This Week In Real Estate: Housing Facts vs. Doomsday Fiction: Analyzing the 2025 Market with Michael Zuber

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I just finished listening to your July 5 episode, man. I just absolutely love your content, man. It gives me value every time I listen to it. It gives me a different perspective on how I view some of the stuff that I do. It's just always good, man. And I just, I want to keep telling you the same thing over and over and over. It does affect people, it does change people's lives and really appreciate all of the effort that you're putting in for that, because I know that you've really got better things to do than this, but yet you still sacrifice that time and do it. So hats off to you, bro. Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial Independence day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.

As we wrap up 2025, the housing market is clearly showing signs. Is it showing signs of distress and the upcoming 38 housing crash that some say? Or perhaps is the housing market telling you a different story? Let's look at the data. What is actually going on the ground? Not ptsd, just facts, facts, facts. Jason, you were doing a great job collecting this all the time. Thank you for that.

My pleasure, Michael. And just the facts, ma'. Am, as the old saying goes from Dragnet, that old show that you can watch on in black and white. Just the facts, ma'. Am. Yeah, there's a lot of doomers out there just promoting complete nonsense. It's just.

Yeah, Opinions. Full of opinions and PTSD and like half baked data.

Right? They just half baked. And that's. That's probably the best word. It's half baked. Because they do show you some data. But there's two major frameworks that you should always live by in life. One is the Jason Hartman question Compared to what?

Compared to what? Yep, I knew that one was coming. Yep, yep.

Life's most important Question. And the other framework is that you can't hear the dogs that don't bark. In other words, what are they not telling you? You know, a lot of times it becomes much more important what someone didn't say than what they did say or what a chart or an article didn't show you or tell you versus what they did tell you. Right. You know, our friend Nick Gurley, who is always, always the doomer of the time, you know, for, for many years he's been spouting doom that never seems to come true. You know, he, he, I, I'd say is one of the very guilty people of not telling you certain things. Right. He shows you the stuff that supports his conclusion, but he doesn't show you the stuff that wouldn't support his conclusion.

Yeah, the one thing we'll say, and then again, we'll get into the facts because again, you know, obviously negativity. Sales. 38% housing crash, 50% housing crash. Gets you quoted in Newsweek saying the market's going to go flat or be up is not what the market wants to hear. But regardless of that, is the 38% housing crash starting? Let's look at some facts on the ground.

Okay. So, you know, different groups do calculations of housing inventory. I don't usually use the NAR data as much because they include three categories. They include current listings, pending sales, and contingent sales. I don't like that because those two latter categories are not really houses you can buy. Okay. So that's not really part of the inventory, in my opinion. But it's okay to use them as long as you compare them with themselves for a prior time period. Okay, agreed. Well, let's do that now. Okay. We're, we're looking at N data today, and that's the national association of Realtors, huge organization. In 2007, they had 4 million homes for sale. That was the active inventory. Now active, pending, contingent. Right. Today, 1.43 million. So dramatically lower than in 2007. Okay. In 2008, as we really entered the Great Recession, Okay. I mean, it kind of started in 2007 with all those mortgage companies going BK for all the ninja loans that they gave out. And it was, it was just completely silly. We had by 2008, as inventory had crept up because of the crash, we had 10 months of supply. Okay. Today we have 4.2 months of supply. Okay. Now how are we getting a crash, okay. Of 38 to 50%? We didn't even have that back then. And that was the worst economy in almost eight decades.

Yeah, that's, that's one of the mind boggling things because again, there's chatter out there that there's a 38% housing crash coming and it will be bigger and fast. That's the, that's the thing for me, if you want to talk about a 38% housing crash over five or six years, okay, we can have that conversation. I, you know, again, I don't see it. But at least that's a reasonable conversation to have because it has.

What are they saying, it's going to happen in a month?

It's all I know is bigger and faster. And to say that and then look at those two statistics. Any rational human being alive should say, how can it be worse? I mean, seriously, if you're in the camp of 38, because it's just emotional and whatever, whatever, fine. But to say it's bigger and faster and then to say we have less than 40% the inventory and, and we have less than half the months of supply, you should just think someone's a fool for tying those two things together. I mean, come on. I mean, it's just like, how do they, these can't, both things can't be true. You can't have this epic housing collapse and inventory one third and days on market less than one half. I mean, come on, let's logically check people when they say dumb.

Absolutely, absolutely. And the one thing I say is that everything is always baked into the inventory numbers. That's, there's a lot baked into that. You know, a lot has to happen for inventory to go up or down or stay the same. And so there's a lot of data baked into inventory stats. Okay, now what I do want to point out is, you know, I just said you can't hear the dogs that don't bark. So what I'm showing people now ask yourself, please. And I'm about to give you the answer. What am I not telling you? What am I not showing you? When I look at these inventory stats with you. In 2007, 4 million homes available. Today, 1.43 million homes available. And just to give you a reference point, there's about 140 million homes in the U.S. so in the NAR standards, it's about 1.1% of the overall housing stock. Right. So what am I not telling you? Well, what I'm not telling you is the per capita number of homes for sale. The population has increased. Now, I don't, I didn't grab the stat for you. I just, this is from this morning. I Literally clipped this this morning in a newsletter of mine from Housing Wire. So, you know, the population we all know is larger than it was in 2007. So we have to adjust for that. And if we adjust for population, our current inventory number is even lower for sure than this number. This is just a nominal number. It's not adjusted for population. Okay. Or households. So that's important. Okay. And same with the months of supply is also not adjusted. Right. Now, let's go to the third point here. Nar, median sales price in November. That's last month. And you know that we don't have the data for this month because it's not over yet. Right. What we have to remember is that these median sales price surveys are done many different ways by many different organizations. Case Shiller does it differently than nar. And, you know, there's all kinds of surveys out there. They all have their own angle on how they calculate these things. But we're looking at the NAR data. So according to NAR, the median home sales price is $409,000. And that's up just a very modest, very boring, very muted 1.2% from a year ago when it was 404. Okay? But it is up, not down. It's up. So all the purveyors of doom that have missed the mark over and over again keep missing it. And this is the 29th consecutive month of year over year price increases. And remember, they tripled the cost of money three years ago. Okay? And this is got to be the most resilient asset class on planet Earth. I mean, you triple the cost of money. That is a. That is like a. You know, it's like in a boxing match, that would be a double thing. You know, they hit you in the face and then they punch you in the gut. Okay? And it's still going, man. It's still going because there is a shortage of housing. Okay. That's just the reality. Yeah.

The other. The other number I want to throw here is I want to make sure I quote it correctly because I reported it today on the daily financial news. 31 months in a row, 31 wages have exceeded inflation.

Yeah.

Why is that important? It's because every month that happens, affordability gets just a wee bit better. And we've had 31 straight months of affordability getting a wee bit better.

Yeah.

I think It'll take another 31 months. So we're halfway through this of wages being more than inflation, and then housing will be affordable again. Back to industry. The curve is clearly bending this is what the doomers don't get as we sit here today on December 22, housing at the national level. Again, we're not talking about your state, your city, your buy box national numbers is the most affordable it's been in all of 2025.

Well, it's the most affordable it's been since the rates went up.

No, again, I was going to do that next. Of 25 and of 24 and of 23. And guess what happens in 26. It gets even more affordable.

And guess what happened? Chairman Powell is out and rates go down and easier. And the fact that they just started quantitative easing like a week and a day ago. Right. Or like eight days to the tune.

Of 40 billion a month. Yeah, or a week.

Or whatever that is. Yeah, it's crazy.

So, yeah, so this is that. Dude, this is only slide 1. I can't imagine what's coming up.

So this is sales activity, which Michael, you've been talking a lot about sales activity. And I think maybe one of the reasons you do that is you probably have a large contingent of real estate agents and people in the industry following your work, as I do. And so sales activity more than prices is like the really important number to them. That means how much business are they going to have? Okay. And let's just go back, way back to 1965. Okay. We'll go 60 years ago and look at what sales. It's really interesting because this is a very long chart. Okay. Look at what sales activity was back then. It was about. Oh, what's that? About 1.8 million per year units. Right.

Yeah.

And then 1980 sales activity was at the 4 million mark. Okay. Which is kind of amazing.

Yeah. So I've actually, I actually have details on that. That year is actually 1978.

Right. Okay. Oh, yeah. Because you've got the spreadsheet. Right. I'm just looking at a chart. So I'm roughly the number. Yeah. So 1978, which if you think about it, all the oldest baby boomers forming households. Right. And just all of the demographics and we are at the same sales volume level as we were in 1978, you know, approximately right about now, hovering around 4 million units per year, Sales volume has been going up. Another very encouraging sign. But that's pretty amazing. And then, you know, look, well, here's.

The deal about this chart because. Because again, the one thing I got right going back three or four years is that from. Is if you look at this chart, 1978, the peak of 4 million, it went all the way down to 1.99. I think that was in 82.

Yeah. Right.

It was a quick. Yeah, so it was a quick and dramatic fall. That's exactly what I called in 2022 when Powell said, there will be pain. If you go to the chart, we were up over 6 million sales. And I said, folks, we're going to have a 40 to 50% housing crash. And of course, everybody heard me say that and thought price. I said transactions. Now, why do I talk transactions? Two reasons. One, you're absolutely right. We got a lot of agents and investors and brokers. But here's the deal. I'm an economist and housing makes up 12% of our economy. If you're going to take 1/8 of our economy and throw it into a depression, and let me be clear, a 40% crash is a depression.

Yeah.

That's what I was calling volume.

Sales volume. Right.

Transactions. Transactions.

Transaction volume. Yeah.

So again, that. That is meaningful. It's a headwind to our economy. Let me just think about this. This is what drives me crazy. Our economy posted a 1 or 2% GDP growth as 1/8 of our economy was in a depression. That's what happened.

Still growing.

Yeah, it was still growing. With 1/8th of the economy essentially on life support. That's what I was calling. That's where I was. Right. And now I called the bottom in August, and guess what's happened? We've had three straight months of transactions being higher, which again, hopefully makes the agents and brokers and investors feel better. But here's the deal. It's about the freaking economy. And we're about to get one eighth of our economy working again. And then guess what happens when you get this tailwind of housing. Not a face full of wind. This is how you get to 3, 4, 5% GDP growth. Is that 1 8th, you know, part of your economy, which was dead and buried, you know, is reborn. Watch out. It's gonna be crazy.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And. And you know, folks, whenever you're doing anything in life, right, especially investing, you want to align your investments with the most powerful forces in the marketplace, right? And as I always say, the two most powerful forces in world history are governments and central banks. And because housing is such a big part of the economy, they don't want to see housing crash. They are going to do whatever they can to make sure this investment just keeps on chugging away. And I'm going to show you something they're doing in just a moment, okay? You want to align your interests with these powerful forces. They're much more Powerful than any of us and just ride their coattails because they've got to see housing succeed. It is a mandate for them because too much of the economy depends on it. Okay? That is just critical, including IRS revenue. Okay? Because if housing doesn't keep going up in price and people don't keep buying houses, then guess what? The mortgage market, there's all these like, you know, you throw a pebble in water. Processional effects. Right? That's the word I'm looking for. And so, you know, it's a domino effect. When housing is doing well, the IRS makes more money because they get hire more.

It's the wealth effect.

They get higher capital gains. You know, all kinds of stuff. The whole thing, the whole thing's just this, like this big giant bubble that everyone. Buddy. Wants to just keep it blowing up. Except the doomers who are lying to you. Okay? You know, so don't listen to the doomers. Align yourself with the government and Federal Reserve, okay? They're much more powerful than some idiot on YouTube that doesn't, you know, do data based.

Yeah, the simplest statement I tell folks is inflation's a feature, not a bug. Again, you can argue you could be upset. Upset by it. It doesn't matter. You're yelling into the void. If you understand inflation's a feature, not a bug, you. You invest different. It's just that simple.

Absolutely. But wait, there's more. The thing we need, if the doomers want to be right, which they're not, they're just wrong, wrong, wrong. The thing we need is lots of people in distress. We need tens of millions of homeowners that are filing bankruptcy in their business or in their personal bankruptcy or going into foreclosure. And, and look at what we've got now. The chart tells you, right? I mean, look at the kind of bankruptcy and foreclosure history we had in the past right now. Compared to what? Compared to that going way back, 20 plus years. Okay? You see that? There's just nothing happening. Like, if you were a bankruptcy attorney right now, you would be complaining that business sucks. Yeah. Because it does suck for you. If you're a bankruptcy court judge, your calendar is light.

Okay, well, you know what? So let's talk about that a little bit because again, the doomers will come back and say bankruptcies are up 50% or whatever they are compared to the.

Emotional, compared to stimmy checks. And everything's up 50% since then.

That's. That's again, that's one of the dogs that don't bark. I mean, if you use a percentage, you can make it sound scary, but again, folks, look at the chart. Look at Q2.

Section of anomaly. During COVID when there was a moratorium on foreclosures, it was distortion. Was there a moratorium on bankruptcies too or.

Probably. Well, we had cheap money, so everybody could get refi. Right. Everybody could borrow. That's what that was.

So it was like virtually non existent back then. And now we're going to look at a longer picture. It's still non existent. It's a nuts.

It's even worse than that. We're getting a little artificial bump today because of all the. That gap, that air pocket on your.

Slide, that's the pent up demand. Exactly.

That should have foreclosed. Yeah, foreclosures happen, people. They always happen. Bankruptcies happen. They always happen. We had about a year and a half where they didn't happen. So that junk is in the system and it has to be processed out. So you're going to get an artificial bump that won't last very long. It's a, it's the reverse of an air pocket. It will come in, they will be processed out and then we will, we will actually see this chart likely next year or the Q1 of 27 roll over. Because we would have processed out the air pocket, right?

Yep. No, that's a good way to look at it. That's a really good way to look at it. Okay. So I was saying before that the two most powerful forces the human race has ever known, governments and central banks, want to see this bubble keep expanding forever. Okay. And of course, every year, pretty much they do this. Okay. Yeah, they increase the loan limits. And these are FHA loan limits. I don't have the data, but they probably did the same thing with va. Okay. Which is, you know, very much like in alignment with fha. They probably did or are about to do the same thing with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. Okay. And basically what they said is that next year these loan limits will increase by $26,250. Okay, here's an actual chart of what that means. Okay. So in the low cost areas of the country, the FHA loan limit has a floor of 540, just over 541,000. Okay. You know, this is government stuff because look at the odd numbers. Like.

Yeah, it's really weird.

Business would just round it off. Okay, weird. So for a single family home, 541,000 and change. For a high cost area, 1,249,000 and change. Okay. So these limits have increased. Now what do you think's going to happen? Okay. More money chasing a limited supply of goods. Housing are the goods, the money. The tidal wave of money just got a little bigger through this and through these other programs and that will chase its way into the market and the sellers will just say, okay, we'll just raise our price $26,000. You know, that's what always happens. Okay. It's, it's just, you know, inflation creep and let's, it's important to just read what this says to the text. That's why I clipped the whole thing. The FHA government backed loans can help lower income buyers or those with lower credit scores afford to purchase a single family home. The FHA sets floor and ceiling loan limits based on FHFA's National Conforming Loan limit. Okay. In short, the annual adjustment provides more buyers with the opportunity to compete in today's tight housing market. Okay, Doomers, are you saying the market's not tight? Tight means limited supply. Okay. Like this isn't me saying this. This is why the government is doing this.

Yeah.

The other thing that consumers can say, what they say, it's just a lie, you know?

Yeah. You know what I wonder is, do they actually believe what they're saying or are they just saying it because they have to pay their rent?

I think it depends. But I think a lot of them are just crooks basically. They're just lying to people. They're just misleading them.

Yeah. I guess the last thing I want to say about this conversation again back to the 38 housing crash being bigger and faster than zero.

You're, you're making it sound real by saying it that way. You know, the bogus prediction.

Well, where I was going to go with is if the market started going that direction. We have learned something, right? What did we learn? Well, in the 08 crisis, the government basically stepped back and said thou shalt crash, have price discovery. And that wrecked, nearly wrecked the entire financial system. Then in Covid, we were in an environment where we essentially shut down the economy and in a second they rolled out forbearance. Click a box, you know, wait six months, all of that. So I ask you if, if we got into an environment where the national housing market was down 5% and inventory was at 2 1/2 miles million.

Get ready for the simmies, they're coming.

Yeah. And you know, whatever else you want to say, do you not think the government would say, you know what, let's step in front of that now? Here's you Know the other side of the equation. I don't like government intervention. I want people who make bad decisions to lose. That said, back to your earlier point, there's the two, two most powerful things. The government in federal, the Fed. I don't get a vote. If the government wants to, they'll step in front of the housing thing and they'll, they'll just support it again.

Yeah, they always do.

Do you think, I mean, just logically folks, if the government saw double digit price collapse, do you not think they would step in front of that and stop it? To think that we're going to get to 38% with zero government intervention, it's just to be just, it's mind blowing that people buy into that story.

I know, but those people are the people who have the biggest opportunity cost. And look, this is the reason Michael and I are doing what we do every Monday morning and the reason I'm speaking at his upcoming event in Las Vegas. You know, I've been doing this a very long time. I got my real estate license when I was 19 years old. I've been through a zillion cycles now. We see over and over how people miss opportunities that could have been literally life changing. Like their whole life would change if they didn't listen to these purveyors of doom that are trying to just mislead them with clickbait and fake news. It is so tragic. Over and over, people are just missing out on opportunities because they're, because of fear, you know, and, and that old thing, that old fear acronym, False education appearing real. And if you're listening to these doomers, they are filling people full of false education that appears real. It's, it's the acronym for fear. Right.

Let me read you a comment. This is a comment I got on a video, the video titled so people can go see it. That. I'm not making this up. The title of the video is Melody Wright 50 housing crash in 2026. This is Comments from.

What is she going to say in 2027 while the Mayan calendar didn't end and the world didn't end.

Yeah, well, yeah, so this is from totem 5658. Again go the comment. I just took a picture of it. Here's what I. I don't know if it's a he or she, but whatever. Yeah, you honestly sound like you are crashing wearing an everyday wealth builder hat. And you sound like you are losing wealth at the moment and the thought of a 50% price decline is triggering you just an Observation. Real estate is correcting and time will tell by how much from here, could be a little, could be a lot. But please be respectful, helpful. It's good to hear both sides and telling people to block people is rather immature. Even your responses to comment are short and dismissive. Wishing you health, wealth and positive vibes. Well, first and foremost, I get hundreds of comments every day and I reply to every single one of them. I'm not writing a book to reply to anybody. So if you think that's short and dismissive, go yourself. Second, I'm going to give you my opinion every time. And I have the receipts and I've been right. And oh, by the way, let's talk about me losing 50% of my net worth. That's the beauty of cash flowing real estate with fixed rate debt, I don't give up about my balance sheet. It doesn't.

What you really should distinguish that is you don't really care if the prices go up or down. I mean, of course it's better if they go up. So I can't really say that. Okay. But with income property, it's a multidimensional asset class and you've got an asset that makes sense. You've got fixed rate debt where you're getting inflation induced debt destruction all the time and you're just getting benefit over benefit. You don't agonize over the price, you don't watch it every day, you don't need to, it doesn't matter. So that you know.

Now, if you would, if you were to tell me my rents are collapsing 50%, that would get my attention.

Right? Right. But let me ask you, let's even take that one. Say your rents went down by 30, 38%. Okay. Like melody saying prices will go down. Well, if your prices went up at the same time by 10%, you probably wouldn't care about the rents going down. It's multi dimensional asset class. Well, give your money lots of different.

Ways as somebody who pays his bills with cash flow, because I don't, I don't have a business, I don't have a thing. I would care if my rents went down 38.

I'll be whatever.

I'm just being honest.

You could refinance something or sell something.

I mean I won't be crushed.

Options.

I would feel it. I'm just being honest with the audience. I would feel a 38 collapse in rents. I would feel right.

But if your price went up 10%, just sell one property.

Exactly.

And make it support the rest of them.

I have Lots of options. And I would be fine. But I would feel it. But I really meant it. Honestly, Jason, I only look at my balance sheet once a year when I have to do a financial statement for my banks. That's the only time I look at. I don't care what my balance sheet is. It really doesn't matter. I live on net income. Right. I live my life. Yes. Can I borrow money? Do I have the. Sure. But I don't need any of that. That's why these people don't get it.

Well, we keep banging, beating the drum here so that people will get it. So hopefully some of them are coming around.

Yeah, it's fun. Well, I do look forward to you keynoting day one of our Vegas event in February. We're down to less than 90 tickets and, oh, by the way, tickets that.

Are left, in other words.

Yeah, 90 left. And tickets stop on January 15th. So you've only got about a month left to buy. Actually three weeks to buy them because I need to get chairs and food and all that stuff lined up. So a couple weeks left, folks. Buy your tickets.

Michael, I just want to say thanks again for what you're doing, keeping it real and happy investing to everybody out there.

Thank you. Merry Christmas.

And Merry Christmas. I guess this is our last one before Christmas.

So it is. Merry Christmas.

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