Radical Transparency in Real Estate Predictions

Afford Anything

Paula Pant | Cumulus Podcast Network

Investing, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.6 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

#653: What happens when we actually check our predictions? In this episode we play clips from our 2023 conversation with Scott Trench from BiggerPockets and ask the uncomfortable question: were we right? Two years ago we made some big calls about the housing market. Mortgage rates had doubled. Prices hadn’t crashed. Inventory was vanishing. Everyone had a theory about what would happen next. Now we look back with data and receipts to see which forecasts held up and which ones fell flat. Scott joined us in 2023 to talk about the lock-in effect, the shortage of sellers, and why homebuilders might be stronger than expected. At the time it sounded contrarian. Two years later the evidence is in. Homeowners with low mortgage rates are still staying put. Builders have taken market share by offering creative incentives. Multifamily supply has exploded in some cities, while small residential properties have held their value better than many expected. We revisit our old clips and grade them one by one. What did we get right about the housing market’s resilience and where did we miss? You’ll hear how rate volatility created bursts of demand, how regional migration reshaped supply, and why small investors can still find opportunities even when the headlines say otherwise. This episode isn’t about victory laps. It’s about accountability. If you’ve ever wondered whether experts truly revisit their own calls, you’ll love this one. Key Takeaways The lock-in effect remains one of the most powerful forces in today’s housing market Builders have been surprisingly resilient thanks to incentives and creative financing Multifamily oversupply is pressuring rents in some regions while small residential properties remain steady Market outcomes are more local than ever; national averages hide major differences Real estate predictions matter only if we’re willing to go back and test them Resources and Links Our course Your First Rental Property open for enrollment through October 30 at affordanything.com/enroll Chapters Note: Timestamps will vary on individual listening devices based on dynamic advertising segments. The provided timestamps are approximate and may be several minutes off due to changing ad lengths. (0:00) Why we’re replaying our 2023 predictions (4:24) The strange housing market of 2023 (5:04) The lock-in effect and vanishing inventory (6:03) Builders finding ways to keep selling homes (12:12) How rate dips created bidding wars (14:03) The construction pipeline and what happened next (37:24) 2025 check-in on prices and incentives (55:06) Regional winners and losers (58:27) Small residential versus large multifamily (1:06:08) Final reflections and what we learned Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So turn on any financial channel, open any investing magazine, scroll through any market podcast or
0:06.8	Instagram channel, or watch any kind of market news. What do you see? You see predictions,
0:13.6	endless predictions. The market's going to crash. Real estate's going to boom. This is the next
0:18.3	big thing. That's the next big thing. Everyone's got
0:21.0	predictions. Everyone's got speculation. And no one ever comes back two years later to say,
0:28.2	hey, remember when I said that? Remember the thing I said two years ago? Let's revisit that.
0:35.5	Let's see, was I wrong? Was I right? Was I partially right? No one comes back later to hold themselves accountable for their own predictions. There's this old joke on Wall Street that analysts have successfully predicted 20 of the last two recessions because people are eager to tell you what's coming, but no one
0:56.0	wants to look back at what they said was coming. And so today, we're going to do something
1:01.0	different. We're going to do something that, frankly, almost no one in financial media ever does.
1:06.2	We're holding ourselves accountable. Two years ago, in August of 2023, I sat down with Scott Trench, who at the time was
1:14.1	the CEO of Bigger Pockets, and we looked at the real estate market as of August 2023, and we talked about
1:22.0	where we thought the market would be in two years, which is now. We made predictions. We speculated. We discussed what the market
1:31.7	was like at the time in August of 2023. And we tried to unpack what would unfold over the next
1:40.3	two years. What would the market look like by the summer of 2025, two years into the future?
1:48.0	So now, it's October 2025, and we're going to do the thing that the cable news pundits never do.
1:55.0	We're going to play those predictions back and see how we did. And to be clear, we didn't just do a prediction
2:02.6	episode. We just had a conversation about the economy as of August 2023, where we are and where
2:09.6	we're going. So we're going to look back on all of that to see, with the benefit of hindsight,
2:16.2	how we did. This is radical transparency in financial media.
2:20.4	This is what honest analysis looks like. So today we're going to climb into the time machine
2:25.2	and find out how well did that conversation age. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show
2:32.2	that knows you can afford anything, not everything.
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