Everyone’s Talking About the Real Estate Market Cooling

CLAY:I get a lot of emails from Zillow about a variety of different homes that I’ve been looking at. This is totally anecdotal. But in the Nashville area where everything has been white hot and people were basically all paying above list, all of a sudden I’m getting emails of homes that I had clicked on and looked at that are now reducing prices substantially. We are going to hit a recession, and I am seeing anecdotally in the housing market that the increase in overall rates from around 3% to nearly 6% on some mortgages is dramatically declining what people are able to afford. I know you’ve been looking around the Florida market where everything has been white hot like crazy. Are you seeing some sort of movement back down to sanity in Florida?

BUCK: People keep talking about it. I haven’t seen the move down, and I can tell you, Manhattan average rent, folks — the average the entire island of Manhattan — just hit its highest level ever.

CLAY: What is that?

BUCK: It’s $5,000 a month.

CLAY: So, 60K a year for rent in Manhattan.

BUCK: Average. Average. Think about that. Crazy.

CLAY: That’s more than a huge percentage of our listeners make in a year, just to live in Manhattan.