In two years, this will be the news: “Glut of unsold houses.”

I live in a world in sticks: Everywhere I look, I see domiciles in progress: Single-family, huge multi-family projects – and the strange hybrid of single-family apartment communities, tiny single-story houses packed cheek-by-jowl, like little Legos affixed to a concrete carpet.

This is all Trump, so you know. Four or five years ago, investors decided that not only would right about now be a good time for new housing, the times would still be good for cashing in on opportunities planned for five years out.

You may think them unwise, but risk is what makes horse races. Moreover, had Trump retained the presidency, the bets would have paid off handsomely.

Things may be different where you are. It’s very easy to build in Arizona, compared to other places. Even so, you have your Trump-promise investments – in sticks, in stone, in steel – and you will have the opportunity to see how things work out locally.

I am beyond dour, for what that’s worth. We are on the cusp of global famine, and how tight belts will get in America remains to be seen. From borrower activity, we know the market has well and truly turned, and yet I suspect people still in the market are underestimating how bad things will get.

Will prices go down? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Since Reagan gifted us with Volker, we’ve treated housing prices as a bellwether to market trends – in real estate and everywhere. That will be a lot less useful as the market tries to find dry land, when it is awash in funds that are 80% newly-counterfeited. The tale going forward will be told by Days-on-Market – from single- to double- to triple-digits.

And yet: Isn’t there a housing shortage? There is here. How about Seattle? No one there will tell us, but the Great George Floyd Migration created housing shortages mostly where bus lines don’t run, leaving locales well-served by rioter-movers hugely vacant. We can expect rent-seekers to fill the most-vacant of that housing with Fiasco Joe’s illegal immigrants – but there was a lot of vacant housing left over from the recession, and by now there is a lot of vacant office space that also needs taxpayer subsidies. Add to that excess mortality from the vaccines, and I think there is good reason to suppose that, nationally, we have a surplus of housing.

Regardless, that is not what I said in the headline: “Glut of unsold houses.”

Lots of families will be doubled- and tripled-up in two years. I am hiking rents by big jumps, and I know some of my families will be moving on. This will accelerate with the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, interest rates will price most buyers out of the market. Accordingly, many of the homes I see in some stage of construction will not be finished, not for now: Approved spec homes will not proceed, and many signed purchase contracts will be cancelled, forfeiting the deposit.

Notices-of-Default are up, loans apps are down and resale inventory is softening faster than custard in the sun. Soon there will be more houses than buyers, especially in new-home developments – hence my prediction.

Brian Brady is teaching you how to survive the coming shitstorm, but it does you no good to gaze into the future with rose-colored glasses. If you’ve been in residential real estate for less than ten years, you’re finally going to get to learn how to sell…