• A company’s value depends in part on how quickly it can restore critical operations after disruption.
• Analysts should examine critical dependencies, tested recovery times, and the financial impact of downtime.
• Recovery speed and costs should inform cash flow forecasts and help explain valuation differences among peers.

Traditional equity valuation rests on a quiet but powerful assumption: continuity.

Revenues are expected to grow, margins are assumed to normalize, and terminal values often imply that the business will continue operating without material interruption.

Discounted cash flow (DCF) models, relative valuation multiples, and even many risk premia rely on this premise.

But continuity is becoming a less reliable assumption.

Over the past decade, investors have repeatedly seen companies lose value not because demand disappeared permanently, but because their operating models could not absorb disruption quickly enough. Idiosyncratic events such as pandemic shutdowns, semiconductor shortages, cyber incidents, platform dependency shocks, energy price volatility, and geopolitical fragmentation have exposed a common weakness: many businesses are valued as stable systems.

In reality they are networks of fragile dependencies.

The valuation question therefore needs to change. Equity analysts should not ask only, “How profitable is this company under normal conditions?” but “How does this business behave under stress, and how quickly can it recover?”

A company that restores critical operations within days may preserve customer trust, continue to generate revenue, and maintain its long-term value. A company that requires months to recover may suffer contract losses, customer churn, regulatory scrutiny, and a de-rating.

From this vantage point then, resilience becomes a valuation variable, not an operational hiccough.

Dave:
We are heading into the cold, slow winter months for the housing market, and the headlines are kind of matching the weather right now. And it feels as though the housing market is taking a turn for the worse. But is that what is really happening? Today at On the Market, me, Kathy, Henry, and James are breaking down the latest data and the latest news to help you understand what’s actually going on. This is On the Market. Let’s get to it. Everyone, welcome to On the Market. I am Dave Meyer. Joined today by the full panel. We have Henry Washington, James Dainard, and Kathy Fettke joining us today. James, how are you?

James:
I’m doing good. I ran off to Mexico, run away from this market, and now I’m just looking at the beach. I might just stay here.

Dave:
That’s the smart thing to do.

Kathy:
Yeah.

Dave:
Henry, how are you doing?

Henry:
I am doing well, sir. Good to be here.

Dave:
All right. And Kathy, what’s new?

Kathy:
I’m just missing you guys from BPCon. It was so much fun and it ended too soon and I’m already counting the days for the next one.

Dave:
I know. It really was fun this year. It was one of the best ones ever.

Kathy:
They just keep getting better, but I get to see you guys in Phoenix soon or in Scottsdale.

Dave:
Yeah, we are doing a regional event. This is a small conference in Arizona this December 5th through 7th, and it’s all about scaling. So it’s actually a hands-on workshop. Kathy’s going to be there, James is going to be there. We’re also going to have Devon Kinard and a bunch of other speakers talking about how to go from a position where you have two to five units to scaling a sustainable business that provides you financial independence over the long run. If you want to get tickets, you can go to biggerpockets.com/conferences, but it’s going to be three days of a lot of fun. There’s only a hundred tickets available though. So if you want to check that out and get your business to the next level, go buy your tickets today. Thanks for the reminder, Kathy. And I should mention, we’re doing a lot more regional events next year, so make sure to pay attention to biggerpockets.com/conferences.
We’re going to have a lot more regional events on top of BPCon that are a little bit more focused and specialized. So if one of them appeals to you, come check them out. They’re always super valuable. We get great feedback on them. With that, let’s get to our headlines for today. I drew the short straw today and I’m going to go first and I don’t have good news guys.

Kathy:
Come on, day.

Dave:
I’m going to report on inflation. So there’s two pieces of data that came out this week. We’re recording this on the 16th of October. First was probably the inflation number that everyone saw, which is the CPI, the Consumer Price Index that measures the price that you and I and everyone else pays when you go to the store and buys goods. And that was up. It was up 3.7%, which is not good. It’s higher than was expected. And I think what’s notable about it is it’s not just the headline CPI that measures everything. There’s this other thing called the core CPI that strips out energy costs. It strips out food costs because they’re volatile. And that was also up. That’s notable to me because we all know gas prices are expensive, but everything else is going up too. And it’s because, in my opinion, one, tariffs, but two, diesel prices are up like crazy and everything runs on diesel.
Every consumer good that you get goes on a boat, most of them, that runs on diesel or gets delivered by a truck that runs on diesel. And so these costs and these expenses are flowing through. Now, the headline I wanted to bring just sort of, I don’t know, adds fuel to this fire is that US producer prices post largest increase in four and a half years. So what this measures is wholesale prices, what businesses pay to each other, and it’s up a lot. It was the highest it has been in four and a half years. And in fact, it rose 1.3% in just a single month. If you shop like that out, that’s like 14 or 15% per year. That’s probably not going to happen, but it indicates that businesses are paying more to each other, which to me says the consumer price index is going up next month because if business are paying more, they’re going to pass it along to all of us.
And so this is just another reason why I feel like the economy is very fragile right now and mortgage rates are not coming down anytime soon. They have come down a little bit in the last few days, which is surprising and good. But man, it’s hard to see this getting better anytime soon, at least to me. But maybe any of you disagree or how do you see this?

Kathy:
I was just on a panel, economic panel a couple night ago in Manhattan Beach and the other panelist said every

Dave:
Time

Kathy:
In

Dave:
The

Kathy:
Past that rates have gone up, and I don’t know if this is true, I haven’t looked it up, when the Fed continues to raise rates, a recession comes after that. And I don’t know if that’s true, but the point of raising rates and the reason the Fed raises rates is to slow down inflation, to slow down the things that might cause inflation. And sometimes they overdo it and they slow it too much and that can turn into a recession. I mean, I’m just curious if you’ve heard that or think that’s what’s next.

Dave:
People say that, but I mean the most recent one, they started raising rates in 22. We haven’t had a recession. That’s true. So I think that’s a pretty clear one. And they were raising rates from 2015 to 2019 and we didn’t have a recession. So I don’t know about that. The one thing I’ve heard though is when bond yields go up this much that something always breaks and that is my real concern. I feel like something is going to break in the credit market and that’s the scary stuff that most people don’t pay attention to, but that worries me. But to the bigger point, I think that’s kind of what they need to do.That’s the only way they’re going to break inflation is to, they call it in economics, demand destruction, which sounds so dramatic, but it’s like just get people to stop buying sh*t is what they’re talking about.

Kathy:
Make money expensive and you don’t spend it, you don’t borrow it. And that’s why on the flip side, when money becomes cheaper, everybody jumps in and bubbles are formed. So all these massive swings are not healthy.

James:
No, I don’t think it’s going to get any better. I think we’re going to be in a very emotional market for the next 12 months where it’s just going to be these constant swings back and forth. But by now, aren’t we kind of used to it though? I feel like it’s been doing this since Powell started hiking up interest rates. It’s been this rubber band back and forth, back and forth. I feel like we’re going to keep having these swings, but it’s just not going to get any better and things are going to keep getting more and more expensive because it’s funny, we had this long construction meeting over the last two weeks. We’ve been trying to focus on costs. How do we get costs down? How do we get costs down? There’s not a lot of angles. The only thing I’m seeing that we could see a break in is labor costs because people, they don’t have work right now.
People are calling me going, we give them numbers to hit and they’re going, okay, well just tell me how much the labor is. Just buy all the materials, I’ll do it for the labor. And it’s starting to pull that cost down. So I don’t think the materials are going to get any cheaper, but I do think the labor is, I mean we’re seeing a massive drop in building issued permits. I mean at least in our Seattle market, there is no work right now for guys. It went from being no bodies to way too many bodies in too much work.

Dave:
Yeah, that is, I feel like what’s going to happen. I know you’re saying, James, you get used to it, but it feels different to me now. I have felt confident the last four years that the housing market would hold up. And I’m not saying it’s going to crash or anything like that, but I think demand for housing is going to just really fall right now. I just don’t think people are into it right now, buying homes. And I also think supply will fall. I don’t think people are going to list homes either. So I think that contains the amount of downward pressure on pricing, but I just have a hard time imagining people being like, “Yeah, now’s the time I really want to buy.” It just feels like if you’ve been on the sidelines, you’re probably going to stay on the sidelines right now. And of course there are some people that are going to move and they’re going to buy because of life circumstances, but I think people have an option are going to sit this one out.

James:
Yeah, the people are looking right now. I’ll tell you one thing, they have no problem asking for a low price.

Henry:
That’s good.

Dave:
Yeah.

James:
They got no problem asking for a low price, which good for them. Some of my clients were selling houses were like, “I can’t believe this offer came in.” I’m like, “Why not?” I mean, at least you’re getting an offer and now you got to work it, but it’s like you can’t blame them for asking.

Dave:
Of course not. It makes total sense. I think the other thing I just want to call out about this inflation thing that worries me is that I don’t think this is the type of inflation that is easily fixed by the Fed. What happened in 22 when there was so much money getting printed and it was just cheap money working through the financial system, higher rates can fix that kind of inflation. But there are two types of inflation. There is demand pull and there’s supply push. And demand pulls when the economy’s hot, there’s a lot of money flowing around, it overheats too much money chasing too few goods. That is what the Fed can control. The type of inflation we have now though is supply push, which is basically there’s a supply shock in the energy markets and the Fed raising rates doesn’t fix that. And the other thing that’s driving up inflation right now in the US is AI.
And I know no one wants to hear about AI, but they’re spending so much money on construction and electricity and construction materials. It’s driving up the cost, especially at certain places of goods and commodities and construction materials. And you think Facebook’s going to stop spending a hundred billion dollars a year because the Fed raises the rates a quarter point? I sure don’t. So I think that’s the problem is the only way inflation comes down right now is consumers stopping to spend. And they really haven’t, which is remarkable in my opinion, and the strength of American consumers. But I don’t know, it just feels like this is going to be a long battle against inflation and that is not good for sellers in the housing market, but I think it’s going to push prices down, which could be good for buyers in the housing market. All right.
Well, sorry to open us up with a depressing story about inflation. Kathy, got anything exciting for us?

Kathy:
Oh, you know I do. This is just a follow-up story to yours.

Dave:
Oh gosh.

Kathy:
Scottsman’s Guide came out with this article, Fannie Mae just tore up its 2027 mortgage forecast. Yeah. The housing giant’s latest forecast shows mortgage rates at 7.5% through the end of next year. And you know what? Fannie Mae is pretty accurate. They weren’t this time. They thought that this year rates would be around 6.5%. That’s kind of what a lot of economists though.

Dave:
Can’t blame people for the war. No one saw that.

Kathy:
Not seeing that coming perhaps.

Dave:
Yeah. It’s a black swan.

Kathy:
Yeah. I mean maybe there were signs, I don’t know, but here we are and it is such a turnaround. This is what is confusing. And like I talked about the bouncing around and the swings that are confusing people that it really was just earlier this year, January and February, that right here on On the Market, we were reporting that affordability was getting better and rates were down and wages were up and people were coming back into the housing market. They were able to afford it and things were looking better and then boom, here we are in this situation. And also in addition, Fannie Mae’s predicting that the Fed will raise rates a couple of more times, which again, I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone. Rates follow inflation. If inflation’s high, you can expect rates to continue to rise. So the question is, what do we do in this environment?
At least it helps to know, okay, rates are going to be elevated seven and a half percent, maybe even ticking closer to 8% at times. How do we navigate that?

James:
I mean, I definitely did not think we’re going to be in the seven and a half.

Dave:
No one did.

James:
I though we were going to be in the six and a half or in the high fives. And I remember when we were in the high fives earlier in the year for a second, sales were clicking off, volume was going.

Dave:
Oh

James:
Yeah. And this isn’t good news for us as far as for the flippers, the developers and the people selling short term, it’s not great because rates staying this high and if we’re going to see that throughout 2027, we could just see it get worse from here because we don’t know what the true effect is right now at rates being seven and a half to 8%. And we could even see, I think Dave, we were talking about this, we might be in the eights next year. And if we’re in the eights and you’re trying to sell –

Dave:
Good luck.

James:
It’s not going to be that enjoyable. The good news is that’s what you have to underwrite at for 2027.

Kathy:
Now you have a number. Yeah.

Dave:
That’s exactly right.

James:
Yeah. You have a number. So do your math backwards. Just because the rates are high doesn’t mean the investments are bad.

Dave:
That’s right.

James:
As long as you have the right information. Now I was maybe forecasting that I though rates were going to be in low sixes coming into the winter. I though we were going to be selling hot all summer, but now we know you got the roadmap in front of you. Now you got to figure out what path you want to take because it’s just math. You got to underwrite your rentals, your flips, and as long as you anticipate it, everything’s okay.

Kathy:
I’m curious as a flipper, do you offer incentives like buying down the rate back to where people were more comfortable around six and a half percent or?

James:
We offer everything. We might put an elevator in a house on one deal.

Henry:
I’m glad you kind of wrapped up at the end there. James was saying there’s still opportunity. Real estate’s always been a cycle. It’s always been a circle. There’s always an uptime and there’s a downtime and people make money all throughout the cycle of real estate. Right now, all I’m hearing is you just got to be careful. You have to be careful with what you’re buying. You have to be careful with how you’re buying it. So in other words, you could do a deal six years ago, five years ago with short-term lending, a balloon payment, the value of the home was going to go up fairly quickly and you could get yourself out of a tough situation. Those situations don’t exist anymore. So you’ve got to be super strong in underwriting. You got to be willing to leave what seems like an okay deal on the table and only buy great deals.
You’ve got to be able to make more offers than you’re used to making because your margins are going to be wider and more people are going to say no. And you got to have multiple exits so that if and when your house doesn’t sell, you’re able to pivot. And so is it scary? Yeah, it’s scary if you’re flipping luxury homes with only one exit, right? That’s scary because you don’t have a backup plan, but if you are flipping homes that you can pivot, you’re a little more protected. And what I’m seeing right now is there’s just lots of opportunity. I just did a mail campaign and the response rate was so much higher than it’s been in the past. We are getting call after call after call because there’s more opportunity to buy because of the difficulty. And so I just put a whole lot under contract for 2,500 bucks that I can build a duplex on.
We got a house for 150 that’s, as it sits, it’s probably worth 250 and we’re just going to fix it and throw a tenant in it. Could I flip it and make some money? Sure, but it’s a good house and a good neighborhood. We’ll fix it up. We’ll throw a tenant in it. It’ll cash flow a little bit right now, but if I can hold through the turmoil, I’ll look back on that deal and be like, “That was a great deal. I’m so glad I bought that.” So adjust your buy box and then study your market. I think this is where people are dropping the ball right now is everybody’s worried about what’s not selling because all you’re focused on is the same things you were trying to sell before the market started to shift, but the market is shifting. Things are still selling. They’re selling slower, but things are transacting.
So I know James is really good at this. He’s talked about understanding at what price point are transaction volume actually going up and down. As a whole, you’ll read the articles and it’ll say transaction volume is down, but if you break that down, look at transaction volume and houses priced in whatever the first time home buyer pool is in your market and then compare that to the next tier of home and then compare that to the next tier of home. Are mobile home selling faster? Are tiny homes selling faster? Do a little more research, see what people actually are selling and see if you can position yourself to capture some of those deals and monetize what’s actually working right now. You got to do a little more research.

Dave:
I’m totally with you. I think this is just a total matter of perspective. Henry, your story about the mailers is a perfect example. There’s always a give and take and when you have low appreciation, you just buy lower. It’s absolutely there. I feel bad for just the industry. I think that’s the hard stuff. For real estate agents and loan officers, I think transaction volume’s going to get even worse personally. You already see pending sales are down like 10% year over year, and last year sucked. So 10% below last year is brutal, absolutely brutal for this industry. So my thoughts to everyone out there who is in the industry, because we’ve been through four or five years of low transaction volume and that’s how loan officers and agents get paid, and I don’t think it’s getting better anytime soon. So more and more reason, I’m sure if you’re listening to the show, you probably already think this way, but more and more reason to be an investor-friendly agent or lender because investors are going to be the people buying right now.
There are probably not many homeowners thinking the way Henry’s thinking, I’m going to go out just laying myself a slamming deal.

Henry:
That’s true. And that’s the caveat. I’m talking to the professional investor. The casual investor is who’s going to struggle. The one who’s just trying to buy something on the MLS that they can hold onto and make money on. That’s going to be extremely hard in this market. But if you’re a professional investor, the opportunity’s there to make money. Or if you’re a casual investor and you want to just operate like a professional investor for a couple of years so that you can buy some great deals, that’s great. And then when the market changes, you can slow down or not buy anything and just capture the upside of what you bought when things were down. It just requires you to think a little different. An example of, and still real estate is still very local guys. Where I live, anything under $200,000 is typically going to move a lot quicker because there’s just not a lot of it and there’s people priced out of things right around that price range.
So if you drop it under the $250,000 mark, you open yourself up to a buyer’s pool that is bigger. And also in my market, because we have large corporations here that are all butts in seat companies, they don’t allow remote work, that second tier of homes, so not the three bed, two bath, 1500 square feet. We’re talking the four bed, three bath, 22, 23, 2,500 square feet priced under 500,000. So somewhere between 300 to 500, those sell here too because there’s demand for that particular product in this small pocket of the country. So you just have to know what’s transacting and position yourself to capture those assets. It keeps you safer.

Dave:
In my market, under $200,000 is a parking space.

Henry:
It’s a parking space.

Kathy:
Yeah. I feel like anything priced at 200,000 would go very quickly in my market.

Dave:
Yes, yes. Instantly. James, your turn. What do you got?

James:
So I brought in an article today by HousingWire that says why housing inventory is sending sellers the wrong signals. And what this article kind of talks about and highlights is that certain markets, for example, like Dallas, when you look at on paper that inventory is actually down 3.3% and it talks about the kind of markets across the board and what’s going on as far as you got to dig into everything in the why and behind it, and I think with investors too, it’s just really important that you’re not looking at things on the surface because what it talks about is that, for example, in Dallas, it’s down 3.3%, but buyers have dropped 32%. And the reason that they’re seeing this inventory drop in certain metro markets is because people are canceling their listings. D-listings are massive right now and you have to dig into it because a lot of sellers are going, oh, well, it’s going to be a great time to sell in the spring, but there could be a lot more inventory coming up.
And that is something I’ve been hearing a lot lately. I’m going to pull it off and refinance this property and sell it in three months and I’m going to wait till January. And in theory, it’s always a better time to sell it. Your first quarter of the year is always going to be your hottest time to sell. But we could see more and more inventory start stacking up because the buyer volume, specifically even in Dallas, 32% less buyers. It doesn’t matter if you have a hot spring market or your spring market’s coming because there’s no bodies to look at it. And that’s what we’re seeing in our listings. The velocity is so slow. And I’m disagreeing with people that I’m not taking my houses off. I’m getting them sold now because like what Kathy just said, we could see interest rates seven and a half percent, it’s not going to get any better.
And so the time to sell and people are serious right now that are buying. And so when you have low velocity, you want to keep that thing for sale. And so because that one buyer, if you’re not on market, and that could have been your magical buyer and you need that one. That’s so true. It is really, really down. And so before you hear inventory is low in your market, if you hear that, dig into the why because the why could be a whole different level of shadow inventory that could really beat you up later.

Dave:
James, I’m with you. I mean, you know I’m considering selling my own house, not because I think prices are going to drop that much because I just don’t want to get stuck with a primary because I might want to move. But I think that’s the thing that people are probably missing is that even if prices don’t go down, doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to sell your home. There just could be complete lack of transaction volume in a given market. And I wanted to say this earlier and I forgot, but keep in mind, like James said it could get worse. Keep in mind that unemployment rate is still really low and the stock market is still bubbly. If one of those things changes, then transaction volume’s really going to be bad. Mortgage rates might come down, but I don’t necessarily think that’s going to revive the housing market if people are losing their jobs or their net worth is going down.
So I just think if you’re trying to sell, there’s a window right now that might get better, but it also could get worse and I think people need to be realistic about that.

Henry:
I agree with you with the leaving homes on the market. I haven’t been delisting anything. And it’s funny because people are like, “Hey, we should delist and try again.” And most of the time people do that because they’re worried about their listing getting stale and people don’t like to buy stale listings. Folks, they’re all stale right now.

Dave:
Yes, that’s so true.

Henry:
Just leave it on the market because you’re right, that magical buyer could be there. I have a home in a small town that when I bought it, I bought it for a screaming deal. It’s a brand new construction house that’s only had one person live in it, but the town is just small. So I knew there’s going to be less buyers in that town. Plus the market started to shift and now there’s even less buyers. And it would work as a rental. And I’ve thought about just throwing a tenant in it and letting it break even, but we left it on and all of a sudden I’ve got an offer and it’s a super weird offer. They’re selling something, they need time to sell it to get the money to buy. And in a normal market, I’d probably just pass on this offer. But in this market, I’m like, “Yeah, let’s work something out.” So I have to wait a little bit.
I’m going to get some non-refundable down payment upfront and we’re going to get the house sold. And I wouldn’t have done that if I pulled it off the market. And who knows what I would get when I put it back on if interest rates are higher or if something else crazy happens in the world. I’m just let it sit if you can, if you have the margin. If you don’t, obviously you don’t, but that’s why the margin’s important right now.

James:
That grinds my gears. When people go, “Oh, the listing’s stale, that’s why we’re not getting any activity.” You know what? That’s just bad salesmanship. The reason it’s stale is you’re not making phone calls, you’re not working the leads, you’re not looking at the numbers, and you need to cut price or not cut price. It’s stale because you’re not doing anything and you’re frozen. And so you got to be proactive, you got to make your touches, you got to get out there. And I hate when brokers are like, “It’s stale.” No, work the phones.

Henry:
Also, if you’re a buyer, stale’s good right now. Go make offers on them stale ones.

Dave:
Go get some stale. There’s a lot of stale. I like it. All right. I like this one, James. Thank you for bringing this one. We got one more from Henry after this quick break. Stick with us. Welcome back to On the Market. I’m here with Henry, Kathy, and James talking about the latest headlines. We got one more for you. Comes from Mr. Henry Washington. Enlighten us, sir.

Henry:
Well, as you know, what I like to do on this show and on BPRE is to see if I can get Dave on his high horse about something.

Dave:
Oh, yes.

Kathy:
All right. Oh, I want to see this.

Dave:
It’s already in the morning.

Kathy:
I’m ready for this. Are we going to talk boomers? Let’s talk boomers.

Dave:
Yeah, we’re going to talk about boomers.

Henry:
We’re not talking about boomers. My article is, it’s a headline essentially from a conference. So the CEO of eXp Realty, Leo Perea, was at eXp Con 2026 recently, and his talk was about the collapse already happened and it happened in the transaction count. So essentially what he said in this talk was at eXp Con, was that the industry’s biggest correction already happened. It happened three years ago, and it happened because of the transaction count. Priya told attendees that he was referring to the sales since 2023. They were hovering around four million annually, and there’s been two record-breaking booms that have warped our expectations, and they stole tomorrow’s buyers with low interest rates and frenzy that we’re just now seeing the hangover of, was the point that he was trying to make. So he said, “In 1996, the US recorded more than four million existing home sales with about 269 residents.
30 years later, the country has about 342 million residents, and the annual existing home sales are again still tracking near four million. So he warned that the mortgage rates and the economy could hold off sales to near the levels that they are now, keep them current, or get them below the four million mark for the first time since 1995.” So what do you think about this? Is the crash already happened, but not in price, but in terms of transaction volume? Because if transaction volume gets worse, then prices do start to come down.

Kathy:
I mean, 100%. Whenever anyone says there’s a housing crash, I say absolutely. It’s not what you think though. It’s not price crash. It is sales crash. And it has been very hard, like we said earlier, for mortgage brokers, for realtors, for title companies. Oftentimes, housing is a leading indicator for the economy because so many jobs are associated with it. And when there’s not sales happening, it affects the broader economy in a big way. So I would agree, but I would also say it’s maybe not over.

Dave:
I agree with that. I actually largely agree with what they’re saying. I mean, you can’t argue with that. There has been a crash in sales. It’s just measurable. Going back 40, 50 years, normal is five and a quarter million is kind of the average. During COVID, it got to six and a half million. So that was insane. Great time to be a lender, great time to be a real estate agent. But four million is low. That’s not a good number for the housing market. I do think it’s going to get worse, kind of what we were just saying. We are already seeing pending sale. It was four million last year, and just the early data that we’re seeing for the fall shows that it’s going down like 10%. I don’t know if it’s going to get to 3.6 million, but I bet it’s below four million for a while here.
I will say though, I don’t think a crash, in fact, I know a crash in sales does not necessarily preclude a crash in prices, and they’re not necessarily even related to one another.
I could get out my supply and demand curve charts, but basically the reason prices haven’t dropped is because supply and demand moved down together. And this is supply and demand econ 101. When supply and demand go down together, prices stay the same, but transaction volume go down. That’s exactly what we have seen. It’s very kind of predictable. That said, if demand just drops off, price will go down and transaction volume will go down. I don’t think they’re necessarily related. And so I agree with the thesis, but I don’t think that means price declines aren’t coming. I don’t think a crash in prices are coming. I’ve said for a long time now, I think we will see national nominal home prices go down next year, but I don’t think they’re going to be a crash. But I don’t think just because sales already collapsed that that means it can’t happen.
So I’m not on my high horse, Henry. I’m sorry. You can get me yelling.

Henry:
All right,

Dave:
Folks.

Henry:
All right folks. You can’t get me

Dave:
Yelling.

Henry:
I tried. But tune in next week where I try to find another article that’ll get Dave’s gears grinding.

Dave:
If it’s about boomers, a sandwich being a hot dog or your ridiculous love of Lon John Silvers, those things will get me going.

Henry:
It’s so good.

Dave:
All right. Well, this is a good story because I do think it’s the thing that people miss, Henry, that the sales collapse is the big story in the housing market actually. People say, “Oh, there’s a crash. Housing market crash is coming.” But they’re missing the two actual crashes that did happen, which is the sales collapse and the commercial real estate collapse, which is only just beginning and is probably going to get much worse. So I think more people have a stake in home prices and so that’s what they pay attention to, understandably. But it’s not really the main story, at least in my opinion.

Kathy:
Can I just end on a happy note?

Dave:
Please. That would be great.

Kathy:
It’s a happy note, a Henry note. This is just a shout out. I took a shuttle from the parking to the airport yesterday and the lady was so sweet. She waited for me. I was running, I was late and she waited the whole shuttle. They normally don’t. And she got my bags. Anyway, she was so awesome. And I went to go tip her and all I had was a hundred dollar bill, which I don’t normally have, but I had that. And I was like, “Ah, what do I do? Do I not tip her? Do I give her the Hundy?” And then I though, “And then there’s Henry Washington. What would Henry do?” And I know exactly what Henry would do.

Dave:
He’d give her his debit card.

Kathy:
I gave her the $100 bill and she just burst into tears and hugged me and said, “I love you,” and hugged me again. And I think everyone in the shuttle was like, “What just happened? Maybe I should tip more.” Anyway, times like this, when times are tough and you know people are struggling and you have the means to just surprise people, it can lighten the day. And I say this because whenever we go out with Henry and we go get a smoothie or an ice cream or something, he’s always tipping those hunties.

Dave:
He’s a very generous man.

Kathy:
Very generous person. And so that’s my goal is to be more like Henry.

Henry:
That warms my heart.

Dave:
We should all be more like Henry, except the Long John Silvers thing, but everything else.

Henry:
No, you should absolutely be more like Henry with Long John Silvers. Look, Kathy and I have had several conversations just about how fortunate we are to be in the position that we’re in. We’re all on here talking about the economy and the doom and gloom. And I would say that the four of us, and there’s a lot more other people in this world who are doing okay right now. So keep that in mind when you’re talking with people, not just saying tip everybody big, but there’s a lot of people struggling because they need to sell their homes and they can’t and they can’t access that money. And it means that they can’t buy things or do things. And so if somebody has a mean interaction with you, just try to give them some grace. Everybody’s struggling right now. Be kind to each other, be patient with each other right now.
When the economy’s bad, crime goes up, that correlation is there for a reason. So just understand that people might be hurting or struggling and if you can do a little something to help them or you can just give them a kind word, this is the time to do it guys.

Dave:
Very well said and a great way to get out of here. Thank you guys for being… That was a good ending note. I appreciate that. And great having you, James, Henry, Kathy, thanks for being here. Henry, I think we’ve made this into a big enough thing that I will try Long John Silvers.

Henry:
Please record it.

Dave:
In person with you.

Henry:
No,

Dave:
It’s got to be in person with you. Yeah, we’re doing it next time.

Henry:
Let’s do it.

Dave:
All right. Thank you guys for watching this episode of On the Market. We always appreciate it and we’ll see you with another episode in just a couple of days.