Episode summary
What would it take to crash home prices this year?
HousingWire Daily
· · Hosts: Sarah Wheeler · Guests: Logan Mohtashami
Summary
Logan Mohtashami argues that a national crash in home prices is unlikely in 2026 because the usual ingredients for a collapse are missing. He says the housing market is not in a credit boom, inventory is not exploding, and there are not enough distressed sellers or underwater borrowers to force widespread price cuts. Instead, he frames the current environment as a more normal housing adjustment: price growth has slowed, but wages are rising faster than home values, which modestly improves affordability without requiring a crash.
He points back to long-run housing history, saying nominal national price declines are rare in the United States and usually require severe stress such as a credit bust, rising inventory, and forced sales. He contrasts today with 2005-2008, when inventory surged and delinquencies and foreclosures spread, and says that dynamic is not present now. He also argues that the popular idea that building alone will quickly solve affordability is too simplistic, since housing prices, wage growth, inflation, and inventory all interact.
Key takeaways
- Logan Mohtashami says a national home-price crash would require distress sellers, and he says that is not present in 2026.
- He argues wages are rising faster than home prices, so affordability is improving even without a price collapse.
- Mohtashami says the current market lacks the key crash conditions of a credit boom, excess inventory, and underwater borrowers.
- He cites 2005-2008 as the real crash template, when inventory surged and delinquencies and foreclosures rose sharply.
- He says simply building more homes does not automatically produce lower prices, because supply and demand still have to move together.
Notable quotes
“nominal home price declines are really rare in America, but I just don't think anybody saw like the data going back to World War II”
“number one wages are outpacing home price growth”
“no credit boom, no inventory. The third thing is you we don't have history of nominal declines”
“what I need to see, number one, did we have any kind of credit boom where we have an excessive amount of demand being pushed into the housing market”
How the episode opens
Welcome everyone. My guest today is lead analyst Logan Moto Shami to talk about what could crash home prices. First, here are the top trending articles on housingwire.com.
At the top of that list is our coverage on the Road to Housing Act. Right now, it's Friday morning, so we don't know if we'll see a veto from the president on that bill or uh if not, it becomes law at midnight tonight. So, I think our uh coverage of that will be the top story throughout the weekend, whichever way that that goes.
Next, we have housing groups push FHFA to delay revise the GSSE condo loan changes, followed by our real trends verified city rankings, looking at where top agents and teams are building scale. Next, we have a special feature on data centers titled data centers emerge as real estate's newest pricing wild card. You want to check that one out.
It's the first in a series that we're going to do on data centers and how they impact housing. Finally, I just published Logan's article on housing affordability is improving as wages outpace home price growth. And that's going to be our topic today.
So, let's dive in there. Logan, welcome back to the podcast.
It is wonderful to be here. I am going to have so much fun talking about this this topic because you we we talked about a a lot last week. We wrote an article about it. Um so much discussion about well we we could solve a lot of problems in America if we could just drive down home prices and bring affordability back. And I was just like you know housing is getting a little bit affordable by itself.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- home price crash scenarios
- housing affordability
- wage and price growth
- mortgage market
- housing supply and demand
Watch the episode
Watch “What would it take to crash home prices this year?” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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