It's Time To Buy The Dip In Housing

Here are two numbers that look like they are telling opposite stories.

Median list prices are down 2.4% year over year. Nine consecutive months of annual declines.

Median sales prices are up 2.0% year over year.

Asking prices are falling. Actual sale prices are rising.

If your first reaction is confusion - good. That means you are paying attention. Most people see one of those headlines and just get worked up or worse, they stop reading.

What's Actually Happening -- And Why It Matters

Here is what those two numbers are telling you when you read them together.

Sellers are listing lower. They have had to. Nine months of list price declines is the market forcing sellers to accept the reality that February 28th created. The sellers who have adjusted - who priced for today instead of 2022 - are the ones getting to the closing table.

And when they get there, they are selling for more than they asked.

That is not a contradiction. That is a functioning market doing exactly what it is supposed to do. Correctly priced homes in good condition are still attracting buyers. Those buyers are still paying. And because inventory has not flooded the market the way everyone predicted it would, there is still enough competition among serious buyers to push final sale prices modestly higher than list in some cases.

What does that mean for you as a buyer?

You are not buying a distressed market. You are not catching a falling knife. You are entering a market where list prices have adjusted to reflect reality - which means you are starting the negotiation from a more honest place than buyers were in 2022. And you are doing it with 47% more sellers than buyers, with concessions available in 46% of transactions, with motivated sellers who have been on market for 30, 45, 60 days.

You are not buying the dip in value.

You are buying the dip in competition.

That is a completely different thing. It is the thing most people waiting on the sidelines do not understand they are missing out on.

A Word About Data and How It Can Mislead You

This week I want to debunk something that has been making the rounds in your newsfeeds and probably freaking people out.

Foreclosure filings are up 21%.

Foreclosure activity continued to increase in the first half of 2026, with 227,548 properties receiving filings - up 21% from the same period in 2025, according to ATTOM CEO Rob Barber. But Barber himself said the broader picture remains one of a market gradually returning to more typical patterns.

Let me give you the context that headline percentage is missing.

Foreclosure filings increased by 71% between 2020 - when pandemic-era protections were initiated - and 2025. The reason filings are up 21% year over year is not because the housing market is collapsing. It is because 2025 was still an artificially suppressed baseline. When you put everyone in forbearance and freeze the foreclosure process for two years and then slowly unfreeze it - the numbers go up as the system normalizes. That is not a crisis. That is a backlog clearing.

Nationwide, one in every 3,656 housing units had a foreclosure filing in June 2026. In 2010 - at the peak of the housing crisis - the rate was one in every 318 housing units. We are not in even the same universe.

Housing economists say they do not expect a housing crisis on the scale of the Great Recession - while acknowledging that a growing number of households are feeling financial stress.

Both things can be true. Some households are struggling. And the market is not in crisis. A 21% increase in foreclosures from a suppressed baseline is normalization, not collapse. The headline is designed to get clicks. The context is everything when it comes to your buying and selling strategy.

Jackson Hole: Warsh Just Moved the Bond Market

This morning Kevin Warsh took the podium at the annual Jackson Hole symposium in Wyoming - the same stage where Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell have made some of the most market-moving speeches in Federal Reserve history.

Short-term US Treasury yields jumped by the most in more than two months after Warsh vowed to rein in inflation that has outpaced the central bank's target for the past five years. Traders ratcheted up bets that the Fed may shift to raising interest rates as soon as next month.

This is why bonds are having a rough morning.

But here is the nuance your clients need. Warsh's comments drove traders to push back the likely timing of a Fed rate hike until later this year. Two-year Treasury yields dipped, with traders now depending on upcoming data on inflation and the job market to help gauge the Fed's path.

So the initial read was hawkish and yields spiked. But as the speech settled, the market started reading it as data-dependent rather than an imminent-hike. Which is actually in line with where Warsh has stood since he took office.

JPMorgan's chief U.S. economist wrote: "In Warsh's press conference, he once again failed to specify how he intended to achieve his stridently asserted inflation resolve. He also cast doubt on whether PCE inflation will remain the Fed's inflation target in the medium run. Both of these points raise questions about the new chair's credibility in delivering lower inflation."

That credibility question is the real story. Warsh keeps saying inflation is the mission. The bond market keeps asking: when are you going to do something about it? Remember markets hate uncertainty. This morning was another chapter in that ongoing speculation. The September 17th FOMC meeting is the next concrete answer.

Long-term US bonds have come under pressure in recent weeks, with traders pushing the yield on 30-year bonds to the highest level since 2007 at one point. That is the backdrop Warsh walked into at Jackson Hole. Whether his speech eases or worsens that pressure will play out over the next several trading sessions.

For mortgage rates specifically: a hawkish Jackson Hole read pushes rates higher. A data-dependent read holds them in range. The September 11th CPI report is the next real catalyst in either direction.

What This All Means Right Now

List prices down. Sale prices up. Foreclosures normalized not collapsing. Warsh hawkish but data-dependent. Bonds are volatile and that is hard for buyers who are actively shopping.

This is the market. Contradictory signals inside a functioning system that is slowly, in a messy way, rebalancing.

The buyers who understand what they are actually buying right now - not a distressed market, not a falling market, but a market with adjusted entry points and negotiating leverage that has not existed in years - are the ones who are going to look back at this window the way previous generations looked back at theirs. I’m going to stand by my prediction: 2026 might be your last best entry point into the housing market.

You are not buying the dip in value.

You are buying the dip in competition.

And right now that dip is everything.