2026 Home Price Predictions: The Correction Continues?

0:00Will home prices go up or down in 2026? We have seen a historic run of home price appreciation, with values rising year after year, even as mortgage rates have remained high. But will that continue next year? Or will we see prices flatten or even decrease in the year to come? Today, I'm giving you my 2026 home price forecast.

0:27Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. Excited to have you here for what is simultaneously both my favorite and least favorite show of the year, predictions about the next year. I genuinely enjoy and love the data analysis and research that goes into making these predictions. And since I started doing this back in 2022, I've been pretty accurately in calling the direction of the housing market. But at the same time, it's a little nerve wracking and difficult to put these predictions out in public, especially this year when there's less data available due to the recent government shutdown.

1:05But despite those limitations, I choose to make these predictions for you every year because having an idea of where the market is heading, even if it's not 100 % accurate as no forecast is, this is still crucial as an investor because you invest differently in a rapidly appreciating market than you do in a flat or a correcting market. And don't get me wrong, you can invest in any kind of market, but you do need to plan accordingly. And that's what I'll help you do today. By the end of this episode, you'll know where the market is likely to go, what things to watch for in case things start to change, and how to build your portfolio accordingly in 2026.

1:46Let's do it. So making predictions about the housing market is difficult because the housing market is driven by so many different variables. On one side, you have all these things that impact demand. How many people want to buy homes? These are things like demographics, immigration, cultural shifts, domestic migration, investor activity, and so on. Then you have this whole other set of variables that impact the supply side, like the lock-in effect, construction trends, a longstanding shortage in homes in the United States, and so on. But to me, and I've been on this trend for a while now, affordability is the number one variable driving the market these days.

2:32Now, why this variable among all the other ones out there? Well, we have hit an absolute wall in terms of affordability. We are near 40-year lows. And by the way, if you haven't heard this term before, in context of the housing market, it just means how easily the average American can buy the average priced home. And that's at 40 year lows. It hasn't been since the early 1980s that it has been this difficult for the average American to buy homes. Now, this is really crucial because what has not changed is that people do want to buy homes. There is still desire to buy homes. But when you look at demand, this economic term demand, it's not just desire, it's desire and the ability to pay for it.

3:21We still have the desire side. The issue is that most Americans just cannot afford it. And in my view, if that doesn't change, if affordability doesn't move, not much is going to change in the housing market. But if affordability improves, so will the market. So affordability, this key thing, is actually made up of three individual variables. We have home prices. How much do homes actually cost? That should make sense. We have mortgage rates because the majority of homes are purchased with a mortgage. And so this matters a lot. And we also have wages. How much are people earning? So those are the three things and we're going to break each of them down one by one.

4:00So the first factor in affordability is mortgage rates. I did a whole episode about that, but the TLDR was that although I think they could come down a little on average, next year I don't think they're going to move that much. So I think it could modestly help affordability, but it's probably not going to be the thing that really changes the housing market. The second one is wages, and real wage growth can improve affordability. Real wages, if you haven't heard this term, is basically just a question of are incomes rising faster than inflation? If the answer to that is yes, you have positive real wage growth?

4:36The answer to that is no. You have negative real wage growth. But luckily right now, one of the bright spots for the economy in recent years since 2022 or so is that we have had real wage growth. Wages in America, incomes are growing faster than inflation, which means your purchasing power is going up. I hope that will stay up, but I think it's going to slow in the next year. We've seen inflation up to about 3%. The job market is definitely weakening. That reduces leverage and salary negotiations, and I think wage growth will slow. But the thing about the housing market and how this relates to our strategy as investors is that even in the best times, wage growth takes time to really impact affordability.

5:18So although wage growth does really matter, it's probably not a big factor in 26. So if rates aren't going to change that much, in my mind, in our base case, and real wages are not going to impact affordability that much, Does that mean that the housing market is doomed to have another year like we had this year where things are pretty slow and stuck? Maybe, but we still have one more variable, which is housing prices, which is why my base case for next year is for home prices to be flat or maybe down just modestly. If you want some actual numbers, I like to predict a range and a direction because I think as real estate investors, it actually hurts us to obsess about is it up 1 % or 2%.

6:00I think we actually should just say, hey, it's up modestly. It's down modestly. It's flat this year. It's going to go up a lot. There's going to be a crash. Those kinds of directional indicators, I think, are what's really important. And what I see is that home prices in 2026 are going to be between negative 4 % and positive 2%. You could call this flat if you want. I am personally leaning more towards the negative side right now. Again, we don't have data from the last couple of months, but the way the trends are going, I think if I had to pick where we'll be a year from now, I'd say negative one, negative 2 % year over year growth.

6:36So you might be surprised hearing me say this because all previous years I've said we've been flat or up because I genuinely believe that. And that was what actually came to be. But this year I see that changing. And I just want to say having these kinds of declines, this isn't crazy. Seeing modest declines in prices isn't a crash. It's not even unusual. It is a normal correction, and I should probably mention a buying opportunity. And that said, I am a little more pessimistic, I think, than other forecasters. I see Zillow at plus 1%. Some others are near flat, but most of them are modestly positive.

7:14But we're all still generally in the same range. Like, honestly, being plus 1%, minus 1%, it's kind of flat, right? So that's what most people are saying. And I think the takeaway here, whether you think it's plus 1 % or minus 2%, is the same. Appreciation is going to be slow at best. It might be negative. We can't know right now with the little data that we have, but we have to not count on appreciation. I think that's the main takeaway for us as real estate investors. Maybe we'll get 1%. That would be great. Maybe it'll be negative 1%. Honestly, whatever. If you're counting for flat or you are not counting on appreciation when you're underwriting your deals, you can still invest in this market.

7:56But that's the main takeaway I want you all to have right now is that you should not assume you're going to get appreciation in 2026. So that's my belief about what's going on in terms of nominal prices. It's going to get a little wonky, but stay with me. Nominal prices means not inflation adjusted. This is the price that you see on paper. This is the price that you see on Zillow. People are split on whether that's going to be up a little bit, down a little bit. But what almost every forecast that I believe in that I think is reputable, all of them agree that real prices are going to be negative.

8:32And again, real in economic terms just means inflation adjusted. So every forecast I see believes that compared to inflation, home prices are going to go down. So even if prices on paper go up 1%, but inflation stays at 3%, then real home prices have declined 2%. Real prices are down. And even though I'm saying I think the most likely scenario is that nominal prices are down next year, I feel much more confident that real prices will be down in 2026. That much seems pretty clear to me. So that's my base case. It's what I've called the great stall in recent months as you've listened to the podcast.

9:12and it's still what I think is the highest probability of happening next year because affordability is too low. Rates will come down a little bit, I think, but not that much. Wages aren't really gonna help us one way or another and prices, if they flatten or modestly decline, that's how we get into the stall period where affordability gradually gets restored to the housing market. That is the base case. But I should say that when I make these forecasts, I like to be honest about my confidence level And I just want to say that this year, it is lower than previous years. Last year, I felt really confident about what I said was going to happen.

9:49That was pretty accurate. This year, I think the great stall is probably a 50-ish, maybe 60 % probability, which means that we have a 40 % or 50 % chance that something else could happen. And I'll give you some alternative forecasts and predictions right after this break. Running your real estate business doesn't have to feel like juggling five different tools. With ReSimply, you can pull motivated seller lists, skip trace them instantly for free, and reach out with calls or texts all from one streamlined platform. The real magic, AI agents that answer inbound calls, follow up with prospects, and even grade your conversations so you know where you stand.

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13:38Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer talking about home price predictions for 2026. Before the break, I shared with you my base case. It's what I think is the most likely scenario to happen next year, and that's having pretty flat or maybe modestly declining nominal home prices next year. And I think pretty confident that real home prices are going to go down unless one of these other X factors happen, which is what we're about to talk about. So what else could happen in the housing market? To me, it still all comes down to affordability. As you'll remember, my base case is saying affordability not going to change that much.

14:16It's just going to gradually improve. But what happens if it goes up a ton? What if affordability gets way better? What if it goes down and actually get worse? Are there scenarios where affordability really does move more than my base case? Yes, absolutely. That is possible. I don't think it's the most likely thing to happen, but I want you to understand all of the different scenarios that could play out next year. And to me, there is one really big X factor that I am going to be keeping a very close eye on next year because it could cause what is known as a melt-up, basically a huge surge in home pricing.

14:55So when I'm asking, could affordability get much better and send prices up? Yes, there are a few routes to that. But to me, the most compelling one, the thing I'm going to watch most closely is something called quantitative easing. I went into this a lot in the episode predicting mortgage rates. So you can listen to that again. But if you missed it, it's basically the Fed using one of its emergency tools to get mortgage rates down into the mid or low fives, maybe even lower. We don't know. Quantitative easing. It's basically they go out and frankly, print money to create demand for mortgage backed securities and bonds.

15:33This pushes down yields, that pushes down mortgage rates, and that could increase the demand in the housing market a lot, which could potentially push up prices. Hopefully that makes sense, right? Because I don't believe regardless of what happens, the Fed cuts rates a bunch of times. I still don't think without quantitative easing, we are getting to the magic mortgage rate that we need in the United States to unlock the housing market. Research by Zillow, John Burns Real Estate, a couple different economics firms have all gone into this. And they say that the magic number you need to get to to get people off the sidelines, to free up inventory, to restore transaction volume to the market is like somewhere between five and five and a half percent.

16:15I just don't see that happening next year without quantitative easing. So the big question for 2026 in the housing market to me is will there be quantitative easing? And frankly, I think the chances of it happening are going up like every single week right now. The Trump administration has continued to prioritize affordability, particularly in the housing market. And as we've seen other parts of the economy start to falter and weaken like the labor market, I think the chance that the Fed dips into its toolbox to stimulate the economy continues to go up. Now, I don't think this will happen right away in 2026.

16:57I think the earliest it will probably happen is in May because President Trump, he actually the other day said he already knows who he wants to name Fed chair, but he can't do that until Jerome Powell's term is up in May of 2026. So that's when we would probably seriously start looking for this to happen. I don't know if it'll happen on day one, but, you know, it might happen sometime after May. So if that does happen, and I call this the upside case, you know, you have your base case, which is, you know, what you think is most likely. Is there a more positive case. That's usually called an upside case.

17:30So my upside case for is we get quantitative easing, affordability improves, and then what? In that case, I think we see prices go up somewhere maybe between 2 % and 6%, maybe up to 7 % if they really get rates down into the fives. Maybe up to 7 % if they get mortgage rates down in the fours, but that seems unlikely. And that's what I see happening. Now, I know a lot of people are saying if there's quantitative easing, if the Fed cuts rates, we're going to see a explosion in appreciation. They're going to go up 10 percent again, like during covid. I don't buy that personally because we know that when rates went up, not only did it drive down demand, but it drove down supply as well.

18:14Right. That's the lock in effect. That's why prices haven't fallen because low affordability doesn't just impact demand, it impacts supply at the same time. Both of them are low right now. So in my opinion, if rates come down, yeah, it's going to bring back demand, but it is also going to bring back supply, right? This will break the lock-in effect. So more people will be listing their properties for sale. More people will be looking to move. And so in this quantitative easing scenario that we're talking about, I think the real winner is going to be transaction volume. We are going to see more homes bought and sold.

18:51That will help. And there will likely be upward pressure on prices, but not like COVID. That is unusual. Seeing 10 % appreciation might be a once in a lifetime thing that we don't see again for generations. Of course, if they drop rates down to 2 % or 3%, maybe that will happen. But I think that is not the case, even if there's quantitative easing. So I would expect positive appreciation in this scenario, good appreciation, really good for investors, but nothing crazy like COVID. The other thing I should mention is that if this happens, it will probably happen amongst a backdrop of a slower economy.

19:29So people may not want to make huge economic decisions like buying a house when they're fearful about their job. So we have to temper our expectations for what might happen if there is quantitative easing. Now, I told you my base case. I think that's about a 50, 60 % chance of happening. When we talk about the upside cases, quantitative easing, I think it's getting more likely. I actually think it's about a 30 % chance that this happens. And we'll talk about how to account for that in your own investing in just a minute. But I also want to talk about downside. Because yes, there is a chance that affordability gets better.

20:04There is also a chance that affordability gets worse, right? How does that happen? Well, it probably happens if inflation stays high, right? If inflation goes up, it's been going up four months in a row. It is nowhere near where we were in 2021, 2022. So people overuse the word hyperinflation a lot in this country. 3 % is not hyperinflation. Four months in a row of growth is not hyperinflation. We are nowhere near that. But if inflation continues to creep up and mortgage rates go back up, I think there is more downside. I'm not saying that's going to be a full on crash, but I think there's more downside below one to 2%, right?

20:42Could a crash happen and it really get bad? Sure. But on top of rates staying high, what we need to see is forced selling, right? We've talked about this on the show, but the thing that takes a correction to a crash is when homeowners are no longer able to afford their mortgages and they are forced to put their homes on the market to avoid foreclosure or as part of a foreclosure. Now, right now, delinquencies, they're up a little bit, but they're still very low by historic standards. They are below pre-pandemic levels. But what I am saying is that there is no evidence that a crash is likely at this point.

21:17If people's predictions about AI just destroying the labor market come true and we see unemployment go up to 10 percent, yeah, there is a chance that there is a real estate crash, but that still remains unlikely. I think even in this scenario, maybe prices drop 5 to 10 percent. I have a really hard time, even in a downside case, imagining more than a 10 percent drop in 2026, it seems just extremely unlikely to me. But the chance that we see, you know, 5 % declines, 7 % declines, low, but I'd say it's maybe a 10 % chance because we just don't know. There could be some black swan event that we don't see coming that negatively impacts the housing market.

22:01We always have to remember, even though we can't predict them, we have to remember that these things exist. That is part of being an investor. And we can't just ignore them and pretend that they don't happen. They are out there. So the question then is, what do you do? How do you use this information where I've just said, yeah, I have a base case, but it's maybe 50, 60 % likelihood. There's a 40 % chance that something totally different happens. How do you invest in that kind of market? I'll tell you how right after this break.

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