JPMorgan Makes a $750B Bet on the Housing Market

Well, I picked a story that was very near and dear to my heart, top of mind, something I am always thinking about.

The headline is, "The market may have already peaked for 2026, and the summer isn't even over yet." This is an article I found on usnews.com, and it's talking about what's happening in the real estate market in terms of sales.

So the article goes on to talk about that existing home sales fell 1.7% in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.06 million, even as the median home prices have climbed to a record for the month.

The national median existing home price rose 2% year over year.

That's up to $434,000 in July, making that the 37th consecutive month of annual price gains.

So housing prices have gone up, and the market seems to have already peaked in terms of sales price.

And now that we haven't finished summer yet, but we're moving into what would normally be a winter slowdown anyway, could be just a not pretty time in terms of real estate sales in the country.

And as I was researching this article, I, I came across another article that talked about how first home purchase sales are down, but luxury home sales are up.

Mm-hmm.

And I think all of this is tied to affordability.

Interest rates peaked over the last month, and that's caused a slowdown in the market for people who are just barely priced into the market.

But there's also a lot of people who have made a lot of money or are making a lot of money in stock market gains.

Uh, and so the, the wealth gap is pretty substantial, and so the people who have more money are buying more luxury homes.

And in my market, I'm seeing exactly that.

And why do I know that? Because I'm trying to sell my house right now, my personal house, and every house in my neighborhood in the luxury market, when it goes up for sale, it is under contract in less than 30 days.

Wow.

But when I'm selling my flips, I am seeing longer times on market.

It's a little harder to sell them.

There's more competition, and so I think all this just, just plays into affordability.

But I was very curious, James, like is that the same thing you're seeing in your market? Your market's substantially more expensive than mine, but you're doing deals consistently.

Yeah, it's flat.

[laughs]

Things are sitting on market.

I mean, we, we...

It depends on what it is.