The real estate industry has repeated one message for years: America has a severe housing shortage. Ryan McKeveny, managing director of Zellman & Associates, offered a different perspective on the Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered podcast with James Dwiggins and Keith Robinson.
According to McKeveny’s research, the real estate market may be roughly balanced today.
A More Complicated Supply Picture
McKeveny’s work covers housing from end to end, including home sales, home prices, housing starts, rentals, mortgages, home builders, and publicly traded housing companies. That broad view matters because the real estate industry can become highly siloed.
The numbers do not point uniformly toward a shortage:
- Multifamily vacancy rates are at a decade high.
- Single-family rental vacancy rates are also at a decade high.
- Resale inventory remains tight but has improved meaningfully.
- Home builder spec inventory is at its highest level since the Great Financial Crisis.
McKeveny described the current picture as a modest undersupply of single-family housing and a modest oversupply of multifamily housing. Truly affordable housing remains a serious challenge, but delivering extremely low-cost rentals is difficult even with government subsidies.
Demographics Are Changing Housing Demand
Demographics may be one of the most important long-term factors for every real estate agent and real estate broker to understand. Births are declining, deaths are increasing, and immigration is currently low. In approximately five years, the United States could experience more deaths than births.
That does not mean housing demand disappears. It means household formation may slow, and the country may not need the same number of new homes that historical real estate trends suggest.
Immigration is especially important because it may become the only source of population growth in the United States. This is not merely a housing issue; it also affects broader economic growth.
The aging population creates another important opportunity for agents. Nearly 20% of new resale listings may be connected to a death, either directly or through an inherited property. An agent who understands estate sales, inherited homes, and family transitions may be better positioned to serve this growing segment.
Affordability Remains the Immediate Problem
Even if supply is balanced, affordability remains painful. Mortgage rates are near their year-to-date highs and remain higher than a year ago. July transaction activity declined both sequentially and year over year, although some seasonal slowdown is normal. The market is also increasingly K-shaped. Higher-income buyers are performing better, while consumers at the lower end face greater pressure from mortgage payments, employment uncertainty, and everyday expenses.
McKeveny suggested that mortgage rates may need to fall near 4.5% for affordability to return to normal. Since that outcome is uncertain, real estate agents may need to focus less on waiting for the market to improve and more on gaining market share.
What Agents Can Do Now
The discussion offered several practical takeaways for anyone building a real estate brokerage, real estate franchise, or NextHome real estate franchise business:
- Study the demographics of a local sphere of influence.
- Build relationships with estate attorneys and local home builders.
- Understand current real estate financing, real estate taxes, and real estate laws.
- Track local real estate prices, real estate listings, and inventory.
- Explain both resale homes and new construction options.
- Invest consistently in marketing and real estate technology.
This applies whether consumers search for real estate agents near me, real estate companies near me, real estate for sale, or information about real estate investing. Helpful education can come from real estate blogs, real estate podcasts, real estate books, real estate courses, and real estate events investing.
The key lesson from this real estate podcast is simple: waiting for better conditions may not be a strategy. Investing in real estate, understanding market data, and serving overlooked customers may offer a stronger path forward. For real estate investing for beginners, the same principle applies: understand the data before accepting the popular narrative about real estate investment real estate brokerage opportunities.
