The Fall of The US Housing Market (What Comes Next)

4.07 million. That's how many homes sold in the United States last year. Sounds like a lot until you realize it's the lowest number in 30 years. The normal pace is about 5.3 million. So we're missing over a million transactions that should have happened but didn't. So where did they go? They're frozen in place by a market that broke in a way nobody predicted. Buyers can't afford to buy because mortgage rates are still at 6%. Sellers can't afford to sell because 80% of them are locked into rates under 6%. So moving would cost them hundreds of dollars a month. So everybody's just just waiting. Except for people who can't wait. The divorces, the job relocations, the tired landlords bleeding money on properties they never wanted to keep this long. Right now, sellers outnumber buyers by 37%. That's the largest gap since 2013. And that gap is a massive opportunity window for wholesalers who understand what's actually happening. Hi, my name is Tyson. I hope you're doing well. I've closed hundreds of real estate deals across more than 20 states and helped my students generate millions in assignment fees over the past 5 years. Some of my students have hit over $100,000 in a single month just from wholesaling. So understanding when these market shifts create opportunity isn't just something I study for fun. It's literally my job. And when I see a window like this open up, I have to talk about it. What I'm seeing right now has me genuinely excited in a way I haven't felt since COVID created that chaos back in 2020. And that chaos is exactly when I closed my first deal for $15,000 within 60 days of getting started. Now, for those of you who've been following this channel, this video is going to be a little different. We're not breaking down a specific deal or walking through cold calling scripts. We're going to zoom out and look at what just happened with the Fed and what's happening with inventory and why the next 12 to 18 months could be the best window for wholesalers that we've seen in years. So let's break it down. The Fed's dropped rates from about 5.5% down to about 3.5% by the end of 2025. 3 cuts in a row. And while that sounds like good news for buyers, here's what most people don't understand. Mortgage rates didn't drop nearly as much as everybody expected. The 30-year fix came down about 8% at its peak to the low 6% range. And that's a bit better, but it's still double what rates were during the pandemic when people were locking in at 3%. And that gap between old rates and new rates is what's freezing the entire market. Here's why. About 80% of homeowners with a mortgage right now have a rate below 6%. So even though rates came down a little bit, most homeowners are still sitting on loans that are just way cheaper than anything they could get today. If you're paying 3.5% for your current house, and the best you can get on a new one is 6.5%, you're looking at hundreds of extra dollars per month just in interest. That's a massive disincentive to move. So they're not moving. They're locked in. And that created this weird standoff in the market. On one side, you've got buyers who still can't afford to buy. Even at 6% rates, the typical mortgage payment eats up over 30% of a buyer's income. That's the official definition of being cost burdened. First-time buyers made up only 21% of home purchases in 2025. That's an all-time low. The historical average is around 40%. And the median age of the first-time buyer hit 40 years old. Think about that for a second. People can't afford to buy their first home until they're 40. That's how broken affordability got. On the other side, you've got sellers who don't want to give up their cheap mortgage payments, so they're staying put. The number of home sellers dropped for 5 consecutive months in 2025 and hit the lowest level since early 2023. Most owners simply don't want to move. So when buyers can't buy, sellers won't sell, you have a 30-year low in home sales. You get houses that are sitting on the market for 50 days on average instead of getting snapped up in a week. And you get a market that looks dead on the surface, but that frozen market isn't frozen for everyone. And this is where wholesalers need to be paying attention. The people who did sell in 2025 weren't people who wanted to sell. They were people who had to sell due to death, divorce, job relocation. These are motivated sellers that are dealing with life circumstances that force their hand. They don't have the luxury of waiting for the market to improve. They need out now. And there's another group that's even more important for wholesalers. These are the tired landlords. They're typically mom-and-pop rental owners who have a handful of properties that are just completely burned out. In 2025, a lot of landlords saw their insurance premiums double, property taxes surged, and maintenance costs went through the roof. And at the same time, cities started imposing stricter eviction rules and rent control. That makes it harder for small landlords to turn a profit. And rather than keep bleeding cash month after month, a lot of these owners decided to sell their rentals. And here's what makes them perfect wholesale deals. They've usually owned for 5 to 10 years or more, so they've got tons of equity built up. They're done managing tenants. They don't want to deal with realtors and showings and waiting 6 months for a buyer. They just want out clean and fast. Now let me walk you through what this actually looks like in practice. Let's say that you pull a list of properties owned by landlords who've held for 8+ years in a market where insurance rates just jumped 40%, and you start reaching out and you find somebody who's been dealing with a problem tenant for 6 months, and they just found out that their insurance is going to go from $2,000 a year to $4,500 a year. They're frustrated, they're tired, they've been thinking about selling, but they're dreading the whole process. And then you call them and offer a cash close in 30 days. No showings, no inspections, no waiting for a buyer to get financing approved. You're solving a real problem for them. You lock up the property for a discount because they're trading price for speed and certainty. Then you assign it to a cash buyer who's looking for exactly that kind of deal. The seller gets their clean exit, the buyer gets a property with built-in equity, you collect your assignment fee, everybody wins. And speaking of cash buyers, this is where the opportunity gets even better. Nearly 30% of all home purchases in 2025 were made with all cash. That's up from about 27% the year before. And over the past 3 years, more than a quarter of all homes purchased nationally have been all-cash deals, and a record of 30% of repeat buyers paid entirely in cash. Even 8% of first-time home buyers managed to buy with cash, which has doubled since the early 2000s. And here's why this all matters for wholesalers. High mortgage rates essentially crowded out financing buyers. The people still buying are the ones with cash, and cash buyers can move fast, close without contingencies, and negotiate harder because they're not dependent on lenders. This makes them the perfect end buyers for wholesale deals. If you're not building relationships with cash buyers in your market right now, you're missing the window to position yourself as the person who brings them deals. Because when you can consistently deliver properties at below market prices to investors who are actively looking to deploy capital, you become their go-to source. And that relationship is worth way more than any single assignment fee. Now, on top of that, there is a demographic wave happening that makes everything we've talked about even more powerful. I've mentioned the Silver Tsunami before, and it's worth repeating because it's even more relevant now than ever. 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every single day. Most of them own properties that they've held for 20, 30, even 40 years. We're talking about properties they bought for $50,000 that are now worth $400K or more. These people are ready to simplify their lives. They want to retire, travel, spend time with their grandkids, kids, whatever. The last thing they want to do is manage rental properties or deal with deferred maintenance on a house that's too big for them now. And a lot of them don't even have mortgages anymore, so they're not locked in like younger homeowners. They can sell whenever they want. The challenge is they don't want complexity. They don't want to stage their house, do open houses, negotiate with buyers. You might have financing fall through. They want simplicity. They want certainty. And that's exactly what wholesaling provides. And here's what's different right now compared to a year or two ago. While these older sellers are looking to exit personal reasons. The buyers on the other side just got slightly better financing conditions. Mortgage applications jumped 31% year over year at the tail end of 2025 as rates dipped. That means that demand is starting to come back, but it hasn't fully arrived yet. You're in this gap where sellers are still motivated, but the buyers haven't flooded back in, and that gap is where wholesalers can make so much money. Let me give you an example, guys. I have a student who pulled a pre-probate list, right? Basically properties where somebody had died but probate hasn't kicked He started calling around and he found a woman who inherited a house from out of state. She had no idea what to do with it. She didn't want to fly out, deal with repairs, list it with a realtor, wait 6 months for the right buyer, right? Well, my student offered her an all-cash close, got it under contract, and assigned it to a cash buyer. And that single deal made him $7,000 in 3 weeks. And the whole time he's also working a full-time job. The reason why that worked is because he understood what the owner actually wanted. She didn't want complexity or delays. She just wanted something simple. She wanted a cash offer to get rid of the property and just move on with her life. And wholesaling is built to provide exactly that. So let's talk about what happens next, because this window isn't going to stay open forever. Most economists are predicting that 2026 is going to be a transition year. Home sales are expected to tick up for the first time since 2021. NAR's chief economist Lawrence Yun is forecasting a 14% surge in total home sales. Zillow is predicting around 4.26 million sales, Realtor.com expects about 4.13 million. Either way, the frozen market is going to start thawing. Mortgage rates are expected to average around 6.3% in 2026, which is only slightly lower than 2025. But here's the thing, even incremental decreases unlock substantial buyer activity. That's a direct quote from NAR's chief economist. Affordability has already improved to its best level in 3 years thanks to the slight rate declines in late 2025. And the typical mortgage payment is expected to fall about 1.3% year over year in 2026, which would be the first annual decline in payments since 2020. What that means is demand is going to start coming back, and when that happens, the leverage that wholesalers have right now starts to disappear. The sellers will get pickier, competition can increase. The deals that are sitting there waiting to be locked up today are gonna have multiple people fighting over them in the next 12 months. So the smart move is to capitalize on this now while sellers are still motivated and buyers haven't fully returned. But here's the catch. Not every market is going to recover at the same pace. And some markets that were hot during the pandemic are actually expected to decline. Realtor.com is forecasting that home prices will drop in 22 of the 100 largest metros in 2026. Most of those are in the South and the West. Florida in particular is expected to see corrections. Cape Coral and Fort Myers is projected to drop around 10%. Northport and Sarasota around 9%. Nashville and Austin are also on the list of markets that are likely to start cooling down. These are areas that saw huge price run-ups during the remote work boom, and now local incomes can't support those prices at 6% rates. Plus, investors pulled back hard from these markets. In fact, Las Vegas and Florida led the nation in investor pullback in 2025. When investors leave, prices soften. On the flip side, Midwest and Great Lakes markets are positioned to outperform. Cities like Cleveland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Madison didn't see the crazy price inflation during the pandemic, so they're still relatively affordable. Redfin is predicting these areas are going to be hot in 2026. They offer affordable housing, and they're insulated from climate disasters that are driving up insurance costs in Florida and the West Coast. So if you're wholesaling, pay attention to your market. If you're in a market that's expected to cool, you've got motivated sellers right now who might be even more motivated if they're watching their equity shrink. Lock them up before before they get desperate enough to just list with an agent and take whatever they can get. If you're in a market that's expected to heat up, you wanna lock up deals before the price adjusts upward and your margins get squeezed. Now, I don't know exactly how all of this plays out. Some markets are gonna move faster than others. Some sellers will hold out longer than expected. The Fed could change course if inflation spikes again. There's always uncertainty. But what I do know is that when you have a market with 37% more sellers than buyers, when you have tired landlords bleeding money, and you have baby boomers looking to exit, And when cash buyers are actively hunting for deals, because they're the only ones who are actually closing right now, that's a wholesaler's market. The people who position themselves during this window are going to make money while everybody else is going to try to figure out what happened. So here's what you can do to actually catch this opportunity. First, start targeting motivated sellers right now. Pull lists of tired landlords who've owned the property for 8+ years. Target pre-probates and pre-foreclosures. Look for properties owned by people going through major life transitions. Whether that's divorce, job relocations, or just being ready to retire and simplify. These are the sellers most likely to say yes to a cash offer because you're solving a real problem for them. Second, build your cash buyers list if you haven't already. Reach out to investors and landlords in your market and let them know that you can bring them deals, actual deals, discounted off-market deals. Cash buyers made up nearly 30% of all purchases in 2025. They're actively looking, and when you can consistently bring them properties at below market prices, you become their go-to source. That's how you build a real business, not just close random one-off deals like a side hustle. Third, pick one marketing channel and master it. Cold calling, cold SMS, Facebook ads if you can, whatever works for your budget and schedule. Just pick one and go all in. You don't need a huge budget to get started. I closed my first deal in 60 days during COVID by just making hundreds of calls, and I knew way less back then than you probably know right now. The difference between people who make money and the people who stay stuck is execution, not information. You can do this entire business virtually from anywhere in the country. I've literally closed 5-figure deals while playing video games. You just find motivated sellers, get their properties under contract, and connect them with cash buyers. And if you want me to walk you through the exact process and you want to start and scale a wholesale real estate business, book a free strategy call with the link in the description below. I guarantee you'll close your first deal in 90 days or less, or I will give you a 100% refund for the program. And just like my student who closed that deal for $7K in 3 weeks while working a full-time job, one deal in wholesale real estate can change the entire trajectory of your life. But if you want to learn exactly how to structure these deals first, I have a free course on my YouTube channel. It's going to walk you through how to get to $20,000 a month wholesaling real estate. I break down exactly how to find motivated sellers, how to build your buyers list, and how to close your first deal step by step. That video should be popping up on the screen like right now. Before you dip, I want to know, what are you seeing in your market? Are sellers getting more motivated? Are you starting to see this imbalance play out where you are? Drop a comment. Let me know, because I'm genuinely curious of how many of you are already positioning yourselves for what's coming. And as always, I hope you found this video valuable. Smash the like button if you haven't already. Subscribe to the channel and I'll see you on the next one.