Good news for prospective homebuyers
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Home price growth is cooling, new reports show. Though homeowners may be struggling to sell at asking price, it is good news for prospective buyers. Especially those who’ve been waiting on the sidelines for a good deal. But, as with most housing issues, the slowdown is regional. Also in this episode: Auto sales were strong in 2025, Gen Zers see cash in a new light, and an unlikely government funds a U.S.-based GED program for Mexican immigrants.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We've got a bit of a variety show for you today. |
| 0:04.3 | We'll talk about home sales, we'll talk about car sales, |
| 0:08.1 | and we'll talk about the disappearance and delight of cold, hard cash. |
| 0:13.9 | From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kai Rizdal. It's Tuesday, December 30th. Thanks for tuning in. |
| 0:32.9 | We started the show yesterday with some potentially welcome news about the housing market, pending home sales were up in November. |
| 0:41.0 | Today we stay on the housing train with some more cautious optimism. |
| 0:45.4 | We got the S&P, Cotality, Case Schiller, Home Price Index for October. |
| 0:51.2 | And it says nationally, home prices are, yes, still rising, but the rate of growth is |
| 0:57.4 | slow, which is generally better for buyers, maybe, kind of, sort of, depending on where you live. |
| 1:04.9 | Marketplaces Carla Javier starts us off. Home prices are the first factor that people look at |
| 1:10.4 | before they can even consider buying a house. Those prices are the first factor that people look at before they can even consider |
| 1:11.4 | buying a house. Those prices are important for homeowners too, because for most of them, |
| 1:16.6 | their house is among their biggest investments, says Timothy Savage at New York University. |
| 1:21.9 | They're paying a 30-year fixed mortgage. They slowly pay down that mortgage. The house ideally appreciates a bit in value. |
| 1:31.2 | Though the latest case-shiller numbers, which go through October, showed that appreciation has been |
| 1:36.3 | slow, says Nick Godek with S&P Dow Jones indices, which puts out the home price report. |
| 1:42.3 | The latest print showed us that for the national index, we're looking at just a 1.4% year-over-year price increase. |
| 1:50.5 | And when you factor in inflation, he says that means... |
| 1:53.9 | Real prices are down overall. |
| 1:57.1 | Though the numbers diverge a bit, depending where you look. |
| 2:00.4 | The Northeast, led by New York, and the Midwest, led by Chicago, |
| 2:04.5 | still have what Godek calls quite healthy price appreciation. |
... |
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