Sellers Do What No One Expects | Dec. 2025 Housing Market Update

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Business, Education, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This could be the most encouraging sign for the housing market in years. It’s the final month of 2025, and the housing market has flipped from this time last year. Real prices are down, mortgage rates are near a percent lower, inventory is stabilizing, and affordability…it’s actually improving. But hints at a wave of underwater mortgages are making people nervous. With the number rising, is this the “distress” signal many have been waiting for? Welcome to our last housing market update of 2025. We’re getting into it all: home price, mortgage rate, and inventory updates, plus a new seller trend that is causing serious confusion, and could be the final nail in the “housing market crash” coffin. With sellers doing what nobody expects, next year could get interesting. More homeowners are falling “underwater” on their mortgages. Is this a 2008 repeat or just a blip on the real estate radar? Some economists are worried about rising delinquencies, but a high-level view of the data could point to an entirely different conclusion. In This Episode We Cover Sellers do what nobody expects, and it’s killing the “crash” narrative Underwater mortgages are surging, but are homeowners really in danger? The best news we’ve had in three years? A massive win for housing affordability Mortgage rate momentum and whether now is the right time to refinance The key affordability improvements we’ve seen since the start of 2025 And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1216 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠advertise@biggerpockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	We have made it to the end of 2025, but the housing market continues to change and shift and confuse as it has all year.
0:09.0	But today, we are going to make sense of it. This is our December 2025 housing market update.
0:19.0	Hey, everyone, it's Dave Meyer. I'm a housing market analyst, and I've been a real estate investor
0:25.1	for 15 years, and I am the head of real estate investing here at Bigger Pockets. And it's hard to
0:30.8	believe last housing market update of the year. It has been a truly wild year in the economy
0:37.0	and the housing market. We started with
0:39.2	one that was rapidly cooling, rates were in the sevens, things were feeling stalled out,
0:44.7	inventory was going up, and fast forward to today, although it might not feel like much has
0:49.8	changed. A lot actually has changed. I see it in the data, wherever I look. We are very much in a different
0:57.2	situation heading into 2026 as we were in 2025. And honestly, I think there's some good news here.
1:03.8	There are good opportunities starting to emerge. But of course, there are risks that need
1:08.7	mitigating too. We're going to get into all of that, both the risks and opportunities in today's episode.
1:15.3	First, we're going to talk about home prices.
1:18.1	Then we'll talk about some good news finally on housing affordability.
1:22.7	We'll get into a new trend that's emerging with sellers and how they are trying to wrestle back control of the housing market.
1:30.8	And we'll end talking about underwater mortgages and this article that I keep seeing everywhere in the news these days.
1:38.1	I will address head on if underwater mortgages is a potential risk to the market going into next year.
1:46.2	That's the plan for today. Let's get into it.
1:49.1	First up, major headlines here. What's going on with prices? Everyone wants to know.
1:54.2	Well, according to Redfin, prices are up 1.4% year over year. That's still relatively good.
2:00.7	We are not in any sort of crash. I would still
2:03.7	call that a correction because prices are down in real terms. 1.4% is a little bit flattish to me,
	...

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