- 2 days ago
On today’s episode, Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler talks with Lead Analyst Logan Mohtashami about home prices and whether he expects them to fall in 2026. The two also discuss the potential new Fed chair, Kevin Hassett. At the end of this episode, Logan and Sarah pay tribute to podcast producer Elissa Branch after her passing.
Related to this episode:
December housing data provides early signals for 2026 market
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/december-housing-trends-2026/
HousingWire | YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXDD_3y3LvU60vac7eki-6Q
More info about HousingWire
https://lnk.bio/housingwire
To learn more about Trust & Will go to https://trustandwill.com/
The HousingWire Daily podcast brings the full picture of the most compelling stories in the housing market reported across HousingWire. Each morning, listen to editor in chief Sarah Wheeler talk to leading industry voices and get a deeper look behind the scenes of the top mortgage and real estate.
Related to this episode:
December housing data provides early signals for 2026 market
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/december-housing-trends-2026/
HousingWire | YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXDD_3y3LvU60vac7eki-6Q
More info about HousingWire
https://lnk.bio/housingwire
To learn more about Trust & Will go to https://trustandwill.com/
The HousingWire Daily podcast brings the full picture of the most compelling stories in the housing market reported across HousingWire. Each morning, listen to editor in chief Sarah Wheeler talk to leading industry voices and get a deeper look behind the scenes of the top mortgage and real estate.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome, everyone. My guest today is lead analyst Logan Motoshami to talk about home
00:11prices and whether he expects them to fall in 2026. We'll also talk about the potential
00:16new Fed chair. And at the end of this episode, we're going to talk about a close colleague
00:20of ours who we lost over the weekend and give our listeners a sense of who she was. Before
00:26we begin, I want to thank our sponsor, TrustinWill, for making this episode possible. Logan, welcome
00:32back to the podcast. It is wonderful to be here, Sarah. Wonderful to have you. Okay, so economics
00:38first. Let's talk about the big news over the last, like, say, five days in a lot of circles
00:44was some predictions that home prices were going to crash. Worse than 2008, I think, is the quote
00:52that I saw over a lot of places. So maybe bring us up to speed on what that is and how worried
00:57you are about home prices. So since I could remember over the last 12 or 13 years, I've
01:05witnessed how the housing price crash people do this. Just remember, these are not housing
01:13analysts. They are entertainers. That's all they are. If you look at them as an entertainer,
01:19then these headlines start to make sense. But, you know, doing this in the last decade from
01:292012 to 2019, the housing bubble 2.0 people, they always had every year there was something
01:35that was supposed to bring prices back down to the mean or reversion to the mean, you know,
01:40and it never worked, right? Of course, going into COVID, everyone right away, home prices,
01:45we wrote, you know, even articles talking about, like, what would it take for home prices
01:50to crash? Now, because of what's happened, you know, in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, we get the
01:57same people that keep on saying worse than the great financial crisis. You know, home prices
02:02are going to drop, you know, to X or they're going to revert back to the means of median,
02:07stuff like that. And I always stress to everyone, they are entertainers. They are not housing
02:13analysts. A housing analyst wouldn't do this every single day for four straight years.
02:18Now, what I've done is tactically tricked them into letting me debate them. So then everyone
02:22gets to see. You only listen to people that have a forecast and a model. A model is much
02:28more important than the forecast because it keeps you in line to what your economic work
02:32is. None of these people are serious people, right? You just go back and ask them for their
02:38forecast and their models, make them visually show you. And then the 50% crash, which the person even
02:45said, I never really said that it was 38%, whatever it is, this individual has been wrong for four
02:51straight years. So wrong that it amounts to the same levels of the housing price crash. So always
02:57remember, do not listen to any headline, look at the person's work. And I guarantee you 100%,
03:04all these price crash tumors are all anti-central bank people. It's a business model. So what we're
03:10going to do today is explain what would it look like for this major deflationary collapse in home
03:19prices, which is really rare in the history of America going back post-World War II. But what will
03:23it look like? What will it look like? And the reason that we keep bringing this up is because
03:27this particular interview got a ton of play, right? So all the major news outlets covered it or
03:34some of them. And the thing is that this is what buyers, sellers are looking at. And they're like,
03:39there's a home price crash coming worse than 2008. That's what they hear, right? And they hear it over
03:45and over again. And so that's one of the reasons we take it on specifically is because like, we know
03:50that our listeners are sophisticated. They're not falling for that. But their buyers, their sellers,
03:57the people that they do business with might very much think this. So let's dig in. What are you
04:03looking for? And why would you not be worried about this? So post-World War II, it's really rare
04:10for nominal home prices to fall. If you take 2007 and 11 out of the equation, 1990 had 0.7% decline,
04:201991 had 0.2% decline. So these people are talking about big nominal home price crashes. So what did we
04:26see in the one time in history that this did occur? Number one, the housing market was, the housing
04:34bubble was a massive credit sales boom. Like credit leverage was being sent off the roof. If you look
04:40at the leverage ratios versus GDP or household worth, they were just, they were off the charts.
04:47None of that's happening right now, right? We did a major deleveraging through foreclosures and short sales.
04:53And because of qualified mortgage and the bankruptcy reform laws, you can't basically leverage up in
04:59housing like people did in the past. So we don't have any credit leverage cycle going back to the
05:06last 14 years, what we saw from 2002 to 2005. Then we want to go back to the inventory story.
05:14Can you hypothetically have a 50% or 38% or 20% or so? Whatever these people have forecasted for 13 years,
05:22we recorded them all too. Active inventory in America in 2007 was 4 million. Active inventory
05:32today in America is 1.52. Okay. Difference. Big difference. Big difference. The new listings data,
05:39which we always think is key, which I don't think these people even have, right? I think they're to
05:45me what we call third party regurgitators. They take other people's data and then they massage it to
05:50create a narrative for themselves. Our new listings data, and I showed this over the weekend on Twitter,
05:57last week was like 47,000, the seasonal decline. The normal periods in the last decade from 2013 to 2019,
06:05the seasonal peaks would be about 80 to 100,000. In the last five years, the years that we're supposed
06:11to have this massive price crash, 30 to 90,000, right there, right there, something is different,
06:18right? But again, reading. Anybody that can read would know this, right? Because you could see the
06:24difference. But back then during the housing crash, these were forced credit sellers, right?
06:30Foreclosure, short sales. These homes were coming to the market, not because these were sellers that
06:35were going to be buyers. That number was running at 250 to 400,000 per week for years, years.
06:46So we've heard this Airbnb crash, all these things. It is the end of 2025. None of it ever happened,
06:53right? And these people have been saying this for year after year after year, including the
06:56individual that everybody's like gone back and looked at what they said. So the new listings data
07:01the last five years have been the lowest levels ever in history. We didn't even get back to a
07:05normal level this year that I was hoping that we would get. So even if I took the peak, the peak
07:12new listings data in the last five years doubled it, we didn't even get to the low end of the levels
07:19that we saw during the crash. Why? There are no forced sellers, right? We've had tons and tons,
07:25and this is very key for everyone. We've had so many recessions post-World War II. We only had one
07:32foreclosure crisis that led to the housing bubble. And now we adjusted all these rules after 2010 to
07:39facilitate the greatest home buying profile in the history of the world. And this is the workplace
07:46they want to fold, you know, die on, on their sword. I mean, just, it's not logical. But if you look
07:53it as entertainment, yes. Yeah. So I think this is the key is like inventory, right? And the correlation
08:01between inventory and home prices, like to get home prices to fall by 50%, or 36%, or whatever we're
08:08talking about here, it's like, you would need something really big to happen, because that's not
08:13normal. As you've pointed out. Now, obviously, these are national numbers, there are different markets
08:17that are having a correction. Austin, you could you could say that about discrete markets. But if you're
08:23talking about national numbers, it's not normal to have that kind of drop in home prices, it just doesn't
08:31happen. You would have to, again, this is why I always say, we've had individuals in the last five
08:39years talk about big housing bubble crashes with inventory near all time lows, and three to four percent
08:45mortgage rate. This is how cuckoo this group is. But if you get, look at them as entertainers, right? If you just
08:52think of them as entertainers for attention, then it's like, okay, they're all crazy. But you know,
08:58we all watch crazy people on TV. Right? So that's nothing, nothing different. Again, this is why a
09:04model is very critical. Now, here, it's at the end of 2025, right? I always, I always like to teach it
09:12this way. For the for the next 100 years, we are on record because I wanted to test my model against
09:18the biggest home sale crash ever. And then a three-year period where sales stay at record low
09:24levels. We just had it 2023, 2024 and 2025, right? In 2006, seven and eight, inventory went vertical,
09:32right? Foreclosures, the tombstone chart that you are going to put, you know, on my grave many years
09:41from now. That was showing stress in 2005, six, seven and eight. And here we are, that data line
09:49is running pre-COVID still. So the model that they're using for these big nominal home price
09:55crashes in 2020, 2021, 2022, 23 and 2025, because the individual and the individual's partner forecasted
10:03the number one and number two biggest home price crash in history in 2024 and 2025 combined. And it
10:11didn't work. Why? There are no working models. So now you guys see this new listings data, active
10:17inventory, distress sales, distress sales as a higher percentage of sales in America. That's what was
10:25going on, right? If the percentage of distress sales are up here, right, then that brings the whole price
10:31thing down. When it's down here, it's really hard, right? So that's what history has shown us. Again, why we
10:38always stress reading. So very simple, just kind of look at it because we just had that, right? We have a
10:45working model. So now that we're at the end of 2025, you go back, you take their name, their face, their
10:51forecasts, you accumulate them all up for five years. And I guarantee you, you add the price gains to it, they would
10:59be wrong just as much as the housing crash price declines, right? So again, entertainers, not
11:06analysts. If you look at them as entertainers, then it makes sense. But we have working models. We show
11:11them all the time at live events. We show them in our articles. We've written countless of articles on
11:17this and it is December 2025. The Russians failed, the Chinese failed, the Iranians failed, the anti-Central
11:25bank failed, right? America is still standing here. The economy is still intact, right? There's no
11:31massive credit breaks or deep recessions. That was their fantasy dream in 2008. And they can't let it
11:38go. And we're sitting here with all the data, with all the numbers to show people why, right? The why
11:44is more important than what they proclaim to be the future of this country.
11:49So let's talk about data for a second, because our data is different than the NAR data. The housing
11:55wire data looks at things that are only available, like if you want to go out and buy a house right now, you
12:00can buy them. So if they're under contract, if they're pending, they're not on our list. They are on the NAR
12:05list, but neither of those, ours doesn't show that. The NAR data doesn't show this either, correct?
12:11You know, when I do the NAR chart, going back to the early 1980s, I draw these black lines. We call them
12:18crayon economics because I can teach a five to six-year-old child housing economics and they'll
12:24get it. But I cannot teach these grown-ass adults. Like the inventory data looks different. So I draw
12:30these crayon lines. It used to be very common in previous decades in the 80s and 90s, 2000, that
12:37rising inventory rise with sales. And these black lines would go up and then sales would rise,
12:43prices would rise, housing. These are how the economic cycles work.
12:48None of that is happening here, you know, in the last few years. And in fact, since really 2014,
12:54I always use 2014. 2014 was the last year that the NAR's inventory actually kind of grew just a
13:01little bit, just like a couple hundred thousand. I think it was like 2.4 million. That was a peak.
13:06And, you know, home sales fell that year. But during that whole time, 70 to 80% of home sellers are
13:13buyers. So there's 20 to 30% of inventories left. A mortgage buyer, a first-time home buyer,
13:18that does not, you know, usually gobbles that up. And this is why inventory has gone down lower and
13:23lower and lower for the last 10 years. And then we got to a very, very unhealthy spot where the
13:29active inventory was at all-time lows in 2020. We had no seasonal increase. And then because of that,
13:36you know, we had too many people chasing too few homes. But the credit market was completely fine.
13:41These weren't the 228s or the 327s or the 8020s or the stated incomes or the option arm, you know,
13:50none of these things are here. So it is not shocking that in the history books, 2023, 2024, 2025,
13:57inventory still today is at the bottom end level of the range of pre-COVID going back four decades.
14:06If you have the ability to read, or even if you couldn't read and just have the ability to see,
14:13those crayon charts are there for a reason. And it is December, 2025.
14:18It is December. So hopefully we have put that to rest for people. No matter what you see between
14:23here and Christmas, the new year, that's not something you need to worry about. Let's switch
14:28a little bit and talk about the unknown of the next Fed president, right? The next Fed chair. We
14:36thought that we were going to have, even today, so we're recording this on Tuesday, there's all this
14:41talk about like, we're going to know it today. And it seemed really certain that it was going to be
14:45Kevin Hassett. Is that how you say his name? Kevin Hassett? Yes. So, and then right before we get on,
14:51it looks like it's been pushed back again. Yeah. You know, there was rumors that, you know,
14:56Trump was going to announce something that they've really leaked out information that it's going to
15:00be probably Kevin Hassett, or is this a trial balloon to see how the markets react to a Kevin
15:05Hassett? This White House likes to do a lot of trial balloons. So this is, this has now kept on
15:13pushing out, out, out. So the whole shadow Fed president thing that, you know, they were going
15:17to announce this early, never really happened. We're getting toward the end of the year and
15:21Powell's end is in May. But now I think, you know, they've, they've got some choices. Trump
15:29says he's picked the person. It looks like it's going to be Kevin Hassett. We've talked about this
15:33before that to me, the White House was fuming at, after the last Fed meeting that Powell did not give
15:41Ford guidance to be dovish. And because of that, and all the other Fed presidents came to be very,
15:47very hawkish. It just, it just, to me, it seems Trump doesn't want anything to do with any Fed
15:54member. Now, Kevin Hassett is technically better than Kevin Walsh because Kevin Walsh has said some
16:00things that everyone is like, what is he talking about? So, you know, and he has always hated the
16:05Fed and now he wants to rule the Fed. So it's like you bash all the people. Now you want to be their
16:09boss. Kevin Hassett is going to be a kind of a yes man. It is not the guy I want. I would be
16:18relieved 100% of Kevin Hassett says that, well, I'll leave the Fed chairman as soon as Trump leaves.
16:25Because what I feel like Kevin Hassett will do it, let's say hypothetically, you know,
16:30Trump leaves at the end, a Democrat wins, Kevin Hassett will go into reverse mode. And instead of
16:37being very duffish, we'll be super hawkish on everything to try to inflict. This is why I don't
16:42like ideological people in heads of power in institutions that are supposed to be away from
16:48everything. Christopher Waller was part of team Logan, right? Labor over inflation. The 10 year
16:54yield today at last I checked was 4.09%. The bond market did a lot of the heavy lifting as they should
16:59have. We can keep this going in a normal sense. You don't necessarily need a yes man, but I just feel
17:06that Trump just doesn't trust any Fed members. And, you know, unilaterally, Kevin Hassett can't
17:12just like cut rates by himself, right? All he could do is try to gather up as many votes as possible.
17:18But what he will do, that is not Jerome Powell. He will not give any kind of hawkish tone. As long as
17:26Trump is president, he will have more of a dovish signal out there. That's what he can do for Trump.
17:34But he's got to make sure that he's got enough votes and rile of people. That's why I think a
17:39Christopher Waller, the markets will trust. They will get, he has a better way of talking about
17:43things with other Fed members that are hawks and they could push that forward. But now you put
17:48kind of chaos into the system. You have somebody that you know does not like the hawkish people on
17:55the Fed. And I can imagine that if Trump doesn't have the numbers, he's just going to go after other
18:01Fed presidents, voting Fed presidents and non-voting Fed presidents to kind of make sure
18:07that, you know, he gets his ways. Because as soon as he gets the numbers, you know, they can do what
18:12they want, right? They could cut rates or do that. And again, 65 to 75% of this whole 10-year yield
18:20channel and mortgage rates and everything is Fed policy. But we talk about this year more, if the labor
18:28data did not get softer and spreads didn't get better, mortgage rates are near 7%, right? Not near
18:346%. So these are the things that we have to start figuring out what's going to, what's it going to
18:40look like in 2026? Because 2026, boy, there could be some drama there.
18:45There really could. Well, keep an eye out, you guys, our listeners here, but also on housingwire.com.
18:50We are following this very carefully, as you can imagine. Logan, now I want to do something a little
18:56bit different. So this is more personal for you and me, the rest of this podcast. We wanted to talk
19:01about somebody who is just really dear to us, who unfortunately we lost over the weekend. And
19:07she is a person that if somebody has been on the podcast as a guest, not just this podcast, but
19:13powerhouse, real trending, all of the housingwire podcasts, they would know our producer,
19:20Alyssa Branch. And she unfortunately was in a fatal car wreck over the weekend, she and her boyfriend.
19:28And this has just gutted us. She was such an important part of this particular team,
19:33obviously very important to Housing Wire and to her larger production team. But for you and I,
19:40a lot of people just see you and me and they think, oh, it's two people, but it's never two people.
19:43It was always three people. And that was Alyssa. And so we wanted to just give our listeners a
19:50little bit of like, we just wanted to, you know, kind of give her a tribute because we are really
19:55going to miss her going forward. So we'd love to hear from you. Again, she was, she was very young.
20:01She was 25. So it's just a shocking thing to lose somebody at that age. And it's just been tough.
20:07You know, she had such a great future. I mean, for her age and able to do, I mean,
20:13an award-winning podcast to deal with you and I together, especially to deal with me. I mean,
20:19unbelievable poise, you know, and I don't, I, in my lifetime, I haven't had coworkers and I don't,
20:27I mean, outside of you, you know, she's really been the only coworker that I deal with on a daily
20:33basis. So it is literally losing a family member. So it was just so gut-wrenching, but knowing her,
20:42she'd always say, Hey, get the podcast up, make sure you do it this week. Keep things going. Cause
20:48we want to keep, you know, staying in the top 10 in America for the business news podcast. So
20:53definitely we will always keep her in our memory all the time. I think that's the thing. Like we were
20:59even like, Oh, how can we do this this week? But you know, I could hear her and here's the thing.
21:04She was so young, but from my perspective, sometimes she was the adult in the room.
21:10Well, with me, she was always the adult in the room. Yes.
21:13She had poise. Like you said, that's a great way to describe it because she started working
21:17at housing where when she was an intern, like 21, you know, she was still in school. We hired her.
21:23We saw so much potential there and she immediately made a mark. And part of that was she was not
21:29intimidated. She had the skills and she built her expertise, but she also had the confidence
21:34to really mix it up with some of the, you know, really big leaders in the space on those other
21:42podcasts and sometimes on my podcast and just really help them. And, but mostly, especially
21:47she was just such a big factor in this podcast. And I was thinking Logan about the many times,
21:55I mean, just on a regular basis, a daily podcast is, is a slog for, for the producer. Right. And
22:01you and I are always in different places. We're always in these, we always have these crazy
22:05circumstances that she would have to work around. And I was thinking about a couple of years ago,
22:11we were in New York city. I think we were there for servicing the MBA servicing conference. And we're
22:15staying, all of our team was staying at a hotel close to that hotel with tiny rooms. And we're trying
22:22to do the podcast and it's so loud in our rooms. And the lighting is so bad that eventually the
22:27only place, so she's helping us as we're trying to find someplace in your room, there's like a
22:33wardrobe. It's not even like a true closet. It's just a wardrobe that you get inside. And that's
22:38the only place you can do it. And she and I, all we can see of you is like your eyes. They're like
22:43glowing because you look like some vampire. And then I don't even, I'm in a smaller hotel room. I don't
22:48even have a wardrobe. So I end up in the bathroom and I have to put pillows and the towels and some
22:54of my clothes just to dampen the sound. And this was our best option. And that's just to me, the
22:58perfect picture of how she would just roll with anything. And she's like, I got it. I'll figure
23:04it out. And post-production just supported us. And it's just a huge partner, even though to our
23:11listeners, they don't know all the work that she was doing. Yes, we will truly miss her, but we will
23:16always keep her in our memories every single day. And any success this podcast has going
23:20on in the future is attributed to her. I love that. And that's why we are continuing.
23:26She was a huge part of how we won our award, of the fact that we're often in the top 10 of
23:32Business News podcast. She was very proud of that as she should be. And so again, we will
23:36miss her. Logan, thank you so much.
Be the first to comment