Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Selling Greenville your favorite real estate podcast here in Greenville South Carolina I'm your host Stan McCune Realtor right here in Greenville South Carolina you can find all of my contact information in the show notes if you need to reach out to me for any of your real estate needs in this area outside this area I might be able to help as well I certainly have connections to realtors all around the country so let me know and especially if you enjoy this content please subscribe if you're on YouTube I'm gonna try to point to where the little button is to subscribe please do that any podcast platform you're using you can subscribe on all of those and just like the show if you're on YouTube hit the little thumbs up button like it takes one second I'd appreciate if you guys could do that and that's all I ask use me as your realtor like the show subscribe that's it if you do that I would greatly appreciate it today we're gonna be doing an episode that we do every year and that is the midyear review of my bold predictions for this year okay so at the end of 2025 slash beginning of 2026 I made bold predictions for what was going to happen this year today we get to do the midyear look at how those bold predictions have gone and I like doing this not just to have an episode that I can record that's an easy one to record there is some value obviously in in in being able to have a few things along the way that are predictable whereas a lot of my episodes are just what's happening and you know quite frankly sometimes I get to Monday morning when I typically record these and I don't have an episode queued up and I'm like what am I gonna do next so it's nice to have one like this that I do every single year but it's also a good exercise it's not just something I do just to fill the air it actually does show us just how much has changed in a six month period of time and six months in in the world of real estate is a tremendously long amount of time a lot changes and one thing I always tell you guys when I do my bold predictions is that these world predictions are assuming nothing cataclysmic happens during the year no pandemics no wars nothing crazy and I hate to say it but as I'm recording this we are in the middle of a war that was not happening when these bold predictions were originally made so there is that that being said I do think that there's still a lot of interesting little tidbits here and I feel fairly good about my bold predictions thus far so let's just dive right in I've got my bold predictions up here on a monitor above me and here is my first bold prediction these are not in an a particular order these are just in the order that I did them in so my first bold prediction was that the 30 year fixed rate mortgage would go into the fives at some point this year per Mortgage News Daily but wouldn't go below 5.65% at any point during this year so I'm gonna screen share here so you guys can actually see Mortgage News Daily and here you go sorry I just got to move some zoom puts all sorts of things around that that I have to move around in order to see alright so here is Mortgage News Daily if you're looking on YouTube you can see where January is going through July I'm recording this on July the 6th 2026 and guess what I did get what I needed just barely on July 23rd and also sorry not July 23rd on February 23rd and February 27th per Mortgage News daily mortgage rates dropped to 5.99% ever since then they've been on the rise and they've kind of been plateauing in this like 6.4 to 6.7 range since then and so I think for the most part I pretty much nailed this one and I have no reason to believe that this one is not going to end up being accurate this was a a bold prediction there are a lot of people predicting on either sides of what I predicted here that either mortgage rates would not go into the fives at all or that they would go into the low fives I said they would go into the fives but they would they would not go below 5.65 and at the moment 5.99 is our lowest of the year and it looks pretty safe to say that that's going to hold alright my second bold prediction is that the median sales price would rise 2 to 5% for the year now we need to go to the monthly indicators here for a second I need to explain something to you guys for those that are longtime listeners of this show these monthly indicators we do not yet have for the month of may and we're in July as you guys know they typically come out the middle of the month after so the May's statistics should have come out mid June we are now in July we still don't have them and I know why the reason is because we get these from the showing service called Showing Time I don't know why but that is who we get these numbers from and they've not gotten it to us yet and it's that simple this is not a Greenville specific phenomenon this is in the entire state of South Carolina and I think it might be in other states as well and so I've got some old data here but as we did last month going through the statistics and the monthly indicators I also have access to Infosparks which gives me some real time data as well but long story short if we look at the median sales price okay because that's what I said I said it would rise 2 to 5% for the year here's what we have January was a 2.7% increase okay right at right in line with what I was predicting February negative point six no where near what I predicted March positive 2.9% okay that's looking good April no increase 0% it stayed flat at 315,000 now again I just said we don't have the numbers for either may or June yet but I've got info Sparks here so let's see what info Sparks says May 2026 the medium price point was 3:25 that was up from 3:20 that's a little more than 1% so that's not that's not helpful for my prediction June was at 3:30 330,900 in June of 2025 was 330,000 so that's only an increase of 900 that's barely above 0% so at the moment I I still think that this prediction could happen we could have the median sales price rise on average 2 to five percent for the year but we are certainly not trending that way currently we've only had two months out of six that have hit that number right two out of six let me go back to earlier yeah only two out of six have hit that number we need to really reverse that trend in the second half of the year in order for me to hit that one I'm not confident at the moment that we're going to see sales median sales prices rise into that 2 to 5% range for the year of Greenville it's looking more like 0 to 2% but we'll check back on that in six months and we'll see what happens alright my No. 3 prediction was that inventory would continue to increase but months supply won't go any higher than 4.7 months and I put after revisions we no longer have those sorts of revisions happening which is nice showing time has gotten better with our data and so and there's a second part of this alright so let's just start with the first part so inventory will continue to increase but months supply won't go above 4.7 alright let's look at info sparks again because it's the most accurate that we've got right now actually no we can't go to info sparks I apologize we're gonna just have to use lagging data here because info sparks and the monthly indicators I typically work off of they have very different numbers when it comes to inventory for some reason all right so inventory will continue to increase but month supply won't go up more than 4.7 so inventory has continued to increase which you can see quite a bit and it there there's no sign of that slowing down at the moment month supply nowhere near 4.7 okay and I don't see that changing once we get the may or June numbers if you go to Infosparks has it at actually going down for the month of June and so that's interesting so I think the first half of that prediction I feel pretty good about but the second half which I haven't read yet I said eventually we will see year over year decreases in total inventory and so it was total inventory was accelerating in April we have the monthly indicators now let me go back to total inventory and info sparks here alright homes for sale it is starting to go down in the month of June that's just standard seasonality happening although it is interesting that that seasonality did not happen so last year inventory continued to climb all the way through October okay so we're seeing it going down in the month of June it's very possible I could get the second half of this prediction as well right so what we would need to see is we would need to see this continue to climb down so currently according to Infosparks inventory in June was 62 12 at the end of that month we would need to see inventory really dip back into the fives and if it did that then we could see an in a year over year decrease in inventory for either August September or October those are gonna be the months to look out for there my No. 4 prediction unrelated to any kind of statistical kind of thing but I said that Greenville County would start discussing major Airbnb restrictions and or taxes on the county level we actually I did a whole show about this recently and the long story short is they haven't come right out at least I need to double check they may have already come right out and said that this is going to happen right now they're just studying Airbnb you know what they should do as far as Airbnb's county wide there is just about no scenario in which that prediction doesn't hit the county is I in in fact as of right now I think more or less I could say that I that I was correct on that just based on what the county council has said thus far but we'll see if we can get a clear quote by the end of the year but I feel pretty good about that right now number five I said the spread between the five year arm and the 30 year fixed rate mortgage would go over a percentage point or over 100 basis points at some point this year and I based that off of this website here Bankrate has a nice little breakdown so you can see the 5 1 arm at 6.27% the 30 years at 6.54 nowhere near 100 basis points or one percentage point spread between those two now here's the thing the reason why is because the 5 year arm is tied directly to the Fed Funds rate the 30 year fixed rate mortgage is tied directly to the 10 year yield and so and or at least indirectly to the 10 year yield and so what I thought was going to happen is I thought we were going to have some rate cuts this year and that the 10 year yield the bond market was not going to agree with that and so the 10 year yield was going to stay kind of more stable as the Fed dropped rates and that has all changed with the war okay that's just the reality of the situation the war has called additional inflation the war in Iran it's called cause additional inflation which now has people thinking that the Fed might actually increase rates this year very good possibility and so and so we're seeing some weird things happening here so we were actually very close I checked this just a few months ago before the war was in in full swing and we were I wanna say the 5 1 arm was like 5.4 something like that and the 30 year fixed rate was like 6.2 or something like that so we were pretty close at one point to that spread being a 1% point but I think the likelihood of that happening at this point is very unlikely okay No. 6 I predicted there would be no major uptick in foreclosures and short sales and so we have to compare this to 2025 now this is not I don't get this data from you know from the market stats or anything like that I get this data I have to pull this data directly from the MLS myself so last year 2025 there were at least when I pulled this data 74 foreclosures and 50 short sales and then I bumped those up because I did this before the end of the year you know what actually let's just do it this way let's actually I didn't plan to do this but I'm going to actually just tell you guys exactly how many foreclosures and short sales that there were for 2025 gonna pivot on the show here for a moment alright y'all can watch me in real time if you're looking on if you're looking on YouTube here all the exciting stuff that I'm doing alright so we had 17,896 total sales let me write that down for the for 2025 how many of those were foreclosures 65 foreclosures how many were short sales 23 short sales alright so that's 88 88 total foreclosures and short sales out of a total of 17 817,896 closings that comes out to point four nine % okay point four nine % just writing that down so not 4.9% less than 1% less than a half percent 0.49% alright now let's pull the same information but for oh I could have just done last year haha silly me alright now let's just do it for this year okay so this year there has been 9,290 closings year to date again I'm recording this on July 6th so we even got we even have a few more days in here I should probably do this through yeah you know what let me do this through the end of June just so that we're being fair give it exactly half the year alright 91 79 the total number of closings from January through the end of June that's better too because that we sometimes people sometimes realtors are late in recording closings so that you know this gives them they should have had a week to record a closing by this point we should be a good shape alright so let's see here 32 foreclosures is what we have here to date again these are closings foreclosure closings and 10 short sales so that takes us to 42 total and let me do the math real quick on that so we have forty two total foreclosures and short sales and ninety one 79 total closings that comes out to point four five % just writing that down 0.45% so my prediction is that there would be a major uptick in foreclosures or short sales there is a basically a downtrend right now right we're currently on track for 84 foreclosures and short sales as opposed to last year we had 88 and we're currently on track for it to make up point 4 five 0 point four five percent of the housing market as opposed to 0.49% last year so not only has there not been a major uptick that we're actually seeing a decrease in foreclosures and short sales that's very important if you're an investor this is this is part of why I do this sort of looking into all of the stuff because I have investors that are very interested in this sort of data and okay are we seeing things like foreclosures and short sales on the rise and not from the standpoint of closings no not from the standpoint of closings alright Housing Affordability Index this is my what 1 2 3 4 5 6 this is my seventh prediction here seventh bold prediction for 2026 was that housing affordability would return to 100 at some point in time during the year the house per the Housing Affordability index that just means that the median family can afford the medium priced home and that's exactly what happened now what's unfortunate is that all of this data got readjusted and so it actually doesn't look like a very bold prediction because we had several months in the month of towards the end of 2025 that also surpassed 100 on the housing affordability index so I don't know what to do about that but I was correct on that one it is what it is alright No. 8 new construction will remain cheaper than existing homes for the majority of 2026 and whenever I talk about cheaper or anything like that we're always talking about from the standpoint of a median sales price all right and it's not the perfect metric but it is the best one that we have and if so I've got info Sparks pulled up here which is by far the best way to pull this data and you can see the magenta line is new construction the top dark blue line is existing homes and the entire year so far new construction median has been below the existing home median and so it's cheaper to buy you can find or I should say it's easier to buy a cheaper new construction home right now than is to buy a cheaper existing home that is the reality of the situation and that is what the data bears out and I said the majority of 2026 we I we need one more month and we're already at the majority so I feel very good six months six out of 12 months so far new construction median has been below the existing home sales median I'm fairly confident we're going to get at least one more month of that especially looking at where this is trending cause right now the existing home median for twenty for June 2026 was 347 five and new construction was three 15 that's a 32 thousand basically a 32 thousand dollar spread and change it's gonna be hard for new construction it's to close that gap we'd have to see really new construction isn't has been hovering kind of down you know in in the low to mid 3 three hundreds for quite some time we would need to see the existing home sales median come down in order for that to happen and usually so last year the peak was the month of July the year before that the peak was June but those months still recent in recent history those summer months existing home sales have still trended above new construction in terms of the medium price point so I feel pretty good I'm quite confident I'm gonna hit on that one number No. 9 number of showings until a home is under contract will increase to an average of 8+ showings for the year let's look at let's see here showings until a home is under contract all right so that would be shows to pending change this to the average and let me get rid of all construction types and I said that it will increase to an average of 8+ so I actually must have meant based on the median and based on the median sorry I messed up for a second there I didn't write down on my notes whether I was doing median or average but pretty clear based on the data that I meant the median and so for most of 2025 we were down around seven we did end up at eight for the month of December I didn't have that date I think at the time that I recorded the bold predictions episode January went up to nine February went to eight March to seven may to 7 and then June went back up to 8 showings per uh before being under contract and so what does that mean okay what why does that matter well you can look at if I pull out the data pull out the data and look at when things were really hot from 2021 through 2023 we had a much higher median showings to pending right frequently in the double digits it crested at 13 in March of 2022 and so that's an indicator of a somewhat healthy market or at least a hotter market I should say that way healthy that was not a healthy market for me to pretend like 2021 through 2023 was healthy sorry I misspoke there not a healthy market it's a sign of a hotter market okay and so I put that we will need to have an average of 8+ showings per for the year and again I think I meant to say median probably the average of the median is how I'm gonna have to interpret it I'm gonna have to go back and listen to that episode what I actually said literally I'm gonna have to do that but and I came prepared I even looked at all of this ahead of time to make sure I'm not winging this episode but that was one that that I clearly needed to look a little bit more closely at but at the moment it looks pretty good that we're gonna we're gonna hit that number alright two bedroom homes I said my 10th and final prediction two bedroom homes will lose value and four bedroom homes will see a greater than 4% increase in median sales price alright let's go back to the median sales price this time break it out by bedroom count I said 2 bedroom homes will lose value the jury is still out so if you're looking at my chart if you're looking at info sparks the magenta line is the 2 bedroom homes the top orange line is the 4 bedrooms or more and the magenta line very well could end up being lower year over year so we ended December let's see here December 20 25 ended with two bedroom homes being having a meeting of 220,000 and the median right now is 207,500 okay now I'm not factoring any seasonality into that so understand that very well could change but the 4 bedroom homes are currently trending at 412,000 and change and that is the highest that that 4 bedroom homes have ever been at as far back as I have this data well hold on in July 2025 there are 4,000 12 five okay I apologize July 2025 was ever so slightly higher ever so slightly higher but the point remains that it looks pretty good that was higher than June 2025 was 4:05 in change we're now up to 4:12 in change and so it's looking like we will see four bedroom homes with some sort of an increase will it be a 4% increase we're not trending to that point yet okay so this one's very interesting I I'm leaning towards that I will not hit this one because the 4% increase on four bedroom homes at the moment even though we've gotten some positive momentum we've had month over month price increases on the median sales price for every month since March a 4% increase year over year right now we're not trending for that so we'll have to wait and see I I'm 50 50 on this one I could see it going either way because obviously you just like I said this war it is obviously the war that we're in the middle of right now say is a huge wild card has been a huge wild card for the entire year if it were to end in some good positive way for the United States that could really completely change the second half of this year as well in a different direction right we could see rates come way down we could see buyer activity shoot way up we don't know it's a lot of question marks but just based on what's currently happening with that final one I'm kind of 50 50 if the status quo remain for the end of the year with the way the market is right now I could see that going either way so hopefully that was interesting hopefully that was useful in some way for you guys thank you so much for listening I'm Stan McQueen this is my podcast Selling Greenville you can find all my contact information in the show notes if you need a realtor for any of your real estate needs here in the Greenville South Carolina market just a reminder to like rate review subscribe to the show just support the show in that way leave a little comment tell me if you disagree with any of my bold predictions or disagree with my methodology how about that if you wanna do anything like that knock yourself out I'll respond to your comment so thank you guys so much for watching and listening I appreciate everyone we will talk again next time!