- 3 months ago
On today’s special July 4th episode, Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler talks with Lead Analyst Logan Mohtashami about what makes the U.S. housing market unique and resilient.
Related to this episode:
Keys to the housing market for the rest of 2026
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/keys-to-the-housing-market-for-the-rest-of-2026/
HousingWire | YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXDD_3y3LvU60vac7eki-6Q
More info about HousingWire
https://lnk.bio/housingwire
Want more from Sarah? Don’t forget to subscribe!
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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 r
Related to this episode:
Keys to the housing market for the rest of 2026
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/keys-to-the-housing-market-for-the-rest-of-2026/
HousingWire | YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXDD_3y3LvU60vac7eki-6Q
More info about HousingWire
https://lnk.bio/housingwire
Want more from Sarah? Don’t forget to subscribe!
https://www.housingwire.com/subscribe/
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 r
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NewsTranscript
00:11Welcome, everyone, to this special 4th of July edition of the podcast with my very regular
00:17guest, some would say co-host, lead analyst Logan Motoshami, where we're going to discuss
00:23what makes the U.S. housing system so unique.
00:25It's a topic Logan and I both feel so strongly about, so it's fun to get to highlight it
00:30around the 4th.
00:31And also, for those of you who are watching on YouTube, we are dressed in our 4th of July,
00:37although you're pretty dressed up.
00:39You're in colors, but you're pretty dressed up for, like, the 4th of July vibe there, Logan.
00:44I actually had to do a webinar right before I got on here, and what happens is when I
00:49do the nerd tour, people do requests for the colored silk shirts that I have to kind of
00:55match the color.
00:56So I have 18 of them, so I try to accommodate as much as I can.
01:01You have some great shirts, and I love this color, so it just doesn't look like you're
01:05about to go to a backyard barbecue, but that's okay.
01:09So let's dive in.
01:10So, you know, when I was thinking about this episode, it's something that we've done before,
01:13but really talking about specifically right now in this moment, what is it about the U.S.
01:21housing market that is really unique and is really beneficial to our whole system of, like,
01:27you know, homeowners building wealth of this entire housing ecosystem that we have?
01:33Well, you know, I mean, just in general, how I look at the housing market is how I look at
01:37the U.S. economy itself.
01:39I mean, outside of COVID, right, when the advent of social media has fabricated people's resumes
01:51in terms of so many people are now economic and housing experts, but always talking about
01:56a crash, a recession, and we have a lot of older men in this country who believe federal
02:01debt is a bad thing in terms of, you know, it's going to be so negative, which was the funny
02:06part, I was at an event recently with a bunch of elderly gentlemen, and they were just sitting
02:11there, oh my God, we can't, we just need to balance the budget.
02:15And I was just thinking, these are now relics of the past, that I've always said that these
02:20men grew up being told that federal debt is bad and we're broke and everything, and they're
02:25going to die this way, and they're going to go in the afterlife not realizing that they
02:29were lied to.
02:30And part of that is, you know, whatever is a deficit is, in a sense, a surplus to the economy.
02:35And here we are, if it wasn't for COVID, we would have had the longest economic and job
02:41expansion in history still continuing.
02:44And here we are being told-
02:45Expansion from what?
02:47Expansion from-
02:47Just from 2010, all the way to 2026, which a lot of people know me for, you know, wasn't
02:54the housing bubble crash people in the last decade, which was part of it, but we had a
02:58lot of people talk about America's broke and, you know, there's no middle class and everything,
03:04and we just smoked those.
03:05There's an article I wrote in 2018 that says, you know, congratulations, America, you destroyed
03:12the American bears.
03:13And I listed all the garbage takes that people have set, a lot of them by elderly men.
03:20And we crushed them.
03:22And these people are way too old.
03:24They're going to die thinking these crazy things about America.
03:27But with housing, I always thought it isn't so much about the wealth creation, so much
03:33of it is the 30-year fixed, right?
03:36And the housing market, when we look at all the regulations that were put in, and not just
03:43the qualified mortgage, the Dodd-Frank in 2010, which eventually became the qualified mortgage
03:47law in 2014, but the 2005 bankruptcy reform laws.
03:52Those are two really big keys.
03:54And what it is, is our households are much better than anyone else's.
03:59And because we consume goods and services, we've been able to do that with a lot of shocks
04:06being thrown our way from 2010 all the way on.
04:09And of course, we have the Federal Reserve.
04:11And, you know, when things get crazy, you know, their job is to reduce any recession as close
04:21as possible.
04:22And that's why we typically have a majority of people are employed.
04:25We had a lot of fake people in the last decade.
04:29We're part of the MMT movement, Money Monitor, probably that we have to do a jobs guarantee
04:34because all these Americans are sitting here for 10 years not working.
04:37And I go, homie, it is not the economy.
04:39It's you.
04:41So majority of people are always working, right?
04:44And within the labor force participation rate and the 96 million people around, there are
04:51all these crazy things.
04:53But when you look at it right now, you know, COVID, COVID-19 recovery model, 2022, a lot
04:59of people thought we were going to recessions because we shocked the system with a lot of
05:03we held through that.
05:04The consumption of goods and services in this economy, the general domestic purchase that
05:11the Federal Reserve looks at, the GDP, has been solid and stable.
05:15And a lot of that is because homeowners, homeowners, I cannot tell you how many times do I show
05:21those charts over and over again where the FICO scores of Americans after the, you know, 2010
05:28have never looked better in history.
05:30And because of that, you know, we're able to handle shocks better because people have a
05:3630-year fixed mortgage.
05:37You have a fixed debt cost.
05:39Of course, there's taxes and insurance and everything.
05:42But you think about all this hype about taxes and insurance and all this stuff, and we look
05:49at our new listings data, and we said, my God, we didn't even get back to normal with new
05:55listings, let alone this notion of, you know, people are so broke, they're going to list their
06:00house and all these things that these pathetic, untalented, ungifted, unathletic, sorry, terrible
06:08doomers on the internet have done.
06:10And it's not, it's not there.
06:11And we are now July the 4th representing the United States of America.
06:16And these people just got smoked and they're going to the graves with it.
06:20Cycles come and go.
06:21But this clan since 2010, they, they, they lost their privilege to speak.
06:29And this is what I always said is the same thing I've always said.
06:32They will walk the afterlife with no eyes, no tongues, no ears, screaming about the Fed's
06:37balance sheets and America's broke and federal debt.
06:40And there's nothing that's going to change that unless they want to change themselves.
06:43Right.
06:44But a lot of that is the household balance sheets.
06:46And most Americans are always working because we are a badass country out here.
06:51Well, let's talk about the 30-year fix because we take it for granted, right?
06:54Most of us grew up in a time when that was available to our parents or to us, but like
06:59the advantage of that over say, you know, something where you have to like the British
07:04system or others where you have to refinance, you only have like a three or four or five
07:08year loan and you might have to refinance, you know, into the middle of, of a mortgage
07:14rate environment that was, that's much different.
07:16And here, like, you know, you know what you can count on your housing cost as opposed to
07:20renting, right?
07:21It's one of the reasons that buying a house is more advantageous than renting, even though
07:26you have to, you know, you have the cost of upkeep on the house, you have property tax,
07:29you have all this, you know, what your debt payment is going to be.
07:33And you can make decisions based on that.
07:35And it, and that happens.
07:36And that stays the same, even as everything in the economy goes around it.
07:41Fixed debt costs, rising wages, and in any inflationary environment, your wages rise
07:46more.
07:47And, you know, it's interesting, you brought up the, the upkeep of the house.
07:52Like I would say, do you think landlords, if they have to upkeep the house are going to
07:57say, well, we're not going to raise rent, you know, because of anything out here.
08:02I just generally believe what we've seen in the data that homeowners are just in a better
08:07financial spot than most renters.
08:09Of course, if you're a single guy, 55, you know, do you really buy a house?
08:14You know, that's why I always say that there's certain men in this country that, you know,
08:19it makes more sense for them to rent because they, they're not stable.
08:22They just, you know, move around and have no kids or anything, but generally families
08:27tend to buy homes.
08:28So the whole rent date may get married three and a half years after marriage, have kids
08:33Americans for decades, buy single family homes.
08:36They don't live in apartments.
08:38If they can, if they have the capacity to own the debt now, right.
08:42That debt payment, that debt payment is there.
08:44And so far it's passed, right.
08:46And we're sitting here.
08:49It's July the 4th, 2026.
08:52And how many things have we've gone through, especially during COVID?
08:55Like this is historic what we see in the last five and a half years, right?
09:00Like a hundred years from now, they're going to, boy, the U S went through COVID.
09:03They went through this rate shock.
09:05They went through these oil things and all this, and they set out and economic cycles come
09:09and go, there's of course, concentrated poverty and there's stuff.
09:13There's always, there's always issues with any economy.
09:16There's, there's no, uh, uh, perfect low, but as a country, we've smoked everyone for
09:22a long time, just because our middle class, you know, work hard.
09:26This is a very capitalistic society with a lot of help from government.
09:29I always say it's a joint affair, even though a lot of people like to say socialism versus
09:33a capital.
09:34That whole thing is Mickey mouse garbage.
09:36If you're still falling for this socialism, capitalism, I remember like those old guys
09:40at the event I was, or we're going to turn to a socialist country or no, no, no, we're
09:45not.
09:45Get your head out of your ass.
09:47What the hell are you talking about?
09:48We're the biggest capitalist money-making people in America, in the world, man.
09:53We represent nothing like Europe.
09:54We're here to make money and do stuff.
09:56So, so I just think that so much of the negative connotation over the last few decades have
10:01based on a principle that federal debt is a bad thing.
10:04And that, you know, deficit, we need to balance our books and we're going to turn like these
10:08other countries.
10:09And we're just not that that's just not who we are as people.
10:12I mean, look at the business applications that are coming out, which some people say
10:16it's AI and everything, but we're here.
10:18We're ballplayers.
10:19We hustle hard and we do this and whatever, whatever fall, small amount of people, you
10:24know, are, are gaming the system.
10:26The total totality of this force and King dollar and all these things have been evident.
10:32And it's, it's wonderful to see this being tested like we did during COVID.
10:38So our demographics are good.
10:40You know, we have a lot of young, how I, how I define it as replacement workers.
10:44We're not a growing population in terms of big growth anymore.
10:48Older countries don't have that, but you know, millennials and Gen Z, you know, both those
10:52two are bigger than the total population of Japan.
10:55And what do I always say, Sarah?
10:5640% of Japan's population will be dead by the end of the century.
10:59And they sell more adult diapers than baby diapers.
11:03Yes.
11:03That, that very cheery message you like to bring up.
11:06Yeah.
11:06You know, so I, you know, when I think of economics, economics is really demographics and productivity.
11:12Like the rest is like stamp collecting, but we, we, we, we got tested and we won.
11:18And there's a reason why we're the number one economy in the world.
11:21There's, there's things that we can do here that other countries really can't.
11:25And it's a lot of our consumers and those consumers are a lot of them are homeowners
11:30in the sense.
11:31You know, we talk about the American dream and I think sometimes, you know, homeownership
11:35is like that is the American dream, but you know, it's really a wider thing, which
11:39is you, you mentioned it, if you come here, no matter where you come from or where you
11:43start from and you work hard, you can reap the benefits of that hard work.
11:48And generally speaking, your kids are going to be better off than you.
11:50That's really the American dream is that like, and, and homeownership is a huge part of that.
11:54You could buy land, you can buy a house here, even if your ancestors didn't own any land
11:59in the, you know, 1300s, there's no landed gentry here.
12:02It's like, you've got, you've got a chance here.
12:05Um, and you know, the, the government has put its thumb on the scale for people to own
12:10homes, right?
12:11We have the 30 year fixes is, is just one part of that.
12:14They've also have, you know, you have your, um, interest, you have tax credits, you have,
12:19uh, all sorts of ways that they incentivize people to make it possible to own a home.
12:24You know, we, we, we look at it as the stock versus flow kind of thing.
12:28When you look at homeownership and homeowners, they are the majority of the force of, you know,
12:33kind of the, the middle class.
12:35And, you know, in a sense, housing policy was designed to have that fixed debt payment where
12:41you're what the reason why they want that rising wages, you have more disposable income,
12:45right?
12:46Because that fixed costs.
12:47So a lot of people go, well, taxes and insurance, like I, I show people like, okay, so here's
12:52your insurance or it's up a thousand dollars this year.
12:55Okay.
12:55That's like two door dashes.
12:57Well, two door dashes for me.
12:59Someone from someone who does door dash every single day.
13:02You know, someone who does door dash seven days a week, you know, uh, uh, yes, that's
13:06like two door dashes.
13:07So, so are you going to sell your house because you're so strapped because of a thousand, then
13:12when you see, when you presented that way, did your wages rise last year?
13:15Yeah.
13:16Okay.
13:16So, so, so, I mean, I, I just say in general, you know, one of the reasons why, you know,
13:23uh, one of the, one of the concerns of inventory getting to record low levels during COVID is
13:29that homeowners are doing really good.
13:31Remember the whole forbearance thing.
13:32Oh yeah.
13:33Remember when we had to deal with the forbearance crash, boy, those guys, I want, I wonder where
13:37the hell they went.
13:38Those, they were funny.
13:40They were like, oh my God, Americans are all going to sell their house and they're in
13:45forbearance and forbearance could go up to 10 to 15 mil.
13:48I was a homie.
13:49It's over.
13:50It's October 20th.
13:51Majority of people got their jobs back that are homeowners and they're like, what do you
13:55mean?
13:55I say, go look at the data.
13:56Anybody who got, who makes over 60,000, got their jobs back.
13:59Their service sector jobs and travel jobs that are being hurt, but it never happened.
14:03Why?
14:03Cause home is where the heart is Wheeler.
14:06You, you buy a house, you raise your family, you go to work, you take your kids to school,
14:11you have dinner, you create memories.
14:13And that's what housing was for, right?
14:16You think of the whole stock of the middle class that out here and that, that's, that
14:21was the benefit of it.
14:22And also the, the government likes to do what they call us forced savings, you know, because
14:26you, you, you use your house eventually over time and you create this wealth.
14:31And then at the end, you know, you think of all these baby boomers right now that have
14:35all these homes and net worth, you know, they have a choice.
14:39They can sell their house and do and have cash or, you know, they could also pass that
14:44out to their children and we're going to have the biggest transfer of wealth that not a
14:50Cleopatra would be jealous of this.
14:52And it's happening in America.
14:54And, and a lot of this is, is kind of the housing thing, you know, and you know, there
14:58are times in our history where home prices escalate out of control.
15:011943 to 1947 was the fastest home price growth post-World War II.
15:05We also saw that in the mid to late seventies, which was faster than COVID.
15:09The housing bubble years though, housing bubble years was different because home prices
15:13escalated with credit debt, inflation didn't.
15:16So there was a clear deviation.
15:17That was, that was the worst of it.
15:19When you have a credit debt expansion here, it was never the case.
15:24We never had like a record breaking demand or debt expanding or anything.
15:28We just got caught in a very, very bad situation with too many people chasing too few homes and
15:34home prices deviating well above wages, well above what the growth rate of inflation.
15:40Now that's coming back, it's becoming a healthier market.
15:42And look, all these terrible things that these doomers have talked about, it never happened.
15:47We're going to get a recession at some point.
15:49We're going to get, but you know, we won America won Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians,
15:56the anti-central bank movement, the MMT people, all of these people who have these really dark
16:00takes on the United States of America.
16:03They lost homie.
16:04And this guy just smiles big every day because y'all just keep yapping day to day out.
16:11So yeah, you know, one of the things you always make a point of saying, and I think that it's
16:15true because I did say, you know, wealth creation, but of course there are people out there who
16:19are like, you know, this isn't the best way to, you know, grow your money.
16:21It's so slow.
16:22It's gone.
16:23Yes.
16:23But you have to live somewhere.
16:24And this is where you say, you know, it's a different mindset than like a stock trader,
16:28like every, so you sell your home and, and then you have more cash, you have to live
16:32somewhere.
16:33So, you know, you always make the point of like, don't listen to, especially middle-aged
16:37men, stock traders, middle-aged men, podcast, stock traders.
16:41We do not listen to, but it's because the whole idea of like what a home is, it's like,
16:47you have to have shelter somewhere.
16:48Even if you don't, you know, have warm, fuzzy things like, Oh, I want to have a home for
16:52this reason or whatever.
16:52Like you got to live somewhere.
16:53So as long as you're paying to live somewhere, you should also be, you know, putting yourself
16:58in a good position to get home equity.
17:00You know, it's funny because I had an argument with a stock trader, a well-known one was like,
17:06nobody should buy a house because, you know, you could put your money in, in investments
17:10and you guys got to realize these people's profession is trying to get you to give them
17:15money.
17:16So, so they want more of your money in cash than in a house.
17:19They're going to have a slightly different take than everyone.
17:21So that's like, I was like, uh, did you sell your house?
17:26So what do you mean?
17:27So you're telling people not to buy.
17:28Did you sell your house?
17:30Uh, no.
17:31Okay.
17:32Then why haven't you take all the money, take all the money you made on your house and put
17:37it in your investment fund.
17:39Think of all the returns.
17:41Think, go ahead.
17:41Think of all the returns because you're such a great stock trader.
17:44Why are you take that capital and put it to work?
17:46What are you doing?
17:48Didn't know what to say.
17:49Cause he's going to go, you're going to have to go back to your wife and you're going
17:52to have to go back to your kids and go, guys, we're going to sell this house.
17:55Cause daddy's going to make a lot of money, you know, in his own funds as a capital.
18:00And it's like, that's, that's not how homeowners people buy homes to live in, right?
18:06Live.
18:07It's the cost of, that's why I've always said housing is the cost of shelter to your own
18:10capacity.
18:11It was basically the payment, right?
18:13It's not an investment.
18:14I don't look at it as an investment first.
18:16This way I could explain the housing economic story in its purest form is shelter cost.
18:22But if I go into this investment thing and all, you know, you're going into a realm that
18:27does not exist.
18:28It's, it's a, it's a mythical place that people go, I could make 6.3% return on this CD.
18:34But if I, no, no, no, no.
18:38This is why we don't listen to middle-aged men podcast stock traders.
18:40And they also get worse as they get older, generally guys just go into crazy land as
18:46they get older and older.
18:47Like, like Ray Adalio is like a really good thing.
18:49And there's a whole bunch of them out there, but it's just home.
18:54That's what it is, right?
18:56It's the cost of shelter in your house.
18:57And we sit here with the last five years, you think about all these things that have
19:03happened with taxes and insurance and rates and AI and all this oil and everything.
19:08And yet the new listings data never even got back to normal because homeowners like, y'all
19:14are screaming out there about the end of the world and doing this Mickey Mouse and we're
19:18just living in our house, turning the TV on.
19:20Our kids are watching the show, man.
19:22And that's what it was about.
19:23So we have to condense that into the talk.
19:26So, I mean, that's, that's the thing.
19:28I mean, I'm only here right now talking to you because back in 2014, I just realized these
19:33people are all crazy.
19:34Somebody has to take them on, but take them on in a way that can make people understand
19:39how this works.
19:40So it's, it's been really 12 years since I figured that this needed a change.
19:44And we sit here in 2026.
19:46If I die tomorrow, Sarah Wheeler, they're going to say the chart daddy came, he played ball,
19:51but he was, he was an American.
19:53When they die, what was their life?
19:56A day in a day out do porting for what?
19:59So your children could go by your grave and go, my dad was a jackass.
20:02He really didn't like America.
20:04He just bashed it every day, but we're still here and they don't leave.
20:08They don't leave Wheeler.
20:09It is very easy to get on a plane and go to another country.
20:13You can do it, but they don't leave.
20:17So there's a, there's a benefit for that.
20:19And again, a lot of that is the middle class is really homeowners and you could, you could
20:23look at their finances and a lot of it makes sense.
20:25And here we sit, it's the second half now of 2026.
20:30And despite everything, and we've been talking about this on the podcast, you've been writing
20:33about it all year, is that despite everything, housing demands held up and actually our mortgage
20:39rates aren't, aren't so bad.
20:40They could be much worse.
20:41We've had much worse.
20:43Of course we've had much better, but like given everything that's gone, you're like,
20:46things look, what would you say?
20:47Perfectly normal to me.
20:50Life finds a way.
20:52Things tend to balance out over time.
20:54Spreads tend to compress and get back to normal.
20:57And we find a way to just push forward out here.
21:00So I think it was a good lesson.
21:03I think you consider all the noise from, was it March 9th, 2020, right?
21:08You know, you and I have been this since, since that timeframe, but since March 9th, 2020
21:14to July the 4th, 2020, and we're still here, we're still here.
21:18And the U.S. economy is still here.
21:20And I mean, between trade wars and Godzilla tariffs and oil shocks and multiple Fed rate
21:26hikes and COVID and all these things, we're still attacked, right?
21:32So we've taken, we've taken a lot of solid punches, you know, but the U.S. is still doing
21:38our demographics are good, you know, compared to other older countries.
21:42Our household balance sheets are good.
21:44People are making money.
21:45People are working.
21:47And, you know, you don't have to worry about like federal debt.
21:50Oh my God.
21:50Remember last year, everyone's like, rates can never go lower because we are so broke
21:55that nobody's going to buy our debt.
21:57We're so broke.
21:58And I know y'all who are listening to this YouTube, you all know who I'm talking about.
22:02We're so broke that, oh my God, labor data gets softer.
22:05Money goes into 10 years because it's us.
22:07We are Godzilla, King Kong combined, right?
22:11There's all these, these third world countries don't have a currency to go against us.
22:15The bricks, the bricks are going to destroy America.
22:18Come on, people, give it a rest.
22:22You only have so much life left living.
22:25Change this doomsday attitude.
22:27Show your kids, show your wife, show your husband, show your brothers and sisters and
22:31fathers and mothers and your people in church and people at work that you don't have to be
22:35a doomsday jackass 24-7.
22:38Let it go, right?
22:40Well, Logan, I really appreciate all your work for us and for this industry, for people
22:46who are out there explaining it to, you know, running their business, explaining to people
22:50who want to buy, who want to finance, who are all parts of this, you know, why they should,
22:55why it makes sense for them, helping the whole economy, right?
22:58I so appreciate your work.
23:00We are filming this before the July 4th holiday, so we will get to go enjoy that.
23:05But of course, it will be published right after.
23:07So I hope everybody has an amazing 4th of July.
23:11And I hope that this, you know, is just a shot in the arm for something that we talk
23:15about every single day.
23:17Pleasure to be here, Sarah.
23:18It's going to be a wonderful second half of 2026.
23:21And I'm already gearing up for 2027.
23:23And it should be a lot interesting under a Kevin Warsh new Fed receipt.
23:28So much to come.
23:30All right, Logan, well, enjoy your weekend.
23:32And we will talk again soon.