Economic Pessimism Peaks, So Why Are Investors Still Buying?

Dave:

Americans recently said that right now is the worst time ever to buy a house. They’re also not feeling very positive about the economy as a whole. So the question is how should investors interpret this information, this and more on today’s headline show.

Hey everyone, I’m your host Dave Meyer, and with me today are James Dainard and Henry Washington, and we’re doing one of our favorite formats on the market podcast, which is our headline show. If you haven’t heard this format before, this is basically where we go out, we pull four articles from the news cycle, talk about the metrics, give you the details, what you need to know, and then give you our opinions about how this might impact your personal finance or your investing. In today’s episode, we’re talking about redfin’s agreement to share data and settle a class action lawsuit, how Americans think it’s the worst time ever to buy a home, recent jobs reports. And lastly, why consumers are feeling so bad about the economy in general. That and much more in today’s episode. Let’s jump into our first headline.

All right, so for our first story today, our headline reads, Redfin agrees to share data and pay 9.25 million to settle lawsuit. This comes from the New York Times and it’s basically just a latest in a string of settlements that are going on between plaintiffs and several different large brokerages. We’ve obviously heard mostly about the NAR settlement and a couple of other big, I think Keller Williams, right, also settled and so this is just the latest. I still feel like things are unfolding and I don’t know about you guys, but I personally feel like despite these settlements, I don’t have a better sense of how this might unfold and actually impact people. James being the owner of a brokerage, are you settling?

James :

We’re not members of nar. So good for you.

Dave:

You avoid this whole situation.

James :

Yeah, it was. I was like, how much is it? No, no, it’s not for us. We’re a boutique brokerage. We offer specialty services. That’s what separates us, not the NAR badge. And so we just never signed up for it. I do think it is interesting that Redfin of all brokerages is pulled into this and has to write a check because considering they’re discount brokerage, it’s like you typically know as a broker when a Redfin broker writes their offer on one of our listings that we have to do a little bit more work here and then we have to spend a lot more time educating what the transaction is pushing it through because they’re offering a discount as it is. So that’s why I don’t really understand the whole Redfin got dragged into this. You would think it would be the opposite because they’re the ones offering it underselling brokers out there anyways,

Dave:

They actually got a discount at 9.25 million when Keller Williams settled at 70 million.

James :

And I don’t know how this is going to affect the brokerage market. I have had, I think investors are starting to ask the question like, Hey, what should we be offering as a commission? And for me, brokers do their job and they work for it. And as a seller and a broker, the last thing I want is to put up a property that people are going to overlook or I want to motivate salespeople to get their clients out there. And I know for us, we sell a lot of property every year, a couple hundred homes. I have no intention of cutting commission or trying to use this as a discount because at the end of the day, you got to let the business go, but I have yet to see how it’s working and I’ve yet to hear any impact from this whatsoever in people’s brokers business.

Henry:

I don’t know that from an investor standpoint it’s going to change much, right? The same way I’m not trying to get a discount because all this is going on. I want my properties to sell, I want ’em to sell quickly. I want the best representation that I can get, and so I don’t want to offer to pay less. And then now I got to go out there and figure out, well, who’s going to work as hard as I want them to work for less money, that’s just like another job. I don’t want to do that.

Dave:

Right?

Henry:

But if you’re looking from the perspective of the average everyday home buyer, they are probably going to look for a discount because this is a one-time thing for them, and money is already a big deal because they view houses as very expensive right now, and the cost of money is very expensive right now. And so any discount they can get, they’re probably going to look for an opportunity. So I think that’s where this is going to be more of a, I don’t know if you want to call it an issue, but where people may be looking to save some money.

Dave:

Yeah, I feel like there’s just going to be something that comes in and tries to disrupt the industry, whether it’s a Zillow or one of these other tech companies. I just feel like we haven’t seen the big thing that might come from this yet, but agree that in the short term it doesn’t really feel like anything has

James :

Changed. Right?

Henry:

Absolutely.

Dave:

In fact, I was looking at a listing earlier today and the compensation that I saw for the seller’s agent was 3.5%, so that just went up rather than discount it. Apparently some seller’s agents are just charging more. So I guess there’s really not much that we know about this is going to happen, but I think that the main headline here is that no brokerages are putting up a fight anymore. I think that’s sort of what we’re seeing is settlements are happening. It doesn’t seem like NAR any brokerages are going to mount a defense against these accusations like they had been. And so we’ll just have to sort of wait and see. We’ve hit our first headline now about Redfin settling, but we have three more headlines after this quick break while we’re away, make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode of On the Market. Welcome back to the show for a second story we have to talk about, Americans just are bummed about the housing market. The headline from CNN reads. Americans say that it’s the worst time ever to buy a house, Henry, is it the worst time ever to buy a house?

Henry:

I mean if you look at it historically,

Dave:

If you look at it with money or time,

Henry:

If you look at it with the facts, then yeah, it is. I mean, in all seriousness, housing is expensive. Interest rates are high. Now, that’s the one thing that’s probably a little different. Interest rates have been much higher before when people were looking to buy houses, but at that time, the price associated with those houses wasn’t nearly as high as it is now, even if you look at it from a percentage standpoint instead of just a pure dollar standpoint. And so yeah, the houses were, we’ve had 12, 13% interest before, but houses were probably less than half of the cost of what they are now. And people were making more money.

There was a better ratio of affordability to what people made versus what house cost at that time. I get that. So I do agree that it’s probably the worst time ever for people to buy a house, but I also think that it’s going to get worse if rates drop even a little bit, even a little bit if you think prices are high now, prices are going to be higher later, and we’re still seeing prices climb even though rates are high now. So I don’t know that it gets better. And even if we get to a point where housing prices start to decline, I mean, what are we talking about? 10%, 5%? It’s not going to be maybe, right, right. It’s not going to be a ton. And so if you look backwards, yes, it’s the worst time, but if you can put on some sort of goggles and look forward, you should probably get in now.

Dave:

Well, so that’s interesting. I want to talk about getting in now in just a second, but just so everyone knows, according to this other article, not one of our headlines today, it’s from bank rate. It says that it’s cheaper to rent than to buy in all top 50 metros. So that’s why when Henry and I were joking at the beginning about the math by a lot of objective measurements, it is better to rent than to buy. Excuse me. And that just to be clear, is what we’re talking about is for primary residences, this is not necessarily for investors as well. James, I know you’re very in tune with demand, but you’ve previously in recent shows said that demand at least in your market has remained high. So even though people seem to think that it’s a terrible time to buy a house, they’re still buying. Do you have any thoughts on what gives there?

James :

Well, I think it depends on what market you’re in. And also this stuff always comes out. It’s the worst time to buy a house or you’re never going to be able to get a house. And the reality is we are at the same affordability of about 1984. It says worst affordability since 1984, but what happens since 1984, the housing market has gone way up, and that’s just what it does over the history of the last a hundred years. It goes up, it goes a little bit down, it keeps going up. It consistently always goes up. And I think the real question is, is it a great time to buy a property? Well, can you afford the property that you want to buy today and are you willing to stay in it for longer than a five-year period? And that’s really what it comes down to.

Can you afford it? Is it what you want? And are you going to stay there for the long haul if you’re not getting some sort of value add discount? And right now we’re seeing that that’s why the market’s moving so much is they’re so low inventory. There’s people that can afford these homes and you don’t need a lot of them right now when months of supply are less than a month in our local Seattle market and we’re seeing people still pull the trigger and what’s happening is the pricing still goes up, right? Median home price is up what, 4% year over year. And if you sit on the sidelines and wait 12 more months and rates are still where they’re at, because they very well could be, you could be paying 4% more. And so I think the thing is, if you’re looking for a house, find the one that works for you that’s comfortable, don’t force the house.

And then once you find that house, make sure that’s affordable with some buffer and then buy it because rates will come down, they always come down and pricing will go up and it will go down. And the purpose of a house is to settle in and have a long-term investment, get comfortable. And that’s why we’re seeing the market do well is people see that they have to get into the market. We did not see a collapse when the rates skyrocketed and people are realizing that they have to get into a property or it could be too late in five years.

Henry:

I completely agree with you, and this is why it’s so important for your average everyday home buyer to either educate themselves or to have a professional in their corner that is educated on some of these economic factors in the real estate industry. Before you just when rates were anywhere between two and 5%, you just buy a house, it’ll be fine, but now the cost of money is higher, there’s less inventory out there. And so if you’re going to make a decision as big as buying a home and spending half a million dollars, well you want to make sure that you’re doing it in a way and at a time that’s not going to negatively impact you financially. And there’s so much noise out here and so much misinformation and so many scary negative headlines that people just see something and they think, oh, they’ll see this article and think, well, it’s a terrible time to buy a house.

Well, that could end up costing you a lot of money and a lot of wealth. You need to be surrounded by someone or surround yourself with the information that lets you know. All we can do is look at history and history says just like James said, that real estate values are going to continue to rise even in the short term. You can look back and see, even though rates have been high, real estate values have continued to rise. And so waiting may not be the safest play, but you to got to have a little bit of guts to take that risk, but you want to do it calculated enough. And the best way to do that is either to educate yourself by listening to shows like this by people who are unbiasedly trying to give you information and we through the negative headlines or having that professional, that real estate professional in your corner who truly does understand the economics.

James :

Yeah, and I think the affordability is going to be in high demand for the next two, three years. I don’t know if rates are going to come down that much over the next 12, 24 months. And the thing to think about as a home buyer or an investor is every asset class is its seasons and things slow down right now we’ve seen what is not selling that well are two to four unit properties. They don’t cashflow. It’s hard to make it work with an investor, but my prediction is that in 12 to 24 months that those are going to become high demand properties because people are going to go, I need to buy a house and the only way that I can afford it is by having somebody next door. I think don’t get caught up in all the headlines, all the don’t buy, buy, buy. It’s like just look at what is typically done. Well in the past, we know single family houses always go up. We know two to four units exploded the last three years and now they’ve settled down. You’re going to see that cycle come back through, and I do think that they’re going to be a big asset class for these types of buyers that can’t get into a house because it’s too high in the interest rate. They’re going to have to adapt their mindset, and I think it’s a great asset class to be in. Real

Henry:

Quick too, I want to talk about why that people might look at those two to four units is because yes, you get somebody living next door who can help pay for your mortgage, but lenders will oftentimes let you count the rent that the other units are producing as income for you, which helps you qualify more to be able to buy those properties. And so it’ll be easier for people to qualify to buy those properties and easier for them to pay the mortgage.

Dave:

Before we move on, I just want to say you might not like this, but I’m not sure it is a great time to buy houses for people as primary residences. I think for a lot of people it’s maybe better to wait right now, not because prices are going to get cheaper, but because people are stretched a little bit and if your budget is stretched, inflation is eating away and you need to save some money, it might not be a bad time to rent because it is going to be cheaper for you probably in the next few years. I think what James said sort of hits the nail on the head, which is how long do you plan to live in a house? And everyone has this debate, should you rent or buy? There are good arguments on both sides, but for almost all situations, if you’re going to live five years in a house or longer, it’s usually better for you to buy.

And so I think that’s really sort of the thing that people should be thinking about is if I’m just trying to, if I want to save money for two or three years and then buy a house, I’m going to be in five years, I think that’s an okay decision personally, but you just need to understand that you shouldn’t be doing that expecting prices to go down because that might not happen. And in fact, historically it’s probably unlikely, but I do think there is some logic to one, just saving money on rent. The other thing that I personally do right now, and I’m in a unique situation, I live overseas, but I rent and I invest the money I would’ve used in a down payment into investment properties. And I think that’s another thing that is not really reflected in this headline, but is another good consideration for people is like if you can do the math, you could actually figure out what’s better for you.

And actually, if you’re a BiggerPockets Pro member, there is a calculator I built a year ago. It’s in the resource hub, it’s a house hack, buy rent calculator, and in your area you can go and just put in information about those three different things and it will help you make that decision for you. So check that out. Alright, for our third headline today, US job growth totaled 175,000 in April, much less than expected while unemployment rose to 3.9%. This comes from CNBC. I think the key thing here is that jobless claims rose and less jobs were added to the US economy bringing hope that the Fed will be able to cut rates. Now 175,000 jobs added to the economy is still kind of a lot of jobs, but it’s like the lowest that it’s been and I think since February of 2023. So it does mark sort of a trend that might be positive if you’re hoping for rate cuts. And just as a reminder, just a couple of weeks ago we were talking about the probability of rate cuts going down because inflation’s higher. And so this is just the latest data point in the seesaw of trying to interpret this very confusing economic data and predicting what the fed’s doing. But people love when we make predictions. So Henry, do you think this improves the probability that rates will get cut this year?

Henry:

I don’t know. I’d have to see it more than just one blip on the chart in the past year and a couple of months. If it continues, then that increases the likelihood, but just because this headline came or this stat came out, I haven’t changed my thought process. I still don’t think we’re going to see any rate cuts this year.

Dave:

Okay, I like it. I like it. And then if you’re wrong, it’s just fine. Right?

Henry:

Absolutely. No one’s paying me more for being right or wrong,

Dave:

But

Henry:

No, but

Dave:

I think if you’re planning for the most expensive option, right? Yeah,

Henry:

Absolutely.

Dave:

Yeah. And so if you turn out to be incorrect and there are rate cuts, then most likely that will lead to better conditions for you, better cashflow. Absolutely. James, what about you? Are you just tired of having these conversations yet?

James :

I’m so sick of this stat.

Every time my phone burns up with headlines, it’s always those three headlines like inflation jobs report and it’s like it’s that shock factor. But to kind of look at this, basically we’re at 1 75 the month before we were over three 30 in growth, and that same drop that you referenced back in 2023 was almost the exact same cut. February, 2023, they brought in 287,000 new jobs, then it dropped to the lowest it had been in March of 2023. And I remember talking about this, we’re like, whoa, there’s this big shift. And then guess what? The next month they doubled the job growth again and we’ve yet to see any consistent data. It’s just these little blips up and down, it’s spikes way high and then it spikes way low and then there’s some average months and we’re all just kind of watching it. And until I see some consistent now next month, if we see low unemployment rise and low job growth, then yeah, maybe there’s a trend here, but right now we don’t see a trend and so it’s just kind of a blip.

Data gets skewed too. I mean it is like you look at median home price right now in certain neighborhoods. Sometimes I was looking at a certain neighborhood, it’s like 45 minutes out of Seattle and the average median home price went from one month of $380,000 to the next month of 1.1 million because there’s such little data in the market, it’s like it just grabbed the one sale and it’s like, so you have to really dig into these trends before you react. And I am with Henry, I don’t think rates are going to go down until maybe the end of the year. You want to forecast that into your investing, but that you shouldn’t let that stop you from an invest, get aggressive pullback. We have yet to see a consistent trend. If you look at this graph, it is all over the place for the jobs totals in Phil. I see the trend, I really don’t care.

Dave:

I feel like this kind of minute by minute tracking of the Fed is for stockbrokers. This is for people who are trading equities where there is volatility and prices get, every asset gets repriced instantly and these tiny little things change everything. Real estate’s just like a slower moving asset. And so these things don’t really matter until there’s a trend like James said, until we have a line of sight on what might be happening a year from now, I don’t really think the real estate market is going to react that much. And you see that now in mortgage rates because they haven’t really changed that much over the last couple of weeks. They’ve gone up over the course of the year, but I think that’s probably likely to keep coming. So I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like we might see a softening in prices over the summer because demand is probably going to lag a little bit and inventory is starting to go up and that might be a good opportunity for buyers right now. Can

Henry:

You define what you mean by softening of prices? Because people hear that and they go, oh, we’re going to drop by 10%. What does that mean?

Dave:

Oh, no, no, no. I just think right now as of this is we’re recording this middle of May, so right now prices are up almost 6% year over year nationwide, which is above average appreciation for the housing market. And so I think it might go down to 3% year over year or 2% year over year, I don’t know, 4% year over year. I just think that we’ll see that still means prices are up just for everyone. They’re just not going up at the same rate slow. Yes. So that’s a very good call out, Henry, but the reason that I think it will soften and is because there’s a little bit more inventory, which is typically a positive thing for people who are looking for on market deals.

Henry:

I would agree with you typically in this scenario, but right now I have a house on the market. It was on the market so long that the listing expired and then we recently renewed it maybe two weeks ago and since we renewed it, showings have gone up and we ended up getting an offer at almost full price. And then when we got to the inspection, things didn’t go great in the inspection and they were like, well, we want to work with you. What can we fix? What can we get done? They really want to get this house and this is a higher priced house in a pretty good part of town, but it seems could be other options out there. And so I still think people are trying to capitalize on the properties that are there because that indicates to me that they don’t want to go back out to the market. They want to keep what they got so that they don’t lose it. And that is indicative of people of there not being a ton of inventory.

Dave:

Yeah, that’s true. And obviously that is reflective of the strength of your market right now.

Henry:

Yeah, very true.

Dave:

I was just actually earlier today was looking at this inventory chart that just shows by county in the US where is going up and it is going up in most counties in the United States, but Henry very notably Arkansas is not one of those places. And generally speaking, Midwest northeast is going up less slowly. When I say I think it’s going to soften, I’m talking nationally and I actually think when you look at the data carefully, it’s not that many areas that are really pulling down might soften, but actually it’s some of the places that were the hottest in the last year, like Texas seeing huge increases in inventory. Florida is actually seeing a lot of increases inventory. Same thing in Oklahoma, Colorado. So I do think that will on a national level maybe bring us a little bit slower rates of appreciation but still appreciating.

James :

Yeah, and I think a lot of that too is those markets are also bringing more inventory because their insurance cost and tax, they’ve just gone up so much. Other factors inside your payment is affecting the affordability with the interest rates and it’s cooling some markets down for sure, and I a hundred percent agree with you, the fact that it’s 6% appreciation year over year with this high rates, that doesn’t logically really make sense.

Dave:

No, it doesn’t. The

James :

Average home appreciation for the last 30 years is like 3.8% and I’m with you. I think it’s going to be two to 3% on a steady growth. That’s usually what real estate does. That’s how we factor all of our long-term holds. We run a 3% appreciation rate on a 10 year halt because that’s just the historical

Dave:

Yes, which is fine. Deals work that way,

James :

Right? It’s completely fine, especially if you’re getting some cashflow or if you want to get some extra kick, get some value, add in there, jump the line, get some extra equity and then get your 3% growth at that point. But I think the thing is the median home price isn’t going to cool this summer. Of course it will. It’s seasonal slowdown. People forgot their seasonal slowdowns. July slows down. When you go into the holidays and people are buying Christmas presents and holidays and traveling, they don’t buy houses as much and as investors, you just got to weather those times and it is some of the best times to buy is in July and August because you’re picking it up when it’s the coolest out there, people get a little finicky, they get a little nervous. And then if you’re a flipper, by the time you’re dis disposing, you’re hitting the first of the year when the market starts cranking. And that’s one thing I do not understand is investors rush in and they start buying in the spring and get really aggressive, but then they’re disposing in a bad market. Whereas if you buy when it’s flat and people are a little worried, that’s where you rip the deal. And so yes, I do think it will slow down because it always does and it’s a great buying opportunity. People should load up heavy during those times, especially if it’s a short-term dispo,

Henry:

Unless you’re James Daniel and you’re padding the stats and you’ve got 18 crews in your flip house trying to get it done in 10 days so you can get it on the market. It doesn’t matter what time you buy it, you got 37 people working in your house trying to get it done super fast. Alright, I see what you do strangle

James :

The deal. You know what the amount of money I pay on labor right now, they should show up 18 DI expected to get done fast with how much we’re paying.

Dave:

I feel like James has the equivalent of the F1 pick crew or the NASCAR pick crew

Henry:

When it was

Dave:

Fucking the house. It’s they close the deal and just all of a sudden 80 people rush the house and they’re just all working at the same time and the cloud of smoke comes up and then the house is sold for of 50% cash on cash return.

Henry:

That’s pretty much how I feel. Thanks.

Dave:

Well James, you’ve worked hard to get to that

James :

Place and sometimes it doesn’t work. I will tell you that much.

Dave:

We’ve heard our first couple of headlines about what Americans think about the housing market and what’s going on with the labor market, but how do Americans feel about the economy overall? We’ll discuss it right after this.

Welcome back to on the market. Let’s get back into it. Alright, so moving on to our last headline here. God, wow, these are all bummer headlines today. Calin, we got to get an uplifting one in the next episode because this one is, consumers haven’t felt this bad about the economy since November. This comes from C Nnn, but it’s just reporting on government data or actually it comes from the University of Michigan. It’s a consumer sentiment index. It plunged to its lowest level in six months as I’m guessing, probably because inflation data has not been great, even though inflation hasn’t really gotten that much worse. It’s sort of in the same ballpark, but I’m guessing people are feeling like there was some momentum that inflation was going down and now it’s just taking a little bit of a step backwards and that’s a bummer. What do you guys make of this?

James :

Well, I think people are slowing down too. The cost of debt is just more too, credit cards are expensive and so it’s not just the inflation, it’s the cost of money and all these things. If you want to go buy that item on your credit card, it’s going to cost you more. And I think that’s why people are kind of feeling bad. I mean if you’re looking at your credit card bill and it’s 25%, that’s not fun. And so they’re hesitant about spending money. But the funny thing is, I hear this and then I land into Seattle last night and there’s over an hour long pickup line at Uber because of the amount of people traveling. And so I hear this and I’m like, this is not what I’m seeing though. People are still spending, they’re may be just complaining, but they’re still spending money as far as I can see.

Henry:

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I travel a ton and I’m always befuddled at how many people I see packed into these airports traveling all over the country and so money is being spent, but I also on the other end like, man, have you been grocery shopping? It is.

Boy, it is expensive because we truly are trying to cook more in order to save money. And man, I’m looking at the grocery bill and I’m like, I don’t know man, might as well just go out. Probably could have ate out, probably could have ate out and done the same. A lot of these social media accounts where people are trying to teach you all the hacks to ordering cheap food at restaurants are starting to look real good right now because groceries are high, fast food restaurants are high. It’s expensive to do regular stuff like feed your family and pay your bills. Utilities are going up. It’s just a lot. I can see why people are feeling it, but it does feel like a lot of people are complaining because there is a lot of discretionary spending happening. I mean I see that as well. So I don’t know how to draw the correlation between that.

Dave:

I heard this term, I don’t know if this describes everyone, but I just thought it was interesting this term financial dysmorphia, which if you’ve ever heard dysmorphia is just kind of like a false sense of yourself. And so you basically, this article was talking specifically about Gen Z and millennials and how social media has led to this sort of dueling. So this one two punch of economic gloom where half the social media content, you guys probably see this too, is all this negativity about the economy, everything stinks. I can’t get ahead and that’s a lot of content, but at the same time the other half of the content they see is are like, look how good my life is. I’m traveling, I’m going to a private island. And so it creates, this makes sense the situation where people really feel stuck because they’re looking at these sort of unrealistic hyperinflated sense of lifestyle. And at the same time, obviously the economy has a lot of problems right now. And so I can definitely see why pessimism is rebounding in the economy right now. Alright, well sorry for all the bummers guys, but we’re just going to bring you the headlines as we see ’em. Hopefully next month when we do this again, we’ll have some more uplifting headlines for you.

James :

One thing, these headlines have been bummers for 12 to 18 months, but one thing I do know is you can make money in this market. And so don’t buy the hype. Don’t buy the fear. Just set your goals, understand what you want to buy, go put it in place and you will still make money. I know Henry’s making money, Dave, we’re going to make some money in this flip off house.

Henry:

See what you did there.

James :

See what you did works.

Dave:

Absolutely.

James :

Yeah, so don’t buy the hype.

Dave:

Alright, well Henry and James, thank you so much for coming and hanging out and chatting about this stuff with us. And thank you all so much for listening. We appreciate it. If you like this show, please make sure to give us an honest review on either Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, and we’ll see you for the next episode of On The Market.

Dave:

On The Market was created by me, Dave Meyer and Kaylin Bennett. The show is produced by Kaylin Bennett, with editing by Exodus Media. Copywriting is by Calico content and we want to extend a big thank you to everyone at BiggerPockets for making this show possible.