I want to put a spotlight on how scummy these kinds of used car salesmen posting their LLM EconomicSlop takes are, copy+pasting their LLM prompts such as; "Dear ChatGPT, tell me why the economy is fine, why boomers will buy my short term rentals and why my dick flaccid?"
These same court eunuch podcast types have been attacking me all week after I went semi-viral pointing out what the reality of being a mildly *successful* realtor post-Covid is actually like. They're trying to point out data points like "um actually Lennar is underbuilding and we have 30 million new Scam-molians and Squatamlans in the country every year who are foaming at the mouth to become Austrian-economic suburb whites!" and cherrypicked data points such as inventory levels of 2009-2012, trying to prove that the GFC was a fluke and we're on the brink of some great economic boom! The used car salesman bit isn't just a jab—almost every anklebiter in my comments is a speculator, home-flipper, AIRBNB prostitute or some other 45 year old ish college-dropout Pace Morby wannabe.
(by the way I've had a number of brokers, MLOs, investors either comment or message me directly to share their stories about similar experiences)
The reason of course is simple; 2008 inventory data is irrelevant to 2026. We could be at 20% of the housing inventory and it wouldn't matter one goddamn because 'The Economy' isn't some hypothetical astrally-projected Necronomicon that Scott Bessent can shape rotate in his mind. It's flesh and blood people who are forced to play a Mr. Beast style game of money-wizardry where they have the freedom to choose their financial prison (job) but nobody escapes the mercy of decades of baby boomer fiscal policy and reckless spending (not including USAID)—ain't nobody gettin out alive. But more importantly, society has altered so drastically since 2008 we may as well be talking about buying farmland in 1066.
We're not in a housing freeze because the interest rates bumped up from 5.5% to 7%. We're in a housing ice age because by in large Millennials and Gen Z (and eventually Alpha) aren't forming families, they aren't having kids, they are beat down by inflation and the only political solution they are remotely interested in involves guillotines, firing squads and stripping the boomers of entitlements. Leaving you with a rapidly-shrinking pool of willing and able buyers, year after year.
I said early this week that 'The Kids Yearn For Federally Funded Midwest Stalinkas' and I was only half joking.
The harsh truth of RE right now is that in order for you to have home buyers, you actually have to nurture amicable economic conditions in which younger people are willing to sit and invest significant chunks of their life to pay off a massive debt for it—more importantly they also have to fucking care. They don't care. They're not interested in padding a boomer's pocket or living a suburban life. They don't believe they'll receive Social Security in 2062 and they're psychologically checked out.
Oh and by the way, we've had 44 consecutive months of declining permitting for building new homes and a 9 month supply of new construction last I checked—there is no shortage of new homes or homes at all. The true price of homes will reflect in the coming years when social trends rear their ugly heads.
What there is a shortage of is honest people in the real estate industry who aren't course sellers, debt pawnbrokers, or shameless grifters—aka human tapeworms
Here's why Real Estate prices aren't crashing
(some of you were hungover during Econ 101)
Between 1960 - 2000, the US averaged building 15.1M homes per decade
Then, the great RE recession of 2008 happened and building in the US came to a halt
We've only averaged 8.6M homes per decade since
That's a 43% REDUCTION in new housing
Meanwhile, the US population has grown an average of 25.4M people per decade
Basic SUPPLY & DEMAND
Population grows 25.4M per decade (demand)
+
New homes drops 43% per decade (supply)
=
Home Prices growing and staying high