586: Why US Home Prices Have NEVER Crashed, GRE's 2026 Home Price Appreciation Forecast

Keith shares a mindset-shifting quote from John D. Rockefeller that challenges the idea of trading time for money. 

He revisits some of the year’s most powerful real estate investing lessons, and breaks down the big forces shaping today’s housing market—affordability, supply & demand, demographics, and interest rates. 

All of this sets the stage for his data-driven national home price outlook for next year—without the usual crash-and-doom hype.

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Complete episode transcript:

Keith Weinhold  0:00  

Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, learn from a quote attributed to the world's first billionaire, it will change how you see wealth building. I'll explain why national home prices have never crashed. Then it's gre, 2026, home price appreciation forecast. You'll learn the future the exact percent that home prices will appreciate or depreciate next year. Today on get rich education

 

Speaker 1  0:29  

since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com

 

Corey Coates  1:14  

You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.

 

Keith Weinhold  1:30  

Welcome to GRE from Lake Huron, Michigan to Lake Tahoe, California and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to get rich education. You know something I love, quotes that shift your entire mindset, paradigm, and once your mind is shifted, actions follow. Actions develop into patterns. Those patterns become habits, and habits become the new, transformed you few quotes hit harder than the one from resource tycoon John D Rockefeller. He lived from 1839 to 1937 in fact, Rockefeller is widely regarded as the world's first billionaire. His quote, you might have heard it before. It is this, he who works all day has no time to make money. That sounds paradoxical, even provocative. It's sort of like it's inviting you to come in and want to learn more about it. And this is because most people's concept of income generating is to work 40 hours a week for a salary or an hourly wage. But what does that quote really mean? He who works all day has no time to make money, and be sure to capture the all day part of that quote that ties right back into the show that I did with you two weeks ago about the K shaped economy breakdown, where you learned about how capital compounds labor doesn't most people sell their time for dollars, but trading time for money makes you too busy to actually build Wealth. Working and building wealth. Those things are two separate distinct activities in how you're investing your time and energy. Now, most people start out with a wage or a salary job. I surely worked by pushing brooms and cubicle dwelling before investing in my first rental property. But if you're working all day in a job, physically or mentally well, then you're consumed by tasks that only pay you. Once you're occupied, you can often get exhausted and you're only concerned with short term output. You're focused on the next deadline, not the next decade, when all your hours are spent on labor, you have no bandwidth to do what you need to do, which is, create vision, acquire assets, build a portfolio, develop systems, learn tax strategy, evaluate investment deals, network with like minded investors, or refine your strategy with a GRE investment coach. Be cognizant that labor only pays today. Wealth building pays forever. Even if your work a day job, salary doubled, you would have to ask, how would that even build wealth? You could retire earlier, but you would have to keep working the hours, and let's remember that wealth equals freedom. You can't architect a wealth plan from the assembly line. Now, that's something that Rockefeller would have agreed with. Wealth requires less. Leverage and labor has none. So working all day means no leverage. You are the engine instead making money, that means using leverage, and instead of you being the engine, well, the engine is something else, like assets, systems, technology, other people's time, other people's money, and borrowing to inflation profit. Rockefeller believed and proved that leverage beats labor 100 to one. He's not discouraging work. In fact, it's just the wrong type of work, because he was one of the hardest working people alive. And really the bottom line here, with this quote, he who works all day has no time to make money, is that Rockefeller meant that if you spend your life doing tasks, you'll never rise high enough to own things that pay you for life. Earning a living is a different activity than building wealth, and once your mindset is shifted, actions follow, yep, actions develop into patterns, and those patterns become the new you. well as the last episode of the year on the show here, 52 weeks worth, I sure hope that I've helped you think, learn and grow your wealth, as have our guest contributors here early in the year, the father of Reaganomics was here, a man that frequently advised a president inside the White House. He told us how much he dislikes tariffs. Tariffs block free trade, and trade improves our lives. Major apartment investor, Ken McElroy, was here this year, and he predicted that the American home ownership rate will fall below 60% that would be major it's currently at 65 if the home ownership rate falls to 60% that would unleash millions of new renters into the market, and it has not been that low in decades, if ever you got a lot of mortgage insights with chailey Ridge, including learning how you can qualify for income property loans without a w2 job, without a pay stub or without tax returns by instead getting a DSCR loan. You'll recall this year that I discussed 50 year mortgages, and I did that before it even hit the news cycle, telling you that it could be coming and that it could be proposed. I explained why I like 50 year mortgages more than 30 year loans, but be aware it is not imminent that they're coming. Also this year, economist Richard Duncan and commentator Doug Casey discussed the Fed. Richard told us how the President is trying to totally restructure who serves on the Fed, trying to get low interest rate pushers in there. And then just last week, Doug and I discussed how fed decisions just keep hollowing out the middle class. A and E television star Todd drillette told us how to negotiate. I had four good discussions with our own investment coach, nuresh this year, more than usual, a pastor and I discussed a rare topic, what the Bible says about money. You learned how to use AI in your real estate investing and when not to. We had a few episodes about that. But above all the shows this year, they were about you, probably more than any other year that we've had here. I did more listener question episodes where I answered your questions as you wrote in, and I also had more listeners come right onto the show and tell me how this show has personally built their wealth. And of course, this year, I got to meet more of you in person when I served as a faculty member on the terrific real estate guys Investor Summit to see and I got to meet you personally for more than just a handshake. The event was set up so that chances are you had dinner with me as well. So rather than this show being a one way chat from me to you this year was more of a dialog between you and I and more two way communication. A lot of new topics are coming for next year, both me teaching and some great guests. If there's something on the show that you'd like to hear more of or less of, let us know. Write into us or use your voice to tell us either way you can do that. At get rich education.com/contact, let us know what you want to hear more of or less of. Do you like shorter term tactics like when and how to increase the rent? Or do you like mid range tactics like how to constantly do cash out refinances and get a tax free windfall from your properties every year. Or do you like more of the long term strategies like specifically how you profit from inflation? Let us know what you like again, at get rich education.com/contact, now, even if you're listening 10 years. Years from now, which I know you very well. May, I'm going to break down next year's home price appreciation forecast, but I'll do it in a way where you'll learn how to analyze a market for all time coming up. It's gre 2026, national home price appreciation forecast. Learn the future to the exact percent. First listen to this from Freedom family investments and Ridge lending group, because I'm a client of both myself and they can help you. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold

 

Keith Weinhold  10:29  

you know, most people think they're playing it safe with their liquid money, but they're actually losing savings accounts and bonds don't keep up when true inflation eats six or 7% of your wealth. Every single year I invest my liquidity with FFI freedom family investments in their flagship program. Why fixed 10 to 12% returns have been predictable and paid quarterly. There's real world security backed by needs based real estate like affordable housing, Senior Living and health care. Ask about the freedom flagship program. When you speak to a freedom coach there, and that's just one part of their family of products, they've got workshops, webinars and seminars designed to educate you before you invest. Start with as little as 25k and finally, get your money working as hard as you do. Get started at Freedom, family, investments.com/gre, or send a text now it's 1-937-795-8989, yep, text their freedom coach, directly. Again, 1-937-795-8989,

 

Speaker 2  11:40  

the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequel and even chat with President Caeli Ridge personally. While it's on your mind, start at Ridge lending group.com that's Ridge lending group.com

 

Robert Kiyosaki  12:14  

this is our Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Author Robert Kiyosaki. Listen to get rich education with Keith Weinhold. And there is, I respect Kate. He's a very strong, smart, bright young man.

 

Keith Weinhold  12:35  

Welcome back to get rich education. It's episode 586 the last show of the year. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, I am proud to present to you in this segment of the show gre 2026, national home price appreciation forecast, where I use my insight and experience so that you'll learn the exact percent that national home prices will either appreciate or depreciate next year. It's the fifth consecutive year that we're doing this. I nailed the first three spot on and then this year happened. I'll get to reviewing my track record, total accountability. First understand something, real estate values have never crashed in your entire lifetime, even if you're 90 years old, to grab eyeballs, slack jawed, tick tock. Call them crash talk. Economists keep making awful predictions about a housing price crash, and none of them have been worse than one that published last month in Newsweek, which outlines a as it's called, correction worse than 2008 and says national home prices will fall 50% five zero, starting as soon as next year. That's absurd, and I can't believe that a respectable publication would platform a view from an analyst like that, and I'm not going to call out that Doomsayer analyst's name. That's not my style. I'm sure you can find it that crash is about as likely as one social media post changing your political affiliation later today. Look, doomsayers don't care about you. They make dire predictions because they care about them. It elevates their clicks, their followers and their name recognition, and they never hang around to follow up on that prediction, but it harms you, because you miss out on the equity gains, and that's the real damage. In fact, this particular analyst also called for this year to have the second largest home price decline since World War Two. Well, national home prices have only fallen twice in that time period. In fact, going further back. Back to the 1930s Great Depression. They've only fallen twice. Yes, that means home prices have risen every single year since the 1930s except for two periods, a small decline of less than 1% around 1990 and then, of course, the severe downturn from the housing bubble and great recession from 2007 to 2011 or 2012 that's where prices dropped in total, 25 to 26% from peak to trough. Now why do I say that that period around 2008 was not a housing price crash. Well, because it wasn't. Instead, it was a slow bleed. The definition of financial crash is a sudden, sharp and widespread drop in prices. That's the definition. Well that can happen in some other asset classes like stocks or Bitcoin or perhaps even precious metals, but not real estate. It is neither sudden nor sharp. The worst year, 2008 saw home prices drop 12% in that one year and some of the other years bracketing it, home prices fell three to 4% in each of those years. So then during this time period of price attrition, during the global financial crisis, each month, real estate values fell just a few tenths of 1% maybe half of 1% or even one full percent, not a crash, a slow bleed. This means that it took about five years for values to fall, a total of near 25% I mean, that makes it really clear that it's not a crash. And again, this period was about 2007 to 2012 don't get me wrong, it was bad. I was a real estate investor both before and during 2008 but to call it a crash is hyperbolic, and that is because words mean things. I think a lot of media consumers get so conditioned to mass media sensationalism that they've forgotten what a crash even means. At some point, it begins to bend our very lexicon back around 2007 I remember I frequently checked a website called implode meter. Yeah, that's the name of it. It tracks, failing banks. I looked the other day and implodemeter.com is still in existence, even though it's not nearly as spicy as it used to be during the GFC, because lending has been pretty stable for a long time, and loans are well and carefully underwritten. So home prices are unusually stable over time, because, in a sense, housing is not a normal market. It is slow, regulated, credit driven, and it's emotionally sticky, even though rental property is less emotional. Well, the values of one to four unit property are tied to primary residence values, and that's where the emotion exists. So if you put all those together, you get prices that creep upward most years and rarely fall at all. Nationally. The real estate market moves too gradually to be crash susceptible. It is the place for real wealth building values also are not going to double annually if you want to scroll for dopamine hits from the couch. Well, you can do that with a prediction market like call she or in crypto with altcoins, while your real estate keeps leveraging dollars in a stable way in the background. That's how you can think about it. All right, so we've established since the Great Depression, home values have fallen twice and once substantially. Well, right now, home prices are up about 2% year over year. Most places have appreciated, especially the more affordable markets. Not only has home price growth been slow, though, rent growth has been slow as well. Single Family rents are up 1% per totality. Apartment rents are down one to 2% per Zumper. But back to our focus today, forecasting national home prices. Everything we're discussing is nominal price change, meaning not inflation adjusted, and it's single family homes up to fourplexes. Well, as we use context to build up to the big reveal today, where I'll tell you the exact percent that home prices will rise or fall next year. Could 2008 happen again any time soon? Let's isolate that out. It's important to look at history rather than. Having some uninformed hunch in both periods with price attrition around 1990 and 2008 these two falls have some attributes in common. So let's look at that. What led to these rare falls in home prices, irresponsible lending, forced selling, a vacancy issue and overbuilding. All four of those factors were in place during those two periods now leading up to 1990 the irresponsible lending was on the commercial side. That was the savings and loan crisis, but it did trickle into the residential market, and then in 2008 it was on the residential side. But of all four of those factors, none of them are in place today. Zero borrowers are strongly underwritten because they've got those full documentation loans, and virtually no one is forced to sell in a fire sale. In fact, homeowners still have these record equity positions of about 300k fewer than 3% of homeowners have a negative equity position, and there is no vacancy issue. Because, in fact, we've been under building. We'll look at that. So for next year, no substantial price of drawdown is coming. None's expected. We can isolate that out. Since I was investing directly in real estate through 2008 I know what happened is that when people walked away from properties, they did so because the economy got rough, their variable rate mortgages rose, they couldn't make their payments, or they just had no motivation to make their payments because they were underwater and had zero protective equity. In a lot of cases, it's almost impossible for that to happen today, homeowners can make their payments, and they're motivated to do so because they have that erstwhile equity to protect, like I said last week, through the Census Bureau data and realtor.com we know a couple things. Four in 10 homeowners have no mortgage at all. They own their property free and clear. Among the group with mortgages, 70% of borrowers still have a mortgage rate locked in at under 5% and blending those together for you means that then 82% of borrowers either have no mortgage or they've got a rate under 5% this translates to really affordable payments, along with The protective equity, even if inflation heats up again, it still cannot touch a borrower's mortgage payment amount because it is fixed. As we're leading up to the big reveal of next year's number, we're about to look at affordability, supply, demand and the effect of mortgage rates on prices. Of course, that word affordability, that has been the most central word to home buying for a couple years now, affordability will improve in three main ways. If either home prices fall, mortgage rates fall, or wages rise, it takes at least one of those three things, the good news is that this year, wages have been rising faster than both stated inflation and home prices. Wages have been rising close to 4% that looks to continue at least into the early part of next year. Well that improved affordability allows home prices to move up, and it gives room for rents to move up as well. Now when it comes to mortgage rates, if you're new to listening to me, it will be groundbreaking for you to realize that today, mortgage rates are low, and increases to mortgage rates usually lead to increases in home prices, not decreases. If you're new here, both of those facts might leave you saying what I thought it was the opposite. How can that be? I won't spend much time on this because longtime listeners already know these two things, but they do go into the forecast the long term 30 year fixed rate mortgage averages 7.7% per Freddie Mac thirst, that set goes back to 1971 and rates are lower than that now, and mortgage rates have risen 1% or more seven different times since 1994 and home prices increased all Seven times right alongside those rising mortgage rates. In fact, when rates more than doubled in 2022 what happened? Home prices soared to their highest appreciation year in a long time. It reinforced this so, yes, way higher rates equaled way. Higher prices. It's not that one directly causes the other. This is correlation versus causation. It's because rate increases confirm that the economy is doing well. I have discussed that extensively in previous episodes, so mortgage rates actually don't have that much to do with home prices, and that's why it is hardly going into the forecast for next year. I'll tell you what trying to forecast mortgage rates to then use that to predict home prices, that is a fantastic way to waste your time. Now, 1x factor that could make that different for next year is that this President, he imposes his will to make rates low no matter what. So even if the economy is good, which typically leads to higher rates, wholesale push to make rates low, and that's an artificial phenomenon. Wouldn't that make home prices boom if we had a strong economy and low rates? The fact that affordability is still historically low today, though, we appear to be off the bottom. Affordability is still historically low today, that has less to do with mortgage rates than most people think, since, again, rates are low when they're in the low sixes, like they currently are. Instead, affordability is soured, because over the long term, decades, wages haven't kept up with true inflation. That's what's really going on with affordability and what everybody misses, and because affordability is still strained, home prices cannot rise a lot, say 10 or 12% next year. That can't happen on a national basis next year, now, a bill is advancing through Congress now to make housing more affordable. It's got bipartisan support relaxing zoning requirements in such a bill that could help build more homes, but if the government tries to help by making access to loans easier, that is going to lead to even higher prices and really will not help with affordability beyond the short term. In fact, just this month, the Fed has resumed QE quantitative easing. And that effectively means that it is ramping up the number of dollars being printed. And these are just more dollars in existence coming in to chase real estate and every other assets values higher we look at the employment picture. Although unemployment has been ticking up lately, it is still low at under 5% what about housing supply versus demand? And future supply versus demand? Well, this is basic econ and it will totally affect future prices. Actually visited the home of the father of economics, Adam Smith in Scotland this year, the man that nearly invented the supply demand concept starting with supply. I think anyone in real estate knows that generally, over six months of housing supply is too much. Under six months is too little. Six months is sort of that balanced point. What does that really mean? Well, months of supply is how long it would take to sell all the homes currently for sale if no new listings came on the market. All right, that's all that means. Well, currently, that level is 4.2 months that is low, and that puts some upward pressure on prices as well. Another way to think about it is with the active listing count of single family homes and condos. All this means is the number of homes currently for sale and available to buy right now. That's what active listing count means when you see that statistic out there? Well, one and a half to 2 million is the normal level of units needed to adequately house our growing population, for single family homes and condos. Well, that figure bottomed out in 2022 and it's only hovered around one or 1.1 million for a few months now, we are under supplied, and it takes a long time to build our way out of it. Now, apartment buildings are a different story. They are oversupplied, but again, today, we're here focused on the future price direction of one to four unit properties. So that's supply, not as tight as it was, but still on the tight side, and then demand. Where is demand coming from? It comes from us. There's more of us. As our population keeps growing, there is a lot of housing demand coming. Not only is there pent up demand from those trying to afford a home as soon as they can, but more broadly. Demographically, I will point back to that period where there was a surge of us births from 1990 to 2010 there were over 4 million births every single one of those years, births peaked in 2007 if you add 40 years to that, because 40 years is now the average age of the first time homebuyer. That's still a mind blowing figure to me, 40 years the average age of the first time homebuyer. You add that to 2007 that peak birth rate year, and this demand won't even peak until about 2047

 

Speaker 2  30:36  

and this doesn't even include additions from immigration, demand, demand, demand, propping up prices for decades, but for next year, improved affordability, which is expected that boosts the demand for those that have the capacity to pay. Well, considering everything we've covered, I'm about to reveal the number for next year. But first, I mean, gosh, don't you wish everyone actually followed up on their past forecasts, like I'm about to I don't think I've ever seen a price crash predictor follow up, because they're always wrong. Well, what is the track record of get rich, education, home, price appreciation forecasts. It's the fifth straight year I'm doing this, and I always release the forecast in the final days of the year in anticipation of the coming year, just like you and I are doing together now. For 2022 I said that prices would rise nine to 10% the year ended, and they came in at 10% 2023 a lot of people said home prices would fall because they had just seen a terrific run up. I said a price fall would not happen, largely due to that jaw droppingly low supply that we had then. I said zero, there wouldn't be any change. They came in at exactly zero. There was no price change in 2023 for 2024 I forecast 4% they came in at exactly 4% this is all documented. You can go back and listen to those episodes. They're all near year end. So yes, three straight years, I nailed it to the exact percent. How about this year? Just before the year began? Do you remember what my forecast figure was from listening here about a year ago, it was 5% home price appreciation. The year is not over yet, and real estate statistics move pretty slowly. Figures lag, but we pretty much know where it's going to end up. And as we look at this same stat set that I consistently use, which is the NARS national median existing single family home price, it is 2.2% as of late in the year, and it's almost certainly going to end up at 2% appreciation. So I would call that a miss, probably not a terrible call, but far enough apart to call that a miss, 5% forecast versus 2% actual for this year. That's the track record. So before I reveal the number for next year, in the last four I've nailed three of them spot on, and why was appreciation less than I expected for this year? Well, a few reasons. One of them is that inflationary pressure from tariffs was postponed. That Tariff Schedule was changed more times than anyone could have possibly forecast, and affordability stayed stubbornly low too. And here we go for 2026 how much home price appreciation or depreciation do I expect? Well, I haven't said this in any of the previous forecasts, because it's the easiest thing to say, and I often avoid saying the easiest thing, but this is just what I see coming, and that is, I expect more of the same. It's the first time I've said more of the same, which is drumroll here, 2% home price appreciation for next year. No wild figure or hyperbolic material here, in order to attract attention that is my best target for the truth, I'm here to do my best to be accurate and help you make the most informed decision, 2% for next year. So a 500k property today should cost you about 10,000 more dollars next year, and as we know, with a figure like 2% which is less appreciation than the long run historic 5% or so, with this 2% appreciation on new purchases, you leverage that five to one with your 80% loan, and you get a 10% return on your down payment. And you add in the other four ways real estate pays to your 10% leverage appreciation and at historic norms, you can end up with a 29% total ROI. That's realistic. I outlined the math of that in an earlier episode this year when I discussed how real estate pays five ways in a slow market, there you have it, 2% forecast home price appreciation for next year. If you want the charts that support the forecast and more, there's a way for you to get a hold of that, and also the best real estate maps, stories and investment opportunities that you won't see in any headlines. They are all in my free weekly newsletter. The newsletter also gives you access to my free real estate pays five ways. Video, course, that is it. GRE letter.com Get it all at one easy place. Gre letter.com I look forward to talking to you in the new year. I'm Keith Weinhold, don't quit your daydrem

 

Speaker 3  36:06  

nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively.

 

Keith Weinhold  36:34  

The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building, GetRichEducation.com