U.S. homebuyer demand hit a record low in July, with just 967,000 buyers versus 1.46M sellers—a 51% seller surplus.
Nearly 80% of major metros are now buyer’s markets, giving house hunters greater negotiating power.
Miami leads with 154% more sellers than buyers, followed by Nashville and several Texas metros.
High mortgage rates, elevated prices and economic uncertainty are keeping buyers on the sidelines.
U.S. HOUSING MARKET TILTS HARD TO BUYERS
U.S. homebuyer demand hit a record low in July, with just 967,000 buyers versus 1.46M sellers—a 51% seller surplus.
Nearly 80% of major metros are now buyer’s markets, giving house hunters greater negotiating power.
Miami leads with…
— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) August 13, 2026
An economist flags a worrying sign of ‘cracking’ home prices with parallels to the 2008 meltdown
The US housing market by many measures is stuck in the mud, and fresh data suggests an alarming parallel to the run-up to the 2008 crash.
David Rosenberg, a veteran economist and the founder of Rosenberg Research known for calling the dot-com and housing crashes, said he’s watching one warning sign in real estate was also present leading up to the housing crisis. It’s the falling annual rate of home sales, which recently dropped below levels recorded in early 2008, just as the housing collapse was kicking off, he wrote on Wednesday.
Home sales have stalled in recent months as mortgage rates have climbed. As buyers have been sidelined, the “lock-in effect” of low pandemic-era rates has kept many sellers from listing their homes.
The result is an anemic market characterized by low levels of transaction activity.
Zillow is warning about another housing market slowdown in the second half of 2026. The company is laying off 7% of its workforce, more than 500 employees, as traffic to Zillow’s apps and websites declines and its stock falls 61% over the last year.
At the same time, United Wholesale Mortgage, the largest mortgage originator in America, reported a $452 million net loss, suspended its dividend, and saw its stock suffer a record collapse. These warnings come shortly after major home builders like Lennar and D.R. Horton also reported weakness in the U.S. housing market.
The bigger issue is housing demand. Mortgage purchase applications remain roughly 60% below their peak, while pending home sales from the National Association of Realtors remain deeply depressed. And now we’re seeing sellers take enormous losses. In Nashville, one Airbnb investor who purchased a property for nearly $1 million in 2022 is now trying to sell for $599,000, a roughly 40% decline.
But this housing downturn is extremely uneven. Inventory is surging in markets like Nashville, Seattle, Dallas, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, and other parts of the West and Sunbelt. Meanwhile, inventory remains historically low in markets like New York and Chicago, where home values are still increasing.
San Francisco is another unusual case. Home values in San Francisco County are up roughly 9% over the last year as the AI boom drives renewed interest in the city, even though employment in the broader San Francisco metro remains below pre-pandemic levels. That creates an increasingly bifurcated U.S. housing market where some cities are crashing while others are still experiencing shortages and price growth.
In this video:
• Zillow’s 2026 housing market warning and layoffs
• United Wholesale Mortgage’s $452 million loss
• Mortgage applications and pending home sales
• Sellers taking 30% to 40% losses
• Nashville, Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, and New York housing trends
• San Francisco’s AI-driven housing boom
The national housing market numbers only tell part of the story. Your local city, county, and ZIP code can be moving in a completely different direction.