00:00:00:01 - 00:00:27:00
Unknown
Okay. Welcome back to the Seven Figure Flipping Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Whitney. And man. The 2026 real estate market is fascinating, but I think it's rebalancing, not crashing. Now everyone keeps asking me the same question right now. Is this a 2008 again? Their neighbor said it. Their uncle said it at a cookout. Some guy on YouTube with a red arrow on the thumbnail said it.
00:00:27:00 - 00:00:46:11
Unknown
So we pulled the actual data. And you guys know me. I'm a big data guy. Like, what does the actual data tell us? The whole report. And I want to walk you guys through it and I release this report. You can get the written copy, all that stuff, but I want to take us what the market's really doing because it's not what the fear mongers are telling you.
00:00:46:11 - 00:01:08:17
Unknown
And this is part this is going to be a part of a four part series. Breaking down our 2026 market report today is going to be the big picture. Is this guy falling or not? That's what we've got to answer. You have to stick around to find out.
00:01:08:19 - 00:01:31:00
Unknown
Okay, let me answer the question straight up and then I'll show you why. I'll prove it with data. So here's the thing. It's not 2008. This is definitely a rebalancing. As of today, things could change. It's not a crash. Here's a difference. In 2008, prices fell off a cliff because of garbage loans. Honestly. And there was no income verification.
00:01:31:00 - 00:02:03:11
Unknown
And you guys all know the story. People were in houses they could never actually afford. And then when the music stopped, the whole thing collapsed. That's not what's happening now. We don't have subprime mortgage loans, and nationally, prices are really just roughly flat and in some cases modestly up, in some cases modestly down. Call it, you know, 0 to 2% year over year and the median sales price across all homes at the time of this data is about $398,000.
00:02:03:11 - 00:02:31:17
Unknown
Now, there are two things putting a floor under the values that didn't exist in 2008. One lending is really strict right now. It's actually a challenge. You know, to get lending, like you have to give all this bank information, credit reports, job proof of verification. It's just like a lot, right? So that's one the people in these houses actually qualified for them too.
00:02:31:18 - 00:02:59:00
Unknown
We have a structural housing shortage. Depending on who you look at, you can see between 1.5 up to even $6 million of shortage on houses, which is because we didn't build enough homes over a decade. This is more of like a long stretch metric, like you don't build 2 million houses in a day, so it's what you're doing cumulatively over time.
00:02:59:00 - 00:03:21:06
Unknown
And it's balanced with like people coming in and out of the country. So you can't really fix this overnight. So those are the two things. Now let's talk about some of the numbers that actually matter. So let me give you the kind of dashboard here. These are the national numbers as of the middle of June. And every one of them tells you something about your next deal.
00:03:21:06 - 00:03:41:09
Unknown
So first off, the median sales price about $398,000. This an initial number, by the way, up around 2%. So your exit comps are kind of holding. They're not really falling. And of course real estate is hyper local. So look at the data in your market. But it's pretty flat honestly. And it's kind of been that way for a while.
00:03:41:09 - 00:04:06:13
Unknown
It's actually a little better this year than it was last year. Also, the 30 year mortgage is about 6.4% to get a loan. It's been bouncing between, you know, mid to mid 60s. The low sevens. It's really in June. It was down more than a third of a point from a year ago though. And that's something to look at year over year.
00:04:06:18 - 00:04:24:03
Unknown
That's your buyer affordability ceiling. And it has gotten a little friendlier. Of course there are some things that are happening geopolitically that make it move really quickly, and then it comes back and all those things. But overall, we look year over year to just kind of say, hey, did we get better this year than we were last year?
00:04:24:03 - 00:04:49:00
Unknown
And we're we're better almost a third of a point. So that's pretty incredible. So all right. Another thing that we used to talk about a lot, we don't talk about a lot is months of supply. Months of supply tells you what kind of market we're in. So kind of the the signpost number that the the market has decided is if you have six months of supply, you have a balanced market.
00:04:49:01 - 00:05:16:19
Unknown
If you have greater than six months of supply, you have a buyer friendly market. And if you have less than six months of supply, you have a seller friendly market. And we're 4 to 4.5%, 4 to 4 and a half months of supply. So if the balance lines 5 to 6, we're still technically under balance. We still kind of in the seller market.
00:05:16:19 - 00:05:40:10
Unknown
But here's the thing. It doesn't feel that way because it's been it was a crazy seller market and it's been going up. It's becoming more buyer friendly. So the feeling in the market is that, gosh, it's a buyer's market, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, but the truth and the data is fundamentally it's still overall a seller's market. Now the next thing that we look at is median days on market.
00:05:40:10 - 00:06:10:11
Unknown
So when we list a property, how long does it take to sell nationwide? That's currently 49 days. It's only up three days from a year ago. So homes are taking a little bit longer, which does matter to you and your deals for your closing costs. Now none of those numbers scream emergency to me. They describe a market that's really normalizing and the new norm, if you will, just like a few crazy years, like 2020 to 2022 were crazy years, but for good reasons for us.
00:06:10:11 - 00:06:35:17
Unknown
And then when interest rate changed from 22 kind of to 25, like it felt painful and it was really just rebalancing. And now we're feeling a pretty balanced market. So all the fundamentals are still standing. Okay, let's tackle affordability. It's actually healing. And nobody on the doom side really wants to talk about it because it ruins the story.
00:06:35:19 - 00:07:01:20
Unknown
If you it's actually getting better, not worse. But if you look at if you put on the news, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and they have any segment on real estate, they're talking about affordability in the marketplace. The housing affordability index is actually back above 108, and it's pushing towards like 118 at the time of this data. So anything over 100 means the median family can afford the median house.
00:07:01:20 - 00:07:26:21
Unknown
We spent a couple of years well underwater on that. But it's healing and that's a beautiful thing. And look at who's back in the market. First time buyers are about 35% of all sales right now, and that's the highest since 2020. That's something you don't hear anybody talking about. Now, why does this matter to a house flipper or a manufacturer of home investor?
00:07:26:23 - 00:07:52:02
Unknown
Well, the first time home buyers are really the majority of your buyers. That's who's looking at a lot of your median price point houses. They want they want move in ready. They use a lot of FHA loans. Right. So I've got a bunch of cash to bring down their shop in the entry price bands. And then when the pool gets deeper, your exit on the clean, affordable flip gets easier.
00:07:52:04 - 00:08:12:04
Unknown
Now more qualified buyers means better sales in the right price ranges. So I think when we look at flipping a house, for example, you know, we're managing risk. So the more capital outlay we have the more risk. So if I'm doing higher price point houses I have more risk. So that's why you see flippers stay in the medium price point band.
00:08:12:05 - 00:08:38:08
Unknown
It just has been brutal the past 4 or 5 years. We're seeing it's often we're seeing affordability actually improve a little bit now. Is it perfect. Is it great. Is our wages up. Not not really, but it's improved from the last couple of years. And I think we've got to recognize the brutal facts here. Now I've been talking I do a class I do a class teaching manufacturer, home investors every week.
00:08:38:08 - 00:09:12:10
Unknown
And I look at the 2025 data for house flipping coming from Adam Atom, which is a big data provider that does analysis. And it had declined in 2025, about 25%. But now in 2026, it's actually coming back up. So the data shows the gross ROI in flips, wrote Rose back up about 25% and average gross profit climbed to about 66,000.
00:09:12:11 - 00:09:36:22
Unknown
I think it was in like the 30s or 40s. So that's the first increase in nearly two years. So for two years everybody felt the squeeze margins were most definitely compressing, profit was shrinking, deals were getting harder and the data backed up. That feeling it really did. But this quarter, you know, quarter two the line went back up.
00:09:36:22 - 00:09:57:12
Unknown
Profit went from about 60 4k Q1 to the prior quarter to 66 case a couple grand an ROI ticked up about a percent or just under a percent. So I want to be honest with you, though, like just because, you know, that's that's a gross ROI, right? Like that's the difference between where you purchase and where you sell.
00:09:57:12 - 00:10:20:00
Unknown
That doesn't include money cost or rehab cost or none of that stuff. Your net will run well below that 66 K number. And so I'm not telling you to pop champagne, you know? But after two years of watching the numbers go the wrong way, the direction does matter. And every time we see data, it's like a delay. Like it's a delay in what we feel and see in our market.
00:10:20:00 - 00:10:44:04
Unknown
So just keep that in mind. So conditions are actually stabilizing for operators, especially the pros. Like we have an event that we do in the summer for seven figure flipping. The whole theme is like just being an operationally excellent operator, being excellent at what you do, fundamentals, brilliance in the basics, things I've learned in the Marine Corps. And that stuff matters today more than ever.
00:10:44:05 - 00:11:07:23
Unknown
Now let's talk about what this means for your by box as an investor. Now, if you don't know how to buy boxes, that's just your define criteria for what kind of deals you're looking for, what price band, all that kind of stuff price, band, bed, bath, square footage, location, all that kind of stuff. Like you have to be clear on what you're looking for or you'll never find anything, right?
00:11:08:00 - 00:11:28:03
Unknown
So let me bring this home. What do you actually do with all of this? Okay, first stop waiting for a crash that the data doesn't support. All right. If your whole plan is, I'll buy when it drops 40%, you're going to be sitting on the sidelines for a very long time while discipline and investors are eating. Baby, they're going to be eating in the market.
00:11:28:03 - 00:11:57:01
Unknown
So you can't just sit on the sideline like the best investors don't wait to buy. They buy and wait. So if you're the the thing about with a stock market or real estate is if you get into a good asset that covers debt and things like that, and you can even if you don't have a good flip, exit on it, if you could hold on to it for long enough, the market will allow you to sell it, break even, or probably profit if you hold it long enough.
00:11:57:01 - 00:12:31:00
Unknown
So don't wait to buy, buy and wait if you have to. Okay? Second, understand that the rebalancing market rewards discipline and punishes the hopeful. Okay, in a rocket ship market, everybody looks like a genius. When I say rocket ship market, I'm talking about like really 2012 through 2020 was like insane growth, but certainly 2020 to 2022. So everybody looks like a genius because the rising tide bails out bad buys.
00:12:31:03 - 00:12:51:22
Unknown
That tide goes down. Now we see who doesn't have their clothes on. So your by today has to be right on the front end. You got to understand how to analyze a market, analyze a deal what assets you have available to you okay so that's number two. Number three lean on the healing parts. Cheaper money for your buyers.
00:12:51:22 - 00:13:16:00
Unknown
Deeper first time buyer pool areas affordable housing. It's coming back. Find the find what's affordable in your marketplace. Let me give you a tangible example. We're doing a lot of manufactured homes. So in Florida specifically the median price points about 450,000 bucks and a really good manufactured home where like on some on an acre more, we're selling in the 3 to 350 band.
00:13:16:01 - 00:13:40:00
Unknown
That's that's you might go, wow, that's an expensive manufacturer home. It's $100,000 less and is brand new because I'm putting brand new ones out there. Then the median price point market. So either position your flips where the demand is strongest or get an exit or get an asset class. That makes sense for affordability. Okay, now this isn't a market to be scared of.
00:13:40:01 - 00:14:02:09
Unknown
Just to be clear, this is a market to be precise in. So on the next episode, I'm going to show you something that genuinely shocked me in this data. The markets everybody chased for the last decade have become the losers, believe it or not. And the markets nobody talks about are quietly printing money. So that's going to be part two.
00:14:02:09 - 00:14:15:14
Unknown
And I'll see you on the next episode if you want to get this full report and you can't wait for the next episode, you can download the full, full report link in the description. See you on the next one.
