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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

New Podcast Alert! Real Estate Conversations is where I get to interview the smartest people in the industry to learn from their expertise. Everyone cares about mortgage rates now so episode 1 is with the mortgage rates GOAT, Matt Graham. open.spotify.com/episode/3gXc...

open.spotify.com

Understanding Mortgage Rates Today with Matt Graham, COO of Mortgage News Daily

Spotify video

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Maryland is just playing catch up!

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Doing some work with the Compass data team today. Thought this looked cool

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Looking at the MBA purchase mortgage applications on a 13-week rolling average really highlights the current trend

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Such excellent insight and a fascinating story!

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Existing home sales are inching above last year as reported by NAR. In our weekly pending contracts, the slight growth over 2024 continues. Last year the brief mortgage rate dip to 6.1% in September lifted the sales rate for Q4. Will be interesting if we can beat that this year.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Interesting that LA is less affordable than SF in your set. Is that because LA renters have significantly lower income?

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

New home sales big print feels like survey noise to me. What would be the sudden catalyst? Existing Home Sales tomorrow from NAR should show YoY gains but nothing in the real-time data says massive shift.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Some millennial will thank you for the infill opportunity.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

In specific, you keep referencing data from several years ago. Wall Street funds are in fact net sellers of homes right now. So to the extent that they deserve blame for home price increases during the free money era, they deserve credit now for dropping prices in the towns where prices are down

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

The result is that we support existing home owners and their prices. To the detriment of those who don’t yet own. I’m of the view that blaming Wall Street for the crisis is myopic and naive, when really we should be blaming “Americans.”

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

But those policies: eg zoning laws, low taxes, environmental laws, foreclosure prevention all exist for “good” reasons. We don’t want to kick grandma out of her house because of high taxes. We don’t want to build on every square inch of land…

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Because we’re so favorable to owners, real estate has been a great investment in that time. Wall Street is a tiny tiny portion of the investor class. That money was what pulled us out of the GFC finally! There are lots of policy changes we should make to fix the crisis.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Look, you’re not alone in seeking blame for our affordability crisis and there’s no more ready-made-villain than “Wall Street Landlord.” But in fact we have 60 years with every law, tax, policy in the US inflating home prices to help homeowners, to the detriment of those who do not yet own.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Furthermore, investors are an important and valuable part of the housing economy. Most renters are not in a position to buy. They *need* rental homes to rent! It is a misinterpretation to assume that if an investor buys a house that means a homeowner cannot.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Investors is not the same a “Wall St” Only 4% of all investor purchases are firms with more that 1000 homes. 96% of investor purchases are people who own 1-4 homes. Otherwise known as “Americans”. www.housingwire.com/articles/no-...

housingwire.com

No, Wall Street investors are not buying up a bunch of homes

The share of institutional investors buying houses is even lower in 2024 than last year, when it was nowhere near the reported 44%.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

My guess is you’ll barely notice it. We’ve been anticipating the Silver Tsunami for at least a decade. Boomers are still net buyers of real estate. They don’t want to sell ever. At some point the grandkids will get a house or two.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

I assume you shared that bc you think that “Wall Street” is keeping prices artificially high? Alas, nope. Wall Street owns a tiny fraction of the homes. Like 1%. In fact the towns like Tampa and Phoenix where those companies invested the most money are the markets where prices have dropped the most

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

7/7 Some buyers are waiting for lower rates and lower prices. The data says they may get one or the other but both may be elusive. This week's video: youtu.be/r_kNzYC7J0Y?...

youtu.be

Why Home Prices Aren’t Falling Like You Might Expect

YouTube video by Compass

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

6/7 We see it in the price reductions too. 41.5% of the homes have taken a price cut from the original list price. That level isn't increasing.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

5/7 This "downside stickiness" psychology is a key reason for price stability. This week, the median price of new pending contracts ticked up to $397,500, coming in almost 2% above the same week last year.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

4/7 But here's the interesting part: Even with limited supply, newly pending sales were up almost 5% from last year this week. We counted 77,000 sales contracts started this week. More transactions are getting done in states with more available inventory.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

3/7 New listings are down and withdrawals are up. This week we counted just over 66,000 newly listed single-family homes, 5% fewer than a year ago. This 90-day rolling average shows the trend clearly.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

2/7 Data shows this in action: National inventory has been unchanged at ~860,000 single-family homes since July. Last year it was rising quickly.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Why aren't home prices falling like you might expect now? It's what Chip Case called "downside stickiness." When the market slows, sellers don't want to sell at a loss, so they withdraw listings, which keeps supply limited. That's what we're seeing now. THREAD 📽️🧵👇

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

hopefully we have rates near 6 in the coming months!

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Everyone's talking Fed of course, but the real news of the day may be the new construction data

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Reposted by Mike Simonsen

Ruo Shui @ruoshuiresearch.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

days on market context H/T @mikesimonsen.bsky.social

Title: Days on Market per State — U.S. Median Days for Single-Family Homes

U.S. map with states color-coded and labeled by median days on market (DOM)

Color legend / scale:
Medium blue: 42–49 days
Light blue: 56–63 days
Light red/orange: 70–77 days
Darker red/orange: 84–98 days

State values (selected):
42 days: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin
49 days: Michigan, Massachusetts
56 days: Pennsylvania, Virginia, Minnesota, Maine
63 days: Washington, California, North Dakota
70 days: Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia
77 days: Oregon, Montana, Texas
84 days: Alabama
91 days: Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi
98 days: Hawaii

Source: Altos Research, Compass; median days on market for single-family homes.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Three observations that continue to surprise me A) Waymo taxis are just incredible B) Tesla has a long way to catch up C) maga is a deeply decel movement

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Super proud of my former wife Heather, who just raised $20 million for her medical device startup, Boomerang Medical. The company is so cool: Implantable device to stimulate the nerves and control stress-related gut diseases like colitis and IBD. t.co/6iYAA6Ysmw

t.co

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250904154790/en/Boomerang-Medical-Raises-%2420-Million-Series-B-to-Advance-Pivotal-Trial-of-Neuromodulation-in-Inflammatory-Bowel-Disease

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

The Great Stay has us sitting in all jobs longer, and it's true in Big Tech too. Staying in our jobs, staying in our towns, staying in our homes. A weak hiring market is contributing to a weak housing market, and probably vise versa.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

6/ Home sales are inching higher We count 66,000 newly pending single family home sales this week, plus 13,000 condos. 4% more than a year ago. In fact, year-to-date the cumulative pending home sales are finally ahead of 2024. 2.759MM sales vs. 2.75MM last year.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

5/ Inventory has stopped growing. 861,000 single family homes unsold on the market. That's unchanged for 6 weeks. Limited supply has implications of a floor on future prices. There are just not that many sellers out there.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

4/The price of the weekly pending home sales is still positive. +1.6% vs last year at this time. I expect it to be negative by October. In this chart I've highlighted three recent pricing moments to pay attention to for repeats later in 2025, depending on mortgage rate moves.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

3/ The Case Shiller Index for June was released last Tuesday. It was still 1.9% above 2024, but in a few months I expect it'll catch up to the real-time active market data and turn negative too. Expect EOY "Home prices are down for 2025" headlines.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

2/ Home Price per Square Foot is Now Below 2024 The slope of the asking price of homes for sale continues to be pretty steep. This is the first negative reading since 2023 and looks like it's aiming for full year 2025 to finish lower than 2024. (national, single fam)

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

NEW: Home prices are definitely trending lower. Here's that the latest data says. I look at three price measures today. Plus inventory is not growing, but sales are. Thread from my weekly market video for Compass Intelligence. 🧵📽️👇 youtu.be/bqKHOfLCVhQ?... 1/7

youtu.be

Home prices are trending lower Here are this signs to watch.

YouTube video by Compass

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

It'd be interesting to see how elastic fare costs are to demand. But WRT to commuting to the downtown office from the East Bay, 3 days per week ain't never going back to 5.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

And it's never coming back, is it?

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Man, those BART numbers are nuts. Any guess on where 2025 lands?

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Home prices are about to go negative again. Here's an illustration of what's under way.

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

Newsom’s social media is next level

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Mike Simonsen @mikesimonsen.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

When home sellers don't get the offer they want, one option is to withdraw the listing. How much are cancellations effecting the market right now? Lots of people asking that question. Here's how I look at it. As a percentage of new listings - how many cancel? Some data:

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