The Current State of The Real Estate Market

On today's podcast episode, I talk about the current state of the real estate market and where I think the market is heading. 

One of the questions I get asked the most is "what do you think of the market right now" or "do you think the real estate market will crash. This podcast episode answers those questions. 

Disclaimer: I cannot predict what will happen. No one can. There are too many unknown variables like war, interest rates, the Fed, the dollar, stock and bond markets, etc. However what I can tell you is my opinion on what I see and how I interpret it. That is what this episode is about. 

Prices have moved exponentially higher. I was looking today at houses that were worth $150,000 in 2000 that are now on the MLS at $300,000. In many markets, prices have doubled in two years. So be very careful of listening to the "Case Shiller Home Price Index" and other data that is put out by mainstream companies because a lot of this data is skewed because it's an "average" or "median" of the entire country.

Different cities and different States have completely different demographics, population growth, job growth and demand (or supply). Averaging this data gives us a big picture. But we cannot invest in our local market with data based on the entire U.S. Real estate is local. If my market is Port St Lucie, FL I am not interested in what is happening in Phoenix, Seattle, San Diego or Philadelphia. I doubt prices in Buffalo or North Dakota doubled in the past two years. Because no one is moving there. But people are moving to Florida. Florida has been hot and Covid exacerbated that. The past two years have been absolutely insane and it seems like everyone in the U.S. was trying to move to Florida. For that reason many people that are local do not see a problem in our local market. However based on my own research I am seeing some cracks forming. 

What I am seeing on the ground is a little disturbing. 1/4 of the listings of the homes on the MLS in some cities are new construction homes built by builders in the past few years. Many of these were "build to rent" homes which were supposed to be purchased by hedge funds and private equity funds (and home buyers). But demand has dried up. No one predicted that rates would move from 3% to 6 1/2%. So these builders are sitting on excess inventory and have had to slash prices.

At the same time, their biggest buyers are drying up too. Many of the largest single family home buyer funds are not buying any more and have ceased their buying operation until they can get a handle on this market (and their inventory). Offerpad, Open Door and other iBuyers are hurting. Some of these operations even have going concern situations (Offerpad just dropped below $1 a share today). Invitation Homes and American Homes For Rent and most of the large Hedge funds have stopped buying too. They stopped buying around July/August of last year. Some only stopped buying at the end of last year. Now they know there is a problem.

So if the largest private equity and hedge funds, titans like Invitation Homes and American Homes for rent are not buying then what are they doing. According to my research they are selling. They are reducing the homes on their balance sheet and they are increasing cash reserves because they know what is coming. Goldman Sachs put out a report just last week of 4 cities that could see a 2008 type of decline. Those were San Diego, Phoenix, San Jose, and Austin. None of those cities are in Florida, but often when troubles start in hot markets like Phoenix, that pain spreads to other cities and towns (and States). And prices being marked down affects their balance sheet, their financing and how much lenders are willing to lend.

It looks to me like the smart money (Wall Street) is not buying houses and is selling houses. So So my question is who is going to buy all of these houses? The first time home buyer has seen rates moved from 3% to 6