The housing market isn’t crashing. It’s changing — and that distinction matters. Understanding what’s driving that change — and what it means for homeowners — is more important than ever.
At Keller Williams Mega Camp, I recently had the opportunity to hear Gary Keller deliver his annual State of the Housing Market address, where he shared a broader look at the national housing market, the numbers shaping it and what they could mean for buyers and sellers.
This year’s message from Gary was not particularly cheerful. In fact, he warned the audience before he began that the presentation wasn’t going to be fun.
But I found it valuable.
Because beneath all of the numbers and economic discussion was a pretty simple message: the housing market is not broken, but it is going through a major adjustment.
One of Gary Keller’s comments really stuck with me:
“Buyers think it’s 2008, sellers think it’s 2021.”
I think that perfectly describes the psychology of today’s market.
Some buyers are waiting for another 2008 — expecting prices to collapse and hoping to swoop in at a huge discount.
At the same time, some sellers are still pricing their homes as if we are in 2021, when multiple offers, bidding wars and homes selling almost immediately were common.
Neither is an accurate picture of today’s market.
Today’s market is somewhere in between.
Buyers have more choices and more negotiating power than they’ve had in years. Sellers can still get very good prices, but they have to pay attention to what today’s buyers are willing to pay.
That difference between what a seller wants and what the market will actually pay has become incredibly important.
The market is moving toward buyers — but prices aren’t falling off a cliff.
One of the most interesting points from the presentation was just how much the market has shifted toward buyers.
According to the data presented at Mega Camp, roughly 80% of U.S. metropolitan markets are now considered buyer’s markets. There are currently 51.3% more sellers than buyers nationally, and price reductions are becoming increasingly common.
But here’s the part I don’t want homeowners to miss:
A buyer’s market does not automatically mean falling home prices.
Keller Williams is still projecting approximately 5.4% national home-price growth for 2026, while existing-home sales are expected to total about 4.1 million.
What has changed is the amount of leverage buyers have.
A buyer today may be able to negotiate on price, ask for repairs, request closing-cost assistance or take more time to make a decision.
That wasn’t the environment we were dealing with a few years ago.
The biggest problem is still supply.
This may have been my biggest takeaway from Gary’s presentation.
The housing shortage didn’t suddenly disappear because interest rates went up.
Gary pointed out that new-home construction fell dramatically during the Great Recession and never fully recovered. His estimate is that the country would need approximately four years of building around 1.7 million new homes per year just to make up for the inventory that was never built.
That is a massive hole to fill.
And it helps explain something that can seem confusing:
How can we have a slower housing market and still have home prices that aren’t falling dramatically?
Because we still don’t have enough homes.
That’s an important distinction.
What does this mean here in our area of Georgia?
This is where the national conversation becomes much more relevant to us.
The latest Georgia MLS numbers for the Atlanta metro show that our market is clearly becoming more balanced.
Gary’s message wasn’t that everyone should run out and buy a house tomorrow. It was much more nuanced than that. For someone who needs to move, has a stable income, can comfortably afford the payment and plans to own for the long term, today’s market can make a lot of sense.
For someone who is stretching financially just to get into a house, waiting may be the smarter decision.
The same is true for sellers.
If you need to sell, today’s market is absolutely workable. But the strategy has to be different. Pricing, preparation, presentation, marketing and negotiation matter more when buyers have choices.
The bottom line
I left Gary Keller’s presentation with a pretty simple conclusion:
It’s a different market, with different rules and different opportunities. We can make educated projections about the next 6–9 months, but anyone who claims to know with confidence what happens beyond that is guessing.
For buyers, there is more negotiating power and more choice than we’ve seen in several years.
For sellers, there is still tremendous equity and strong demand for the right homes — but pricing correctly from the beginning matters.
Real estate has always been a long-term game.
Our job at The Curtin Team is to understand the market, tell you the truth about what we’re seeing and help you make the decision that makes the most sense for your situation — not what the national headlines are telling you to do.
Markets will change. Rates will change. Buyer and seller behavior will change. What won’t change is our commitment to staying informed, staying ahead and giving our clients the straight answer — even when it’s not necessarily the answer they want to hear.
Any content, resident submissions, guest columns, advertisements, and advertorials are not necessarily endorsed by or represent the views of Best Version Media LLC (BVM) or any municipality, homeowners associations, businesses, or organizations that this publication serves. BVM is not responsible for the reliability, suitability, or timeliness of any content submitted, inclusive of materials generated or composed through artificial intelligence (AI). All content submitted is done so at the sole discretion of the submitting party.
