Zillow Forecast: Best and Worst Housing Markets of 2026

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Business, Education, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 26 December 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The housing market correction is well underway, but the story looks very different depending on where you invest. Some markets are cooling gently, others are slipping faster, and a few affordability outliers are still holding up. With new Zillow data in hand, Dave breaks down the major regional patterns, why price growth is slowing almost everywhere, and what today’s shifts actually mean for investors buying at the end of 2025 and into 2026. He also looks at markets that may be “oversold” despite strong fundamentals, the places where buyers suddenly have serious leverage, and how rents are diverging sharply from home prices in some metros. We’ll even take a look at the data to see where corrections may continue. So, where should you buy? If you want killer deals, are these “oversold” markets prime places for rental property investing, or could they fall even further? In This Episode We Cover Zillow’s newest list of best and worst housing markets of 2026 Where buyers have strong leverage and where demand still holds Markets that have strong fundamentals but major concerns from buyers What rising or falling rents actually signal for investors Will hot, affordable markets keep their flame burning or freeze like the rest of the US? And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1218 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	Hey, friends, it's Dave Meyer, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. I hope you are all enjoying the
0:05.8	holiday season. To close out the year here on the Bigger Pockets podcast, we're republishing a few
0:11.8	of our most popular episodes this year from across the entire Bigger Pockets podcast network.
0:18.3	Today, it's an episode of On the Market originally published back on
0:22.5	October 30th. This show is me breaking down Zillow's 2026 metro level price forecast.
0:30.5	So if you are curious whether Zillow thinks prices are going to go up or go down in your
0:35.9	region of the country or maybe you're looking
0:38.0	for a new market to invest in, or maybe you just want to nerd out with me because you love
0:42.1	looking at which cities are trending up and down. The next 30 minutes has all of that. So
0:47.6	enjoy, and I'll be back with fresh new episodes starting January 2nd.
0:57.0	Hey, everyone! episodes starting January 2nd. Hey everyone, welcome to On the Market. Thank you all so much for being here.
1:02.0	I'm Dave Meyer, and today, sort of going back to my roots. This is one of my favorite things to study and talk about real estate markets.
1:12.2	We're going to talk about the regional trends that we're seeing, the opportunities to be
1:16.6	had, and the risks you probably want to avoid.
1:20.6	You might already know this, but there isn't really such thing as quote-unquote the real
1:26.8	estate market.
1:27.9	On the show, we cover the national market a lot because it's helpful to understand some
1:33.7	big macro trends.
1:35.8	But what really matters most to your actual portfolios, to the profits that you're actually
1:40.3	generating is what's happening on the ground in your local market. And of course,
1:45.8	we cannot cover every market in the U.S. in today's show alone, but in this episode, we are going
1:51.9	to do a deep dive into housing prices into different regions, different states, different cities
	...

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