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think where we are is we're looking at people that we trust to get these predictions as close to being correct as possible.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: As we head into 2026, the one question that keeps coming up from buyers-sellers, and particularly real estate agents, is what do the experts actually think is coming next for real estate?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is on the edge of their seats.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is there another sit to Burnett?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Are interest rates going to fall?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Are they going to rise?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Are home sales going to go up or down?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is the inventory situation going to be taken care of?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So today what we're going to do is take that guessing out of it.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to stop looking at social media influencers who don't know anything about real estate.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to quit looking at the headlines to CNN and Fox and MSNBC and CBS and MBC and all these others that all they're trying to do is get clickbait, get you to click these headlines that are designed to scare you.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're getting rid of all of that, and we're going to look at the largest housing authorities in the country.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, we're going to look at groups like Redfin, Realtor.com, Fannie Mae, National Association of Realtors, the National Mortgage Brokers Association, places like that, and see what they are predicting this year, 2026, for interest rates, inventories, prices, overall market conditions.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think what you're going to hear throughout today in this podcast is that the big theme over and over again from this entire expert class is 2026 isn't about a boom or bust year.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically a year for reset.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be a year of extremes.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically going to be a year of normalization.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to have fewer bidding wars.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to have more thoughtful decisions about listing a house, what price to list a house at, buyers, where they really want to look, how much are they willing to pay for a house?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see we'll see these bidding wars where people end up at the end of the day paying a whole lot more than they wanted to for a house and making knee-jerk reactions because of inventory being so bad.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: They have to be somewhere.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: What we're seeing is a market that makes sense.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't had a market that makes sense in a long time, since COVID, probably.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're not going to have necessarily an easy market or a cheap market, but we are going to have a much healthier market.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's break down what does it mean in terms of interest rates, sales prices, sales volume, inventory.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: What do we mean by a common sense market, a normalization of the market, a market that really makes sense?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: What are the experts talking about?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Overall, we're going to talk about multiple topics, and we're going to start today with the overall tone of what most of these experts think about 2026.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: What is the tone that they are already setting in making these predictions for these individual categories?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: So let's look at it on a global sense.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: 2026 is a cautious optimism.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's what a lot of experts are saying.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: We need to be cautiously optimistic with a reset.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to hit that reset button.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're not going to see a big boom that a lot of people think.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard a lot of people saying, oh, we're going to have a boom year.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Most experts say, no, not a boom year, a good year, a reset year.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if that was the theme that I would say we're going to look at, it's the great reset.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's at the end of 2026.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: We'll sit back and say, yes, 2026 was the great reset, not the big rebound or the big boom market.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: None of the experts that we're seeing are expecting any market to return to the chaos of 2020 and 2022.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Mainly because I don't think anybody expects interest rates to get down to 3% or 4%.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody sees that happening.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, if you remember in 2022, the government gave a lot of money out.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: How many$1,800 checks were being sent out month after month?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you put all that money into the market, you had all these people with money to burn, and they were using that money for housing.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: That money doesn't exist now.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're into a more reasonable, more common sense market.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: The good news is no one, I haven't seen a single person talking about a real estate crash.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: A real estate crash isn't even in anybody's vernacular right now.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: No one's even mentioned that word.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: What they're all talking about is 2026 shaping up to be a year where the market slowly finds firmer footing and it's not going to explode, not going to get back to that pre-pandemic era growth, but it's going to get back to a reasonable, consent, steady growth.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, with this cautious optimism being the dominant mood, is that we have to be cautious.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: The part of cautious optimism is caution, right?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just the optimism, it's also the caution.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the first part was the optimism.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: The second part is the caution.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: The caution is there's real confidence that the market will improve, that the conditions out there are going to improve.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: We are going to see lower interest rates than we did in the most recent years.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we're already seeing that.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: On Friday, we saw interest rates drop below 6%.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: We saw more, we are seeing more homes in the market.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Inventory is certainly up.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: We saw more transactions in 2025 than we did in 2024.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: But there's also this realism out there that the affordability challenges aren't going to magically disappear overnight.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: We are seeing inflation down from what, 9%, 10% down to about 2%.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: So they were a couple of good government reports that came out just the past couple of weeks that the GDP growth was much higher than expected, and that consumer confidence also went up.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: All that's going to lead, hopefully, to a rebound.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we need to see.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: The more we continue to see consumer confidence going up, the better we'll be.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: The more we see that inflation going down, the better we'll be.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's certainly what we're looking at.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: But again, what we're looking at is less dramatic rebound, more of a recalibration.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start with the biggest area of concern every year.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest area that everybody always worries about, probably rightfully, is interest rates.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: What will interest rates do?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because it does seem to be a predictor on what the market's going to do.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Interest rates are extremely high or perceived to be high, people don't move.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Interest rates seem to come down, people seem to be willing to get out of that.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not moving and losing my 4% interest rate idea, and start actually looking at putting houses on the market.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: So interest rates do have a tremendous effect on how this market will be perceived.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Most major forecasts by this expert class, they expect mortgage rates to settle in the low six range for 2026.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is a much better prediction as well as a much better outcome than 2025.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: That is going to provide meaningful relief compared to the recent highs when, if you will recall, for a short period of time in the fall, we did hit the 7% mark.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Experts are very clear we will not, let me repeat this, we will absolutely not return to 3% mortgages.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of people who are still sitting on the sidelines who could refinance and save themselves$200,$300 a month, going from a 7% to a 6% mortgage, but they are still holding out hope for the 3%, 4% mortgages.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I have yet to see any single person with any knowledge of how the market works that is believing that we'll be down at 3% or 4% or even 5%.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: No one is saying that.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Conditions may change and get us there, but that's certainly not the predictions.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: We need some people to finally look and decide that refinancing their house is a smart decision, even now at 6 or 5.875 or somewhere like that.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: The bottom line is the era of ultra cheap money, the 3%, 4% money, that's probably over for a good period of time.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's definitely over now.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Will it come back anytime soon?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Most experts say no.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Good news here when we talk about interest rates are buyers are feeling less frozen out of the market.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: More buyers are believing they can now get into the market.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk a little bit later in this episode about how it's just increased, decreasing the interest rates to the 5.99% we saw on Friday, freed up well over$100 on the average mortgage.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So buyers are feeling a little bit less stuck and frozen out of the market.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sellers are also feeling a little bit less locked in, and that's very important.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking to my friend Paul, who's a real estate agent, just uh yesterday, and we were talking about that.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the sellers have been feeling like I can't get out of my house into another house because my interest rate's 4%, and I'm not going to go to a more expensive house at a 4% rate to a 7% rate.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: If we can get a five in front of those interest rates, then sellers are not so locked into their house and their mortgage rate.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: That should help these sellers feel less locked in.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's also good to think about this, and that these sellers have felt locked in for two or three years.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Their wives didn't stop.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: They still continue to get married, get divorced, have more kids, need more space.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of that pent-up demand of the seller will now be able to have more houses listed, and those sellers become buyers as well.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's really what we need more than anything, is for these sellers to feel like 5.875, 575, 55 is an interest rate I'm willing to sell my house at that I have at 4% and buy a new house at a little bit higher interest rate.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's the main thing we need to see in this market.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: No one, surprisingly, is expecting a refinance frenzy.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: That sucks bigly for your mortgage friends.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And our mortgage trends have really taken it on the chin.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of real estate agents feel like the last three years or so have absolutely sucked for y'all.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you it has sucked worse for all of your mortgage trends.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: We could hope that we could get some refinancing out there so our mortgage friends can recover some of the uh money that they've left on the table over the last few years.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I personally don't understand why we haven't had a refinance frenzy.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you bought a house at 7% and can refinance at 6% now, you could save hundreds of dollars.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I guess everybody still considers uh the possibility of a 3% interest rate or 4% interest rate to be out there.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the good news is that the consensus is even if we get a small drop in these interest rates, it can unlock a pin-up demand, but the market still has to function in a world where money costs more today than it has probably forever, because the government simply printed way, way too much money post-COVID.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Can't print all this money and not expect to have inflation.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Overall, we see from the experts generally positive tilt toward lower interest rates.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: They all have some caveats to it, but for the most part, everybody is very positive.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: What we're seeing is most people are predicting rates falling down around the 6%, and they see that mainly as a catalyst for more buyers to re-enter the market and some sellers to feel more comfortable selling it.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Economists do believe this meaningful drop will continue to happen, and we'll start seeing even more first-time home buyers in the market.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: The caution and the neutral view is based on many analyses causing that the best of rate relief might already be behind us, that this 599 might be the low point, and that any additional big drops are not going to guarantee any bigger shifts and mortgage rates.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Mortgage rates may still also feel way high when you compare them to just four or five years ago.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And some people may still feel like the affordability aspect of it is keeping them constrained.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, all of these reactions and predictions, interestingly, most of them were made before mortgage rates dropped on Friday, which led us to the lowest home payments in two years.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Whether this is how what they expected or now this throws in a new recall, I don't know.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: If we see revisions from these people we're gonna talk about here in a second, I'll come back with those revisions.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: But now let's go ahead and talk about where they are and what they're saying.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go ahead now and talk about our particular experts.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna start with RedFin.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about 30-year fixed rates for all these mortgages.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: RedFIN predicts the average rate will be 6.3% in 2026, which is down from the average of 6.6 in 2025.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: They do believe that rates will remain pretty much throughout the entire year in that low six range.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And they believe that will continue as feds cut rates modestly, but the economy weakens slightly.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I personally don't think the economy is going to weaken.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think the economy is going to actually increase.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that that could actually drive those rates a little bit lower than RedFed.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Realtor.com puts their prediction at 6.3% in 2026.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: The rate relief paired with steady income growth should help ease affordability crunch and bring the typical mortgage payment share of the income down to 29.3%, which is the first time since 2022 in this key measure that it has dropped below 30% of your share of income.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's an affordability threshold we haven't seen since 2022.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Mortgage bankers associations predicting a range between six and six and a half throughout the year.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Their specific number for their average is 6.4.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Zillow is saying 6.0 for the average, as does NAR.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Compass says 6.4%.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Fannie Mae believes that it would drop below 6.0% by late 2026.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it looks like it, they believe it will stay there after that.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Lawrence Young, who is a chief uh economist for NAR, he believes the rates throughout the whole year are going to average around 6% with a modest decline that will improve affordability.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, Endemir, their expert uh economist, believes that interest rates will likely stay above 6.25% for most of 2026, but could dip slightly below 6% throughout the year.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Federal Reserve's shift to a rate cutting cycle combined with slower economic growth has brought the 10-year Treasury yields to around 4%, while the spread has gradually moved back toward its normal range of 2% or less.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Our overall takeaways, therefore, are low sixes, pretty steady throughout the whole year, maybe some slight dips below the 6.0 threshold.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: My prediction, Dish and Dirt predicts something a little bit different.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I do so is when Trump announced that Fannie Mae was going to buy$200 billion in mortgage bonds, we saw rates drop to 5.9%.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it's going to take some time for the effect of that to truly be seen in the marketplace.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I was talking to my friend Tripp Davis, he thinks it will push rates down into the fives.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I tend to believe what Tripp believes, and this is all good news because when somebody's buying a median home price in the United States at$425,000, according to NAR, using the 30-year fixed mortgage with a 20% down payment, your mortgage payment drops$118 by having that rate down to$5.9.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: So this could be a big deal.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if this buying of$200 billion in mortgage bonds works like I believe it will, and Trip Davis and others do, I believe we could see rates down in the fives, mid-fives for part of the year.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to say rates are going to bounce between$5.5 to 6.25 on the high, but I think we'll kind of settle in that average in the six or right below six.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's going to be a little bit better than they predict because I think when these predictions happened, Trump had not announced the$200 billion purchase of mortgage bonds.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about inventory next.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Generally, what we're seeing experts say is that inventory trends are heading in the right way in 2026.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: As these rates stabilize, we're seeing steady but not dramatic increases in the available number of homes.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Again, the theme I would say we go with is relief, not abundance, improvement, not oversupply.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Message is very clear from these economists.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Buyers will have more options than they had in previous years, but we're still not oversupplied by any stretch of the imagination.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we're not going to see sellers greatly discounting houses or giving houses away.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: The factors that are releading or that are leading to this opinion is that rising inventories is widely seen as a key factor to balancing the market, giving buyers more options and easing upward pressure on prices.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: The view signals pent-up demand will be waiting to be unlocked.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Other analysts are stressing that inventory and sales increase won't instantly return the market to normal, especially not pre-pandemic norms.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm to the point where I'm kind of tired of hearing about pre-pandemic norms.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there is anything such as pre-pandemic norms anymore.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know anybody who can say that COVID and the shutdowns didn't dramatically change the entire world and how people view the world.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: To say that things will get back to how they were in 2019 or 2018, I just think it's absurd.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Ship sale.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're five, six, seven years down the road from that.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we need to get over this pre-pandemic BS.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: According to Realtor.com, they think active listings are expected to rise 8.9%, making it the third straight year that we'll see inventory gains.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: However, inflation is expected to outpace these gains with consumer prices likely growing more than 3%, which means when you do inflation injusted that home prices will actually decrease or decline slightly for the second consecutive year.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Realtor.com also predicts a four-point supply, which is nearly balanced, not quite, but it's not a full buyer's market, but we're getting closer to being a balanced market.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And for context, six months is typically considered a neutral market.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're heading more toward a neutral market.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: So conclusion, inventory will continue recovering toward the 2020 levels, though still moderately below typical norms.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: We could see a 5 to 10% inventory increase nationally.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: It could vary regionally.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: I predict that we're going to settle in around a four and a half month inventory in South Carolina.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it won't be a completely balanced market.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be slightly a seller market, but it'll be trending more to a buyer's market.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that moves us more to a buyer's market from the seller market that we have experienced in the past will make it feel more and more like a balanced market.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: The problem y'all will see is that a lot of buyers will believe it's a buyer's market, and a lot of sellers will still believe it's a seller's market.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you're going to be constantly at odds with your client believing the market is such that it is not.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Moving on, sales volume prediction.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a broad agreement that home sales will increase in 2026.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: We love to hear that.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: We love hearing that.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing is how much will it increase?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Some experts see modest gains, others see very strong rebounds.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the shared belief is a lot of buyers and simply have simply been waiting on the sidelines and are ready to buy.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not new demand.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically pinup demand that's going to finally get unstuck.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Redfin's projecting existing home sales to rise 3% to 4.2 million units.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: They expect a stronger spring home buying season because mortgage rates were sitting around 6.8 last spring, meaningfully higher than the 6.3 they're sitting at now, and what RedFen predicts.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Actually down around 6, but RedFen's predicting 6.3.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Zillow sees 4.26 million sales of existing homes, which is a 4.3% increase year over year.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Realtors looking at a 1.7% increase in sales to$4.13 million.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Bright MLS, which is out west, they predict a 9% growth in home sales.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And NAR, which I pray is correct, is seeing as much as a 14% increase.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this could be a tremendous year for our real estate agent friends if that happens.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Even Fannie Mae, 7.8% increase in sales from previous owned homes.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: MBA, Mortgage Bankers Association, 6.3%.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Compass comes in at 4.0.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: So you're seeing a pretty good range there.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is pretty consistent that they believe it's going to go up.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: On the low end, you're looking at 1.7%, all the way up to as much as a 14% sales increase.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of that will certainly depend on what market you are in, what regionally market you are in.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: According to Danielle Hell, who is a chief economist for the Realtor.com, negotiating power is expected to tilt toward buyers as more homes come online and affordability improves, though younger and first-home home buyers will continue to face some financial hurdles.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: My prediction is 4.25 million units, so somewhere between a 4 and 5% increase.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: It could be better in South Carolina and Southern states, because quite frankly, we are the best place to live in the country.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're not in South Carolina listening to this podcast, my suggestion is you need to move here because this is the best place to live.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to see a lot of closings for our agent friends, our mortgage broker friends, and our real estate closing friends.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I do believe we will have a big sales year in South Carolina.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's talk about price growth predictions.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: The era of double digit growth is over.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to prices, these experts are remarkably aligned.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: They don't see prices crashing.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: No one's talked about a price crash, but they certainly don't see runaway growth like we saw post-2020.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Most forecasts now are calling for single, low single-digit appreciation.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Prices aren't going to fall off the cliff, but they're going to catch the breath.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: This goes back to that original sentiment that we talked about earlier: a reset, a catching our breath, a reasonableness, a steadiness, and that's what we're seeing.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: For buyers, this means there'll be less fear of being priced out of the market.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's good.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: For sellers, what it means is you need to price your homes correctly more than ever.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: The warning here is that don't overprice these houses because buyers are not going to pay more than houses are worth.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we're seeing that vibe through everywhere.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: The prices aren't crashing, on digit, double-digit growth isn't happening.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to settle into a more sustainable territory in this market.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that captures basically the sentiment of most of our experts.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Fannie Mae, 3.6% national increase in 2026.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: NAR, 4%.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: RedFent, 1% year-over-year home price increases.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Filter.com, 2.2% nominal price increase.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: But again, with that real adjusted inflation, that means houses are going to be cheaper than they were last year.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Zillow predicts 1.2% home value rising nationally.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Bright MLS chief economist Lisa Sturdevant, 0.9% increase.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: The one outlier is Mortgage Bankers Association, which sees a 0.3% decrease.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Compass also only sees a 0.1% increase.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, Wendemere believes that home prices will remain relatively flat in 2026.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: The main reason will be higher inventory, putting downward pressure on prices.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the broader data looks at housing forecasters clustered somewhere between a half a percent and four percent price growth.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I'm going with 2% increase in prices.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Lastly, before we get to commissions, some of the industry challenges that most of the experts continue to talk about, affordability.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: As you've heard throughout this podcast today, affordability is going to be affected by a lot of things such as inventory and mortgage rates.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think those will trend in the positive.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: We need to continue to see positive wage growth, which we have seen in the last couple of months, that wage growth is outpacing inflation for the first time in several years.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Consumer confidence went up Friday to over 50% for the first time in multiple years.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good sign.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously we know regional markets are going to behave differently.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know how many times I have seen it on social media, agents putting posts stating that South Carolina is number one or two place in the country where people are relocating to.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Greenville, South Carolina continues to be a hotbed for relocations, as does Columbia.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: While we do have industry challenges, it looks like the affordability and these other matters should start improving.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Lastly, real estate commissions.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody wants to know are my commissions going to go down or up?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: We did a podcast on that earlier this year or last year, which showed that commissions haven't gone down.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: CleverOffers.com says this despite major industry rule changes in recent years, real estate agent commissions have not collapsed.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Data from Redfin and nationwide surveys show commission rates have stayed around the same or even ticked up slightly.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Most agents say they don't expect significant decreases in their compensation in 2026, meaning commissions are likely to remain stable barring any new regulation or major market shock.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, if we don't have another Sitzer Burnett or some other type of major lawsuit being filed, then we should expect that commission rates should stay the same.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, when they polled real estate agents, 61% of real estate agents think buyer agent commissions won't go down.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: 65% say that listing agents' commissions won't go down.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: I personally don't think either one of them will go down here in South Carolina.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think that we have weathered the Sitzaburnett storm, and I think consumers have settled into understanding how commissions work, what real estate agents do to assist them in selling the house, and that's where we are.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: So in conclusion, what we're looking at here today is optimistic but grounded, a balanced market vibe, no bubble, no crash, but more of a shift toward an equilibrium.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Affordability will continue to be an issue, but hopefully we'll start seeing a little bit more relief.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: All looks to me to be very good news for a very nice 2026.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: So my hope for you guys is that these predictions do come true and that we see 2026 getting back more toward a normalizing of a market, a more common sense market, a more balanced market, and that everyone will experience what I believe we will experience, which will be lower interest rates, housing prices not going up as much, more inventory, and a whole lot more sales.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Hope this information is helpful to you.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hope y'all have a wonderful weekend.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Come back again next week for another episode of Dish and Dirt.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Please share us, like us, and subscribe.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we will see you next week.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all take care.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget Monday, Dish and Data.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.