👋👋 Good morning real estate watchers! Today, we are going to talk about how 40% of homeowners have no mortgage, which means four in ten people can watch Jerome Powell's press conferences the way the rest of us watch foreign elections…mildly interested, completely unaffected, and honestly a little smug about it.

But first, here’s what we’ve been paying attention to this week…

1️⃣ Google’s Portal Faceplant? Google’s embedded home listings have quietly vanished from mobile search in markets like Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles after MLS pushback and data-licensing disputes reportedly jammed the experiment. The short-lived feature ran through a paid partnership with ComeHome (HouseCanary’s brokerage arm)—turns out even Google can’t “index” its way around an unhappy MLS. (HW)

2️⃣ Holiday Hangover Housing: The median monthly housing payment fell to $2,365 (down 4.7% YoY) for the four weeks ending January 4, driven by mortgage rates dipping to 6.15% (their lowest level in over a year) even as home prices still rose 1.1% YoY (slower than ~5% last year). However, demand hasn’t yet sobered up: pending sales are down 6.7% and new listings are down 8.3%. (Redfin)

3️⃣ Balance, Finally(ish): Real estate agents are seeing the housing market tilt toward “balanced,” with 37.5% calling it balanced in Q4 2025 (up from 30% in Q3), as prices ease and more sellers cut prices even though affordability is still rough. Mortgage rates largely stalled around 6.2%–6.4% in Q4, so buyers aren’t stampeding in; most are moving only for life events (baby, job, retirement), i.e., the market’s hottest trend is “adulting.” (CNBC)

4️⃣ Wall Street Grounded: Trump said he’s “immediately taking steps” to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes and urged Congress to codify the ban, framing it as an affordability move aimed at keeping corporations from outbidding households. The catch: the White House can’t unilaterally rewrite who’s allowed to buy homes, so this is likely a mix of political pressure and potential regulatory/tax levers that could still make banks and big landlords sweat. (NMN)

5️⃣ Starter-Home Sweet Spots: Realtor.com ranked 10,067 places inside the 100 largest U.S. metros (minimum 500 listings), weighting affordability and amenities at 25% each, then availability, “young peers,” commute, economic health, and housing outlook to crown the most first-timer-friendly markets for 2026. Their top 3: Rochester (NY), Harrisburg (PA), and Granite City (IL). (Realtor.com)

SPONSORED

The Best Ever Conference returns February 18-20, 2026, in Salt Lake City—three days where relationships are built, deals are made, and companies are formed. Connect with a quality community where 95% of attendees have closed at least one CRE deal in the past 9 months. From industry-leading speakers and economic insights to exclusive networking opportunities, this is where serious investors gather for pure education (no sales pitches) and access to off-market opportunities.

Use code BRIEFCASE at checkout for 10% off!

TOP STORY

Somewhere in suburban Phoenix, a 67-year-old named Linda just celebrated a milestone nobody threw a party for. Last month, she made her final mortgage payment on the three-bedroom ranch she bought in 1996. She didn't post about it. She didn't ring a bell on the NYSE. She just... stopped owing money on her house.

Linda is not special. She's a statistic. And she's part of the most underreported trend in American housing.

Here's a number that should make every housing crash prophet quietly close their laptop: 40% of U.S. homes are now mortgage-free.

That's up from 33% in 2010. In fifteen years, the share of Americans who own their homes outright—no monthly payment, no interest rate anxiety, no refinancing calculus—jumped by seven percentage points. That's not a rounding error. That's millions of households who, when you publish your doom-scroll housing thread, simply shrug.

Think about what that means. Four in ten American homeowners wake up every morning, and the Federal Reserve's mood is irrelevant to their housing situation. Jerome Powell could announce rates are going to 47% and these people would say, "That's nice, dea,r" and go back to their crossword.

Every few months, a new "housing crash imminent" take goes viral. Here’s one of many we stumbled upon last week:

Housing crash predictors have been wrong so consistently for so long, they're basically the NFL analysts of economics. 'This is the year it all falls apart!' said with confidence every single year since 2015 by Reddit users whose profile picture is them crossing their arms in a blazer.

Thanks for the solid analysis, CrashDaddy2008.

The formula is always the same: cherry-pick some scary metric, invoke 2008 like it's a horror movie sequel, and watch the engagement roll in.

Here's the problem: 2008 was a leverage crisis. People owed more than their homes were worth. Subprime loans had turned American housing into a casino where everyone was playing with borrowed chips.

2025 is the opposite movie.

We're not overleveraged. We're underleveraged. The American homeowner, as a species, has never had this much equity cushion. When you strip away the noise, you find a housing market sitting on a historically massive pile of unencumbered assets.

Even the homeowners who do have mortgages are sitting pretty. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage just dipped to 6.15%; the lowest of 2025, according to Freddie Mac. A year ago? 6.91%. And millions of those existing homeowners locked in rates between 2.5% and 4% during the pandemic refinancing bonanza. They're not selling. They're not distressed. They're just... staying.

The mortgage-free surge isn't just Baby Boomers paying off 30-year loans like clockwork. It's also:

Cash buyers. In the post-pandemic scramble, all-cash purchases hit levels not seen since the investor-heavy days of the foreclosure crisis. But these aren't vulture funds circling distress—they're individuals, often downsizers or relocators, using the equity from their previous home to buy the next one outright.

Inheritance. The great wealth transfer is already underway. When Boomers pass homes to their kids, those properties often arrive unencumbered. The next generation receives a free-and-clear asset or, at the very least, a substantial equity stake.

Aggressive paydown. Whether it's Dave Ramsey disciples or just people who lived through 2008 and developed an aversion to debt, a meaningful cohort has been throwing extra cash at their principal as if it owes them money.

The result is a housing market that's structurally different from anything the crash-callers remember. You can't force someone to sell themselves who doesn't owe anything. You can't create a foreclosure wave without foreclosures.

Here's the increasingly likely scenario: Housing doesn't crash. It doesn't boom. It just... sits there, stubbornly stable, frustrating both perma-bears and speculators alike.

When 40% of homeowners have no monthly housing payment, they have no trigger to sell in a downturn. They can ride out recessions, rate spikes, and apocalyptic Twitter threads. This creates a structural floor under the market.

Meanwhile, the homeowners with mortgages are locked into low rates they'd be insane to give up. Selling means trading their 3.2% rate for a new loan at 6.15%. The math doesn't math.

So supply stays constrained. Not because of some conspiracy, but because the incentives to sell just aren't there.

For buyers? This isn't great news. It means prices probably won't crater, waiting for that mythical "crash" could mean waiting forever, and the competition remains fierce even in a slower market.

For agents and investors? It means recalibrating expectations. The clients who can buy—those with equity from a sale, cash from savings, or help from family—are the market now. The first-time buyer stretching every dollar is in a knife fight.

The housing market crash narrative is a content farm. It feeds on fear, thrives on short memories, and ignores the most boring trend in real estate: Americans, quietly and unglamorously, paying off their mortgages.

Forty percent of homeowners are done. They're not worried about rates. They're not waiting for prices to drop. They've already won the game everyone else is still trying to figure out.

The doomsayers aren't just wrong. They're looking at an entirely different market than the one we're living in.

Linda, by the way, celebrated her payoff by doing absolutely nothing. Which, when you think about it, is kind of the point. The American homeowner isn't overleveraged. They're over the whole conversation.