If You Want to Buy a House in 2026, Watch This

What if they lied to you about the American Dream and homeownership? And what if we could rewrite the rules? What the hell is going on? Well, I think this is why young people are so mad today. How are they going to be able to afford a home when wages have stagnated? In 2025, more senior citizens are buying homes than Gen Z and Millennials combined. So while you were taught that if you got the job, kept your head down, save 10%, we'd get the keys, that playbook is not just outdated, it's dangerous. Because owning a home isn't just about shelter. It's about safety status. It's about making it. So by the end of this video, I'm going to show you exactly how I'd buy a home in 2026 without having to be rich and doing what everybody else is doing and how you can do this. And here's the truth no one wants to say out loud. The American Dream. We were sold. It was a marketing campaign built by banks, pushed by politicians, backed by mortgage brokers. And it was brilliant. Because if everyone believes the finish line is a home, you've just created 330 million predictable customers. So you pay the mortgage, get the insurance, you fix the roof, you upgrade the kitchen, die with equity. Meanwhile, the wealthy, they don't play that game. And at this point, somebody always goes like, but, Cody, the price always goes up. Does it? If that was true, why don't billionaires only put money in houses since prices only go up? That's absurd. Of course they don't. Everyday consumers, we just see the prices go up. But beneath the surface, there's a lot that you'll never see. An AEI housing analysis shows cheap loans inflate prices. How does that work? Well, builders like Lennar, they inflate prices through what's called concessions to builders. Which basically means real estate insiders use a bunch of tricks to make housing pricing numbers look like they always go up. They give two months free. They do what's called mortgage rate buy downs. I think Ramit Sethi said it perfectly. In real estate, I think you should consider yourself the sucker in the casino and find every possible angle for how you're being taken advantage of. Because there are multiple sophisticated parties who want your money and are very good at convincing you to give it to them. At this point, people usually go like, but, Cody, my house price went up. Okay, let's play that out. You bought a house. It's a good investment, good job. Value increased $300,000. Well, so how do you get that money out? Do you sell and move to another house? They're all more expensive now. Do you move to a new city? I guess. But your job, your business, your friends and family, all right, here. Remember, rent is capped at a maximum. But home ownership also has all these hidden costs. Part 2. The Middle Class buys homes. The wealthy buy cash flow. This chart is fascinating. And it explains why 90% of people never get rich. Let's break it down. If your net worth is under a million dollars, odds are your biggest asset is your house and your car. You're asset rich, but you're cash poor. Your wealth is actually locked behind walls. You can't touch it unless you borrow against it. That's not freedom. That is just dressed up debt. Now if you're worth $10 million, how does that work? Well, then your biggest asset class isn't real estate. Instead of that, it is private businesses, where over 60% of their wealth comes from companies that spit out monthly, quarterly, even daily cash flow. Think about that for a second. While the middle class scrambles to buy their home, the wealthy focus on buying the income that pays forever. You don't need a house. You need a profit machine that buys your house. Here's the uncomfortable truth. Wealth doesn't come from grinding harder. It comes from owning things that grow while you sleep. But most people spend their whole lives buying liabilities dressed up as milestones. A car, the second that you take it off the lot, loses about 30%. A house that bleeds you dry with taxes, repairs and interest. A safe savings account that quietly loses to inflation every single year. That's why that chart stings. It shows the real divide, you know, at the bottom of it, people's net worth is stuffed into cars and homes. And it feels like progress. But it's not compounding. It's dead money. It's idle. It's stagnant. If you want to climb a few rungs on the wealth ladder, everything flips. See, the wealthy, they don't hoard stuff. They own equities, shares of businesses, private companies, cash flowing real estates, assets that pay them every day, even when they're on the beach, asleep or board. And here's the truth nobody wants to swallow. Wealth grows really slow until it grows really fast. It looks boring for years and it feels like nothing's happening until right here. Which is when something called compounding shows up. This is when you start to get exponential returns. But most people actually never make it this far. They quit right before the curve bends. They bail in year nine. Of the ten year game. If you actually want to get rich, you got to stop performing for people who don't pay your bills. Buy things that make money instead. Own them long enough to let compounding do. It's quiet violent work. Because once your money starts earning more than you do, wealth stops becoming a dream. Part 3 Real Estate as Investment let's get real here. Let's look at long term performance of the house versus the stock market. So a stock beat owning a house by over 3x over the last 20 years. If you put 100k into the stock market instead of into home equity, you would have more like 350 to 450k as opposed to 200k today. And in some periods much more than that. And that's just the math. A lot of people at this point go like Cody, I want to own a rental property. Like okay, fine, let's break this down. Let's say you save up for a rental property. The average price in the US is around $400,000. So you close the deal, you rent it out, and after the mortgage, maintenance, taxes and tenant calls about leaky faucets, you're bringing in 200 bucks a month in net income. That is 2,400 bucks a year. For $400,000 in what's called capital risk, that is a 0.6% return. You'd make more money in a savings account. And a savings account won't have to have a last minute roof replaced. And then dealing with five renters and a broken water heater. Now let's take the same 400k and buy a small business. I know, I know it's riskier. But before you freak out, you're young, you have to take risks somewhere if you're ever going to make money. There is no rich without risk. So yes, there's more risk that the business could fail completely. But there's a hundred percent guarantee that buying a house is not going to make you a millionaire. So where's the real risk? I guess instead I'd say like go for boring. Lawn care, property management, pool cleaning, dog grooming. And if you do it right, it looks more like this. So in this case you're still putting that same $400,000 into a business and you're using a loan to do it. Or you're using seller financing. I'll teach you that in a little bit. But that business could net you out. Instead of 2,400 bucks a year, this thing is going to make you $60,000 a year. That's $5,000 a month. And we get there because most small businesses profit 15 to 30% per year. So that's 15% of $400,000 is $60,000. That's $60,000 a year in income. You more interesting if you compare the two that's 25x the real estate return. And that's not theoretical. That's what we teach and do every day. You don't have to learn from me. Go learn from anybody in the world on how to do this. Go start the business instead of buying it. But get into the game of business of top 14,000 people at contrarian thinking how to do this thus far. And it is the game the rich play and the poor never do. You know, I've personally bought businesses when I had money, when I didn't have money. I've helped people buy businesses with no money. We've made more million dollar business owners than I can count. Not because I'm smart, but this is just the math game between the two. Because asset ownership is the only way that is repeatable. I've found to make money. Now part four Passive income is a lie. Choose the right kind of hard People say but Cody, business is risky. I want passive income. You're right, business is risky. Have you ever found a way to make money or gain wealth that doesn't have risk involved? If you do, please send it to me. One of my episodes which I highly recommend you listen to on my podcast. I had a conversation with a self made billionaire, Jenny Just and she told me the same thing that I think which is one of our biggest problems in the US today is we do not take enough risk to get rich. We actually demonize it. She would say that in order to get rich you have to have what is called a risk budget. This is actually something that all investors have. It tells you how much risk you're comfortable with and then you figure out a strategy for what's called risk mitigation. And so that means a way that is more likely to make you money with less downside. That is what I teach. Let's talk about the opposite side now. Real estate isn't passive. We've already talked about you're dealing with roofs, rodents, regulations, tenants, 3am emergencies. Business isn't passive either. You have to hire lead, sell, learn, fire people. But here's the difference. One builds a little bit of profit and slow equity. The other builds cash flow, skills and leverage. So the real question is do you want low effort, low return hard or do you want high impact, high leverage hard. Everything is hard. You just pick your flavor. And by the way, freedom is not passive. Freedom is earned through ownership. Now, part five, the risk most people never take. Most people are terrified of taking the wrong risk. But here's the truth. They're playing defense while their life runs out on the clock. Bill Perkins said it perfectly. The biggest risk most people take is not taking enough risk for the life they want. So what do wealthy people do? They stack the deck. They don't gamble. They negotiate terms. They structure upside. They engineer the outcome. And you can do the same. And if you know someone who needs to hear this, send them this video. All right, part six. If you still want to buy a home in 2026, here's how I do it. And I think this is really smart. I treat buying a house like buying a deal, not like buying a dream. So strategy number one is called rent to own. This is where you lease with an option to buy. You rent the home, pay a little extra each month that goes towards the purchase price. You lock in the price today, you build credit, and you buy yourself time. If rates drop or your income grows, you buy on your terms. Strategy two is called sell seller financing. And seller financing is how I buy most businesses. But you can buy houses that way, too. You find a distressed seller. You offer to buy their house over time with small down payments and monthly installments. No banks, no mortgage, just you, the seller in a win win contract. Let's explain this in detail. Seller financing is when the seller becomes the bank. Instead of you borrowing money from Wells Fargo or Chase, you borrow from the person who owns the house. So it looks like this homeowner gives you the money for you to buy their house over time. You pay the homeowner back the house as you get income instead of. Usually the money comes from the what bank. We're going to replace the bank with the owner. Now, you still make a down payment, pay interest, pay monthly payments, sign a promissory note, have the house as collateral, but the seller gets the monthly checks instead of the bank. Now why would anyone do this? Seller financing helps two types of people. Buyers. Because it's going to help you with a lower down payment and easier approval. No underwriting. They're going to have faster closing, more flexible terms. Then it helps sellers because they actually get something really valuable, which is interest. So they keep earning on the house as you pay the mortgage. This also allows them to sell the house faster and you avoid a lot of listing hassles, which could be additional money. In addition, there's tons of Tax benefits by spreading income over years, which means maybe you pay less money to the irs, which everybody is into. So at the end of the day, it's a win win when done right now, how does it actually work? Step by step. First, you're going to agree on a price. So let's say the house is $300,000. Step two, the buyer gives a down payment on the house. For example, this might be 10% aka $30,000. Step three, the seller finances the rest. That means that you are getting a house valued at 300k for 30k, the remaining balance $270,000. Step four, you're going to negotiate the loan terms. So you and the seller are going to agree on some type of interest rate which might be 6%. Then you're going to agree on a term which might be something typical like 30 years, and you're going to have a monthly payment that is set up. Step five, you sign the paperwork. So the signing that you do is going to be typically what's called a promissory note, your promise to pay, or also something called the deed of trust. This is where the seller can take the house if you don't pay. Then step six, you make your payments every month just like you would in a bank. Pretty simple. Okay, so in this example, what does that mean? That means your monthly payment would be principal and interest. 16, 18amonth. The seller gets that amount every month. They also get that 30k upfront and over 30 years they're going to get about 310k plus in interest on it. That's why sellers love it, because they're going to make a lot of money. If a seller owns the house free and clear and really wants to sell, you might even be able to get them to give you 0% down instead of the 30k and maybe increase your monthly mortgage payment to 2k ish a month. This is used in distressed sales expired listings when tax savings matter more to the seller than cash. Strategy 3 might be live in business. Buy a home that doubles as a money making asset. Turn it into an Airbnb, rent out a room or go bigger. Buy a duplex, live in one side, rent the other. This isn't rocket science, it's deal thinking. And the second you start thinking like a deal maker, you stop feeling stuck. You start seeing opportunities everywhere. Now part seven, here's what I'd do instead of buying a house. If I had 50k, 100k, even up to 400k, I wouldn't buy a house. I'd buy a boring business with existing customers, predictable revenue, and an upside I could grow. I'd buy it with creative terms, seller financing earnouts. And I'd use that cash flow to pay for rent or housing. So I'd use my asset to pay for my liability. Then I'd buy more income streams in order to buy a house. And if you're wondering where to even find those kind of businesses, I'd probably go to Bizkout. It's a small business marketplace where you can literally search for companies to buy, just like you'd search Zillow for houses. Except instead of picking out your next mortgage, you're picking out your next income stream. So stop playing their game, build your own. And look. I don't hate houses. I'm a Zillow junkie like the rest of us. I just hate seeing smart people get stuck in a system designed to trap you. You weren't born to be a mortgage payment. And here's the thing. No one told you. You don't need permission to get wealthy. You don't need permission to get seller financing. You don't need to wait. If you're done playing the game they built for you, then hit the subscribe button. We'll teach you how to build the new playbook. From house poor to business rich, from dreamers to deal makers. That is what this channel is about. So let's go build something together.