The Strongest Sign for the Housing Market in Years | June 2026 Update

0:00I'll say it. We're in a full-on buyer's market for real estate. Sellers are watching their homes linger on the market longer. And that means you now have the leverage to pick up great deals and to negotiate hard. This may not be the trend you're hearing about in the headlines, but the data does support it. And now is the time to take advantage before everyone else gets the message. I'll share how I discovered this crucial recent shift, which regions are seeing the most positive trends, and what you can do about it, all in the BiggerPockets June Housing Market Update.

0:42Hey everyone, it's Dave. Welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast. Today on the show, we are doing our June Housing Market Update, and this is going to be a great episode. I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised by some of the information that I'm going to be sharing with you. I know a lot of the mainstream headlines and narrative about the housing market is overwhelmingly negative, but I actually think there are some encouraging trends that real estate investors should be taking note of and should be using to guide your investing decisions. So I'm going to start the episode today by laying out the big, important stuff up front, what's going on on a national level, the kind of stuff that impacts everyone.

1:28But then we're going to go into a regional update where I'm going to share some trends that are going on across the country to help guide your decision making on your specific portfolio and your next deal. Then we'll move on to our risk report, something we do every month where we talk about potential stress in the housing market because that could create risk in your portfolio or it could create a national crash. So we're going to keep our eye on what's going on there. and then we'll end the episode by talking about what this means for you specifically. Let's get into it. So first up, let's talk national big picture stuff going on in the housing market.

2:08The headline I want you all to take home today is it's actually doing okay. I know that's not what everyone's saying, but that is actually correct. You heard it right. The market is doing okay. Is it great? No. Is it the healthy kind of market we wish we had something back in the 2010s? No. But is it falling apart? Is something disastrous happening in the housing market? Absolutely not. That is not happening by a long shot. Instead, the big picture in the housing market right now is that we are in a classic buyer's market, which does come with risk, but also means a lot of opportunity for people who know what to look for and who understand what's actually going on.

2:57So that's the headline, but I'm going to share with you some data to back up what I'm saying here. Prices on a national basis, year over year, which is how we should be looking at housing market data, are basically flat. The Case-Shiller, which is really good data, it lags a little bit, but that has us at less than 1 % growth year over year in terms of pricing, at 0.7%. And flat pricing is exactly why I've been calling the period we're in right now the great stall, because we're in it. All of the market conditions that I've been talking about for years that are going to stall out home prices are happening.

3:33And flat prices is kind of exactly in line with my headline, right? Is it the best thing ever to happen for real estate investors? No, of course not. We're not getting the appreciation we saw for a decade or more. but it's also not falling apart despite what people are saying. So prices, pretty stable, and stable for real estate investors is good. Same kind of story with inventory. And inventory is a super important metric. It's actually, personally, I care more about what's going on in inventory trends week to week, month to month than prices. I know prices are that sexy thing everyone wants to look at.

4:10But inventory is such an important number because it helps us understand the balance between supply and demand in the housing market. And when inventory is moving rapidly, that means a big shift in the whole market might be coming. And what's happening with inventory right now is it's also really flat. We actually see that it's down 1 % year over year according to Housing Wire. And the fact that it's flat and actually a little bit down is crucially important. Flat inventory tells us that the balance between supply and demand is relatively stable. We are not all of a sudden seeing tons of people leave the market as buyers.

4:48We're not all of a sudden seeing a ton of sellers enter the market and flooding the market with inventory, which can push down prices. We're not seeing any of that. In fact, what we are seeing is a great stall. We're seeing inventory level up. And although there is opportunity for inventory to get better, in my opinion, again, this means stability. We are not seeing wild swings in inventory. and for investors, stability is a good thing. The other thing you should take away from this is that inventory being down a little bit is further proof that a crash is highly unlikely. If a crash was going to come, we would see inventory going up.

5:27That would almost certainly happen, either because the market was being flooded with homes or demand was leaving the market, but inventory is stable, which means supply and demand dynamics and prices are likely gonna be relatively stable for the foreseeable future. And there is other data that supports this too. It is not just the inventory number. Trust me, I look at everything and I'll just share with you quickly two other things that give me conviction about this, that the market is stabilizing right now. Is one, new listings, the amount of people who list their properties for home for sale is up, but just a little bit.

6:02Again, if there was going to be a crash, we would see that going up rapidly. but instead we're seeing a few more people list their home for sale, but nothing crazy. And it's really in a historical context, not really that high. And then secondly, perhaps I think most importantly and most encouragingly, demand in the housing market, the amount of people who want to buy homes is actually doing pretty well. It's actually up. We're seeing more people entering the market right now than we did a year ago. I know that is contrary to the narrative that is being projected about the housing market. But listen to this.

6:42Pending sales, the actual amount of transactions on real estate in any given week up 17 % year over year. More people are buying houses right now than there were a year ago. So all these people saying that buyers are running away from the market, it's just not true. It is patently false. You can look this up anywhere. That is not true. We also see this backed up in mortgage purchase applications. The number of people who are going to their bank and asking for a loan to go out and buy a new home, not refinance, go out and buy a new home, that is also up year over year. So don't let anyone tell you that demand is gone.

7:24Is it good in any historical context? No, it is not the best demand we've ever seen. It's actually pretty low. But the thing I'm trying to convey here is that even though we're not in a great market, it's not getting worse. It's not really changing all that much right now. I think people are getting used to where we're at. Instead of sitting on the sidelines and waiting for mortgage rates to come down, I think people have accepted the new reality that we're in in the housing market. And although I still believe in the great stall, and this is going to take a while, probably years for it to get back to a healthy level, the stability that we're achieving makes decision making for investors a whole lot easier.

8:09And we're going to talk about that more later in the episode. But that's the main thing that the data is telling me. Before we move on to the regional stuff that I want to talk about, just two other things that I think are notable in terms of the national market that are also encouraging for investors. Number one is that days on market is going up. This, again, similar to inventory, helps us understand the balance between supply and demand in the market, but it also helps us understand who has the negotiating leverage when you're going out and transacting on a property. When days on market, which is just a measurement of how long, it's very literal, how long that a property sits on the market before it's put under contract, when those are really low, the seller has all the power, right?

8:58Because that indicates that buyers are bidding on anything that hits the MLS and that sellers have a lot of negotiating power. When days on market go up like they are right now, that tells us that buyers are gaining power. And as a real estate investor, That is something you should be taking note of because that means that when you approach a new deal in a stabilizing market, you can be more aggressive about what you bid. And by aggressive, I don't mean bidding high. I mean, you could be aggressive in your low balling. So make sure I'm not paying more. I mean, you can be bold in the kinds of offers that you are willing to write in a market with days on market rising.

9:38And that's exactly what's happening. And to back that up, last piece of data here I'll share is that according to Redfin, right now, there is actually 500 ,000 more sellers in the market than there are buyers. And this is exactly why Days on Market is going up. And this is exactly the kind of opportunity that real estate investors should be excited about. This is what tells us we are in a full-on buyer's market. Now, buyer's market does not mean everything's great and you should go out and buy everything. It absolutely does not mean that. It means that you, as a buyer, have the negotiating power.

10:18You have leverage. You have the ability to be picky and to negotiate and to pick only the best assets to add to your portfolio and to be patient. The combination of a more stable market but better negotiating leverage is an opportunity investors really should be taking advantage of and to me is good news. The market does not need to be perfect. Stability and leverage is a great place to start building your strategy from. And after the break, I'm gonna share some regional trends and how you should go about looking for your next deal depending on what's going on in your region. We'll get to that right after this quick break.

10:58Stick with us. Vacation is expensive. Your empty place doesn't have to be. If you're heading out of town and your home is sitting empty, you could list your space on Airbnb while you're away and turn those unused nights into extra income. And with Airbnb's co-host network, getting started is more straightforward than most people think. You can hire a vetted local co-host with hosting experience who could create your listing, manage reservations, handle guest communications, and even provide onsite support for guests during their stay. So while you're away spending money, your space could be working in the background, bringing in extra cash.

11:34Find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle? Active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress. Here's a better question. What if you could buy brand new construction homes, 10 % below market value, in the best markets across the country without making real estate your second job? That's exactly what Rent to Retirement does. They're a full service turnkey investment company handling everything for you. In some cases, investors get 50 to 75 % of their down payment back at closing, plus interest rates as low as 3.75%.

12:10They've partnered with BiggerPockets for over a decade, helping thousands invest smarter. If you want to do the same, visit biggerpockets.com slash retirement to learn more. Everyone loves talking about big returns, but here's the problem. Returns don't tell you how efficient your investment actually is. Because once taxes hit, that great deal can look pretty average. That's why a lot of experienced investors focus on multifamily, not just for cash flow, but for the tax advantages. Depreciation can help offset income while the property is still producing. BAM Capital builds its strategy on that reality, focusing on active asset management and tax aware structuring to help accredited investors navigate complex markets.

12:55If you're exploring passive real estate, understanding this tax-efficient framework is a great place to start your due diligence. Learn more at biggerpockets.com slash BAM. Only for accredited investors, past performance is not indicative of future results. Here's why savvy real estate investors are obsessed with bonus depreciation. It lets you take that rental property or commercial building you own and depreciate most of the cost against your income, legally 100 % IRS compliant. That's instant cashflow improvement. Cost Segregation Guys is the number one firm nationwide specializing in identifying these faster depreciating assets in your property.

13:34They've completed tens of thousands of studies across all 50 states from remote cabins to apartment complexes. So if you own investment property, this is a no brainer. So visit costsegregationguys.com slash BP for your free proposal and find out how much you could save this tax season.

13:55Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. Today, we are going through our June 2026 housing market update. Before the break, I shared some national level trends that the market is pretty stable. Pricing is pretty stable. Inventory is pretty stable. Demand is actually up right now. And that stability creates a good foundation for investors to make decisions off of. But obviously, real estate is local. And so let's talk a little bit about some regional trends. And then I'm actually just going to give you some examples about how to bid on different properties, how to look for different deals, depending on the dynamics in your market.

14:33So right now, most of the markets are pretty flat, right? If the national market's flat, it follows that most markets in the US are pretty close to flat. There are a couple kinds of markets that are actually doing well right now. The first are affordable markets. Shouldn't be surprising. This has been my thesis for four years, that the markets that we're going to do well and and rising interest rate environment are the ones that have really solid affordability where the average person in that market can go out and buy a home. And that has been correct. We are seeing strength mostly in affordability because affordability drives the housing market.

15:09The other thing that is working right now is kind of the opposite. It's like super expensive AI finance centers. Like we're seeing a lot of growth in areas around New York. We're seeing a lot of growth in San Francisco in particular. and I say this a lot on On the Market and I'll say it here, can we just stop betting against New York and San Francisco? Like I wouldn't have invested in them a couple of years ago and I'm glad I haven't over the last couple of years because they have struggled. But I hate hearing people like, oh, those cities are dead. New York is dead. San Francisco real estate's dead.

15:43No, it's not. They're some of the biggest, most powerful economies in the entire world. The real estate will come back, or residential, at least in almost all circumstances. And we're seeing that a lot right now as well. Now, I think for us, for real estate investors, those are probably not markets we're investing in. They're way too expensive. They don't cash flow. It's very hard to make them work here. But affordable markets are still working. And so take note of that. When you think about where you're investing and what you're going to do, ask yourself if you live in an affordable market. If you live in the Midwest, if you live in the Southeast where affordability is good, you can probably bet that housing market activity is going to pick up.

16:24If you live in a super expensive market, it's probably going to remain challenged for the next couple of years. Just as an example, the markets we are seeing that are the hottest right now, that are seeing the highest year-over-year growth, according to Redfin, number one, San Francisco, 11 % year-over-year growth. That is massive, but that is driven probably by the AI boom and excitement around there. We have a lot of IPOs going on there. A lot of people are going to become very rich. So that is probably driving up the market there. But the second hottest market in the entire country is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which fun fact, not a lot of people know this.

17:03Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the single most affordable housing market, not in the Northeast, not even in the United States, but in the world. If you look at the price of a home compared to the average income, Pittsburgh has the best ratio in the entire world. And so it is no surprise to me that Pittsburgh, even though it's not the sexiest housing market, is seeing growth because it's affordable. After Pittsburgh, we see St. Louis, another highly affordable market. Newark, New Jersey, affordable. Jacksonville, Florida, affordable. Then we go to Nassau County, New York, not affordable, but New York, like I said, had some other stuff going on.

17:45After that, Baltimore, affordable. Chicago, affordable. Cincinnati, affordable. So you see, these are the hottest markets. And if you're in some of these markets, even though they're affordable, you're gonna have to adjust your strategy a little bit based on that. The markets that aren't doing well, it's a combination of affordability and oversupply, right? Those are the markets that aren't doing well. Either they're super expensive, like Seattle. That's one of the worst performing markets in terms of home prices last year. It's down, but only 1%. That's probably because it's relatively unaffordable.

18:17But you also see markets like San Antonio and Orlando up there because they've just had a lot of supply. Even though there are good dynamics in those markets, they are relatively affordable. At least San Antonio is. It's because there's just too much building there. So these are the factors you need to be thinking about when you're going out and thinking about your next deal. What's the supply look like? What does the affordability look like? But before we get into some examples here, I just want to call out that Orlando, our second worst market in terms of declines, declined 2.2%. It's pretty darn close to flat, right?

18:50So again, it's like even the ones that aren't doing well, aren't doing terrible. San Antonio is the third worst. It's down less than 1%. So flat is the name of the gain. But I do want to just show that there is some regional variance. But that variance is shrinking, right? Like two years ago, we saw Austin would be like down 8 % and Milwaukee would be up 11%. Huge difference in the best and the worst performing markets. That gap is really closing, right? Like we are seeing much closer to flat. We'll see, you know, some markets down 1 % or 2%, a couple are up above 5%, 6%. But like the majority of them are clustered around flat, but are trending slightly positive.

19:30So let's talk about what this means for you. First and foremost, go out and look up the data for your market. You can do this for free. You can do it on Redfin. You can do it on HousingWire. I highly recommend those two. You could do it on Realtor or Zillow. It's totally free, and there's really easy tools. So you have no reason not to go and do this. And the things that I want you to go look at are, first and foremost, inventory. Remember, I talked about why that's so important. You want to see not just where inventory is, but what the trend is. Is it going up? Is it going down? Fast or slow?

20:01That's something you should be able to do. Second thing, look at days on market, right? I explained that earlier. If it's going up, that means you have more leverage. If it's going down, you have less leverage. Look at those two things and look at price trends. You should also understand if prices are going up or down in this area. Now, if before you make an investment, you want to do a lot more research. But if you just understand those three things, you can sort of figure out how to approach your next offer or what kind of deals you should be looking for. And I'll just give you a couple of examples of what I mean by this.

20:37So if I was in a market like Orlando, I mentioned that earlier, this is a market where prices are down, but inventory is also falling. So that's the combination we're talking about, right? We're seeing prices are down. So you're thinking, okay, this is a slow market. Maybe I can be aggressive, but inventory is falling. Days on market are falling. That tells me that even though they've been in a correction in Orlando, sellers are starting to respond. They are responding appropriately because we're seeing less people start to sell. And that means a bottom is forming, right? When we see that days on market are going down, inventory is going down.

21:16That means buyers are losing their leverage. They still might have relatively good leverage, but it's declining day by day. And so to me, the strategy here is that you should try and go out and buy sooner before sellers can fully adjust, right? Take advantage of some of the stress that is still in that market right now. If you like the overall fundamentals, the window of maximum leverage of when you're going to be able to have the most power over sellers as a buyer, that window might be closing soon. It's not like today or next week, but like you can just see in the trends that that window is closing.

21:57So this might be a good time to go write a lot of offers. Still need to buy below market comps. I'd still try and get things well below list price in these markets, but it seems like if you like the underlying fundamentals in Orlando, good time to go out and get a good asset below market price before things get reset and the balance between supply and demand comes back together, right? So that's what I would do in a market like Orlando. But if I'm in a different market like Seattle, an expensive market that's in a decline, I would treat that totally different. I would only in Seattle buy really, really good deals at steep discounts right now.

22:39And I'm going to be super patient because prices are only down 1%, right? Actually less than Orlando, not really that bad. But active listings, inventory, is up 13 % and it's trending higher. So this tells me, even though prices are only down 1%, that prices are probably going to go down more. The balance between supply and demand is moving towards buyers. Sellers are going to be in a weak position and their position is getting even worse. So that doesn't mean that Seattle's market is going to crash, but it means your leverage as a buyer is likely going to increase because active listings are up and days on market are up.

23:22This tells me there's gonna be more motivated sellers. There's gonna be a little bit more stress into the market. So that means good deals are coming, but you can also afford to be patient because that trend is still emerging here where six months from now, it might even be worse in Seattle. Prices might be down more. And so that doesn't mean you can't buy now, but it means that I would be very aggressive in my lowballing. I would have to take things 10, 15, 20 % off local comps before I bought it because otherwise I can just wait. And so the only reason you shouldn't wait is if you get a screaming deal and that's the kind of deal you should insist on if you're in a market like Seattle where conditions are moving more towards a buyer's market.

24:05Last, I'll give you one more scenario, like buying in Chicago, which is one of the hottest markets I mentioned, top 10, right? So what we're seeing here is that prices are up 5%. That's good, right? That's above the rate of inflation even. So that's rare right now. And that trend is likely to continue because active listings, pretty stable, right? Days on market going up nationally, they are down in Chicago. So this means that in this market, buyers don't have that much power. It's not like Seattle where they're gaining power or in Orlando where they have power, but it might be going away soon.

24:42This is a market where sellers still have a lot of power. And so this means I'm not going to be able to go out and lowball on market deals as much as I could in the other kinds of markets. So instead of doing that, I think the strategies you have to use are either be patient and offer on a lot of stuff because that still can work. There's still going to be motivated sellers. There's still going to be some inefficiencies in the market that you can take advantage of. You can still look for things that have been sitting. You can still find things for value add, but you also might want to look off market here because it's just going to be harder to find really good deals at deep discounts in a market that's still really hot.

25:23This is still a balanced market, if not a seller's market. And so that should change your approach. Can you still buy in Chicago? Absolutely. Are you going to get a 10 % discount on an MLS deal? Probably not. Maybe you don't need it because if prices keep going up, Maybe you don't need as steep as a discount, but this is kind of the thing that you should be thinking about is that deals are probably going to be a little bit thinner in markets like Chicago or Indianapolis or places like that. But that might be worth it to you because there's more likely to be appreciation in the next couple of years than in a market like Seattle or Orlando.