The Rage-Quitting Housing Crisis No One Is Prepared For

The media is starting to catch on about this rage quitting where sellers are getting upset that they can't get the price that they want and they're taking their house off of the market. It's getting worse every single month. And there's reports showing that this is the worst that it's ever been. Let's dig into why this is and what will happen next year in the real estate market because this is a big story and this pentup supply will be coming to the market next year and really change the way that the game will be played in the real estate industry going on for likely the next few years.

So this is a picture of Jacksonville, Florida. This is where I am located and you can see by this image that it's like an infection that's spreading. This is the number of active listings that are currently on the market in Jacksonville, Florida. It's gone from 2,000 active listings in 2022 all the way up to 12,000.

Now, a lot of you will argue and say, "Hey, look, it's just a normalized market now and we're just rebalancing, etc., etc." But we know from studying real estate that real estate swings in a pendulum. Once the consumer confidence is gone, it starts to really drag the entire market. And housing of course is a multiplier type of business. What that means is if somebody goes and buys a house, they buy a couch, they buy furniture, they buy appliances, they make upgrades to the house.

So if the number of sales slows down, which it has, it's actually about 15% lower than the numbers that we had in 2019 in terms of number of closed sales, then the inventory can start to stack month by month. It'll get a little bit wider, a little bit wider, a little bit wider. And this is what's happening, right? And this will continue to happen going into the future.

And the reason why we actually don't see higher numbers than 12,000 right now for active listings is because of what is we're calling rage quitting. People are getting upset that they can't get the price that they want on their house. That that prevents them from being able to move to a new house and be able to purchase it because they can't get enough of a down payment to make it worthwhile because a lot of them are locked in at lower interest rates. And this is causing a lockin effect that is also reducing the amount of supply that's on the market otherwise.

And so we are going to have this pent-up supply again come into the market next year and completely disrupt the market during next year's busy season. So here's the data to back it. Okay, this is created with data wrapper. It says home D-listings hit the highest September level since 2017.

This is the number of homes that were listed for sale and then delisted. Okay, so and this is for September's only. You can see in 2025 we're all the way back up to 2017 levels. Now of course there is seasonality.

A lot of people at the end of the year in November, December, this is for September's only, but in November, December, they take their house off the market and then they try to relist during busy season. Right now, we're seeing them, this happen in almost every single month of the year in 2025 because people are frustrated. They have their low interest rate that they want to give up. And so, this rage quitting is widespread.

We're experiencing it. We're getting phone calls in every day, my house won't sell. And they blame the real estate agent. The realtor is like, "Reduce the price." Because if you reduce the price to a certain level, the house will transact.

It's not that we have a demand problem. We have an affordability problem. There's lots of buyers on the sidelines who are pre-approved. They're just waiting for the deal to show up so they can actually execute and buy the house.

And this is what's so frustrating about it. You know, there's a next wave of buyers who do want home ownership. This is again, it's just an affordability crisis. And that's what's getting people locked.

It's the same reason why the person who's looking to sell wants to buy their new house and can't do it unless they get the equity piece out of it. It's the same problem that the buyer has, right? They just it's an affordability problem. They don't want to give up their 2.5% rate for a 6.5% rate.

Well, neither does the buyer. The buyer is like, "Well, I could rent this for less than I'm buying it for." So, everybody has opportunity cost when you're looking at this. So, where are these sellers rage quitting? Of course, Florida, we have the boom bus cycles here in Florida.

It's very different from the Northeast. Every area is so different when you're looking at a market. You have micro markets, you have the state market, you have the national market. It's extremely difficult to analyze a national market and try to make comparisons in that regard.

That's why there's so much arguing online. I'm actually on X now. If you want to follow me, I I am John Brooks. There's lots of arguing on there.

It's because people in California are trying to compare what's happening in Florida. People in Florida are trying to compare what's happening in Texas. Well, there's a lot of similarities between Texas and Florida, as you can see from this chart. And only certain areas of California are being impacted.

There's spots in the Northeast that have zero impact. They have a shortage of supply and so those people are saying, "Hey, we're not seeing it here." And everybody thinks where their market is is where everybody else is. I promise you, if you came down to Jacksonville and drove around the street with me, you would know exactly what I'm talking about. And we are going through a boom bus cycle and the pendulum is swinging very widely.

Now, I will say this, once certain areas start to slow down, this changes the sentiments. It changes the stories and it does tend to like a virus spread across the entire United States over years. This does not happen overnight. You know, there's this big Melody Wright article that came out in Newsweek that saying, "Hey, she thinks that prices will drop 50% next year." That does not happen and they actually misqued her, right?

So, it takes 3 to four to 5 years for the damage in the economy to filter through in the housing market because it's an illlquid asset. It moves slowly and it's month by month just trickling up more and more inventory. Prices just step down, step down, step down because of the illquid factor. It's not like stocks where they can sell off, you know, 30% in one month.

So, this is where we're seeing people rage quit their listings. It's Florida, Texas, areas of California, you see Arizona there, Colorado, even Washington State. And so, this is really important to understand. Every area is different.

And this is tracked by Redfin. Now, we are absolutely now across the nation in a buyer market. How do we know this? The data tells us this is also from data rapper and it says there are 37% more home sellers than home buyers and we this is what we're experiencing every single day.

You have a listing that's on the market for 60 days. You drop the price, you might get a couple showings, then finally you drop the price where a buyer will actually show up. They think it's a deal and they'll transact the house. It's not like before where you list on the market even with a flip phone photo and it sells to a hedge fund within 30 seconds, right?

That is no longer the case. That's what we experienced during 2021, 2022, and 2020 as well, late 2020, because of the zero interest rate policy. In March 2022, we saw interest rates move up because the uh the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, and boom, all of a sudden, they moved it from a sellers market to a buyer market with that one flip of the switch. We don't know what the Fed's going to do in December.

It's kind of divided right now. A lot of people are expecting a 25 basis point cut in next year. In May of next year, Trump is going to nominate a new uh Fed chair, which will have to be approved by the Senate. So, this will happen in May of next year.

He's looking for somebody who's going to be pumping housing as much as pos possible, pumping assets as much as possible, being able to follow his order and honestly be, you know, politically chosen. Now, this has never been the case. The Fed is supposed to be independent. It was set up that way on purpose.

However, every president wants to pump the market because it impacts the the voters who will come out and vote for that president. Totally understand why he's doing this and why the choices to do this. And a lot of people are dismissive of Powell's policy because he's concerned about affordability and inflation. And honestly, I'm concerned about the next generation's ability to buy in.

That's why I would prefer a market that has no interruption by the Fed or Congress to try to prop up housing any more than it already has. Right? The Fed already has $2.3 trillion of mortgage back securities on its balance sheet, which at that time brought down interest rates really, really low, mortgage interest rates really, really low because they brought that demand in. And that caused us to have this bubble that we're in today.

So more Fed intervention doesn't solve the prior intervention that came into the market. And obviously, we're seeing this now. And there might be no way to stop it anyway. Even if the Fed tries to step in or Congress tries to step in or they try to change 50-year mortgage, portable mortgages, all this, it's might not be enough because the state of the consumer is so bad.

Uh they're loaded up with debt and they're a they're just scrubbing nickels together. And I know there was that report that came out about the consumer and Black Friday and hey, we're up like 11.1% in the number of sales from Black Friday. Well, that wasn't number of sales. That was actually just revenue.

And the revenue was higher because the cost of buying the things were higher because of tariffs and because of inflation and things like that. So again, everybody's trying to pitch this narrative that the consumer is doing great. I don't buy it. The people I talk to on the ground, they don't say things are great.

I rarely talk to anybody who says it is. So I'd love to hear from you. Do you think the consumer is doing great or do you think that the consumer is in a really sore spot um of what's going on? And by the way, this is just an indication of where the consumer is at.

This is pending home sales, right? Obviously, if things were affordable, consumers doing great, you wouldn't see the lowest pending home sales since the great financial crisis. All right, we're already at these crisis levels. Pending home sales are down 27% from the normal levels, right?

The median levels right here with that blue line across and we're grinding along the bottom here. And I think that we'll continue to see pending home sales slide until we see prices really come down where it makes sense. Now, if we see interest rates go up from here, which would really suck for a lot of home borrowers and a lot of sellers because prices would come down even further, then I would expect to see pending home sales continue to decline, inventory stack up. However, this chart is dynamic.

Look at how dynamic the real estate market is. It can go up 20% within a year, down 20% a year just based on what the Fed decides to do and if they're going to manipulate the market. Okay? So, what you need to know for now is that we're already worse than the great financial crisis from a pending home sales perspective.

And this comes from Reventure Consulting. And this is frankly because the prices went out of control. Okay, so we saw this massive comeback after the great financial crisis. This is the case Schiller index, real home price index since World War II.

You can see we saw prices come all the way down and now we're past our prior peak in terms of real prices and we're just grinding along the top. This is because the Northeast is staying steady in the Sunb Belt areas that are completely overbuilt, had tons of wild speculation, institutional investors coming in. Those areas are already starting to come down and we're seeing inventory stack up. So, it's the tale of two markets of what's happening, but you can see there's been periods of time where there's virtually no price gain in 50 years following World War II.

So, there are periods of time where it's a good time to buy according to fundamentals and it's a bad time to buy according to fundamentals. Right now, my thought is that it's a very bad time to buy from fundamentals, especially as we have the demographic outlook with the s silver tsunami coming around the corner and prices just currently are out of control pricing out the next generation. We're seeing this march upwards right now in terms of days on market. And you could see that it's gone from 73 days to 84 days.

And why this while this may not seem like a lot, we're seeing that it used to be like two days on the market and sell. So, we've gone from like 2 to 10 days all the way up to 83 days within a short period of time. And I expect as more inventory comes on the market, the days on market will continue to increase. We're also seeing sellers start to negotiate more off of the list price of their home.

Right? So, we used to be getting 94.4%. Right? So, you can negotiate off 5.6%.

So, if you're a buyer right now, this is really good information to understand. Now, not every house is going to sell according to their sold to list ratio, right? Why? Because some houses are phenomenal.

They're upgraded. They have some sort of compensating factor. They're just going to sell because they're just a great house. Okay?

But other houses that are just mediocre, cookie cutter, similar to everything else or near new construction, you're going to see the price that a seller is going to take just really drop off of a cliff. And that's what we're seeing right now. We're seeing the sold to list price ratio really, really decline all the way down to 90 uh what is this? 92 uh.7.

Yeah. So, accepting 7.3% off their list price. I expect sellers are going to do a lot more. And we're seeing 33% of listings now slash their prices every single week in Jacksonville because of this competition.

And this is again not to mention the 400 500 homes that come off the market every single week. That's going to come onto the market next year when sellers are going to try to list at the opportune busy season of real estate. I don't think that's a good strategy. We actually think right now is the best time to get out because we see more inventory coming on despite the rage quitting and we think that prices will continue to come down moving forward in Florida over over the next year.

Here's what we're seeing across the board. This comes from Bloomberg opinion. People are talking about affordability crisis across the board. A year from the election, the cost of living dominates the debate even more.

And this is what I think will happen on the next stage uh for a presidential election. Even in the midterms, everybody's going to be talking about affordability. Now, of course, the administration blames illegal immigrants, uh, on affordability of a lot of things, of housing costs and all this stuff, SNAP benefits, pushing up prices, right? So, the administration has this narrative that they're talking about, hey, we're going to fix this, we're going to fix this, we're going to fix this.

Remains to be seen. I'm interested to hear your thoughts and if you think the same thing. Uh but ultimately this conversation is going to dominate over the next few years and over the next 10 years the number one conversation will be about the silver tsunami and the demographic outlook of the United States because there is an affordability crisis and it's limiting people to purchase their first house, start having start having kids and getting married. And those are big factors that go into the American value system.

So look, the media is starting to catch on this rage quitting. US home sellers pull stale listings off the market as interest fades. Yes, absolutely. They're yanking their listings off the market as the nation's real estate sector stagnates.

We see this across the board. Good for the media. They're finally catching on to stuff that we've been talking about here for the last 3 to four months. That's great.

And another way that we can see that this market is completely overvalued, this also comes from Reenture Consulting, is that home value to rent ratio. And this is why we are currently in a housing bubble, right? So this is across the United States and I can tell you in Florida it would just be so much crazier because a decade ago you can move to Florida is completely affordable. It's not even recognizable this market from what it was a decade ago because there's so much building, so much construction, so much migration and builders were building at such an insane level that you know they thought this demand from the northeast and the west would continue with these wealthy buyers moving to the area.

It's just not the case. We're not seeing that demand continue from these areas. So, the only people who can purchase are the locals. Well, to be able to purchase as a local, you need dual income and you need a great credit score and we just don't have that anymore.

So, you have to have prices come down or we're going to have to see migration to Florida continue to move over. But, this basically shows you the home value to rent ratio, right? It was the worst during the mid2000s bubble and now we're about half the way there, but it's starting to come down on the 22 to 25 bubble and this is where we are now. We expect that prices will continue to decline.

You know, if you go back down to that median price, I mean, we could see another 20 to 30% off prices at this point to be able to get that ratio. And by the way, this ratio could get a lot worse because rent prices are starting to fall. We're actually seeing rents drop by about 15% here locally because of the amount of inventory that's coming onto the market. And of course, there's this generational divide that's happening.

If you haven't seen this chart, it comes out from the National Association Realtors. There's a lot of arguments on if this chart is true or not true. And then they came out with counter information that says, "Hey, yes, the median age of a home buyer is higher, but it's not as high as what this National Association of Realtors is putting out there." I can tell you in our experience in Florida, this is pretty accurate for what we're seeing. We're seeing people in their late 30s being first-time home buyers.

They're starting their family and they're starting about a decade later than people used to start. Yes, we're starting to see that. So, intuitively, what we're seeing on this chart is what we are actually experiencing. And now you obviously see all buyers are age 59.

This is basically a boomer 61 years or older. It's basically boomers trading houses back and forth to each other to downsize or get close to family and things like that. And so we are seeing this exact thing because if you're in your 30s and 40s and you have student debt, you have car loans, all these things. How can you afford to purchase a home unless you're giving up your entire paycheck to basically pay for your shelter cost?

You barely have any money left over for child care or any other expenses that you have when we really look at it after tax. So, this generational divide is is really crucial. This will be a conversation that we'll continue to to study very closely here on this YouTube channel. So, thank you guys for watching.

I'd love to hear from your market. Who are you seeing as the home buyers and who are you seeing as the home sellers? What are the problems that they're experiencing and tell me which market that you're in. And of course, this chart is phenomenal.

This comes from the Joint Center for Housing Studies. It used to be a 3:1 ratio back in 2000 for your house price to income, right? Because everything's relative to income. And this is where a lot of arguments start online is like, you know, wow, you can have a really high income ratio or, you know, and still have the houses stay at peak prices.

Those are for very unique locations that have a limited supply. That is not for areas like, you know, Jacksonville or, um, areas of of Florida or Texas. Okay? But you can see right now there's 7 to one house price to income ratio just over the last 22 years.

So it costs on relative to your income twice as much, a little bit more than twice as much to be able to purchase a house relative to your income than it did previously. So homes are insanely overvalued from nearly every metric that we look at. And of course there's going to be areas in the Northeast where this is not true. But I'm talking about the Sunb Belt in specific areas that are overbuilt.

And if you're in one of those areas, I feel for you. If you want to reach out and you're looking for help, you know, you can look at my email below in the description and you can reach out to me and I can give you an update on what I see going on in your market or I can get you in touch with a top agent. Most agents suck, right? 74% of agents didn't even sell a house last year.

They make it seem like on media they're the kings, the center of the universe. But the reality is most of them suck and you need to do your research and diligence on them. I can help with that. But here's the truth.

Even though things are really bad now, next year won't be better. This is my prediction for next year. Obviously, unemployment expectations are getting way worse. We're off the chart.

This comes from the University of Michigan. Uh unemployment expectations are closing in on a series high. People are getting laid off across the board. A lot of middle management, a lot of fear of AI, a lot of companies that are just cutting to be able to save cash because they feel like the market is changing pretty quickly.

And if the employment market drops, obviously, if you don't have a job, you can't purchase a house. Or if people think they're going to lose a their job, they're not going to buy a house to for real estate to continue. Consumer sentiment has to be really good and people have to have a lot of faith that their job is going to continue for the long term. Otherwise, most people won't buy a house.

And if the stock market cracks even for a little bit and we're seeing a little crack this morning, you know, if the market really does turn over and let's say go down 10 to 15%. That will absolutely impact how people will feel because why the people who are trading houses are right now are 59 years old and if they're they see their 401ks or or their account balances go down, the last thing they're going to do is go out there and buy a house most likely. So, it will absolutely have an impact on what's happening next year. And I think we are at record highs for for stocks.

We're at record highs for houses housing. And those prices will revert back to the mean. And frankly, the sales are already slowing. So, this is already happening.

Record low home buyer demand for existing home sales is just grinding along the bottom along with pending home sales. And we're going to get slower if we don't see the rates drop more. And rates have been, you know, above 6% for nearly a year now. And if they continue to stay above 6% for another year, I could definitely see us continue to slide down into lower and lower sales.

And you know, NAR is coming out and say the National Association of Realtors saying, "Hey, you know, we'll actually have more sales next year." But they keep revising down the number of sales every single month that comes out because they see what's going on with home buyer demand and the affordability crisis as well. And by the way, NAR, just understand when you listen to somebody, they have a motive of what they want to pitch to you. Of course they're going to pitch that housing is the best investment. It's the National Association of Realtors, right?

You're listening to Housing Wire. Of course, they're going to pitch the best, you know, real estate's the best ever and it's going to be the longest bull run in history, another 25 years. They're sponsored by mortgage brokers and they're sponsored by builders and they're sponsored by realtors. So, of course, they're going to push this housing narrative that there's a shortage and we we, you know, this is the best time to buy in history and it's way better than renting, etc., etc., because that's how they get paid.

Without these transactions, they do not get paid. So their job is to create media to pitch this to you. So you always want to be careful. And this is the chart that I think is so important to look at and to understand about real estate.

Okay? When you have this is active listings in the blue. When you have active listings going up and you see that every single month you see new listings come on the market in this pink line and sold listings in the orange line. The difference between those two is the new inventory comes on.

Might well you might say, "Well, if that's the case, if there's more new listings and sold listings, you should see the number of active listings rising." No, because of the rage quitting. The rage quitting is causing this to actually decline because people are getting frustrated. They're taking your house off the market and this inventory will come on next year because these are sellers who are truly motivated to sell their house. They're not just testing the market like many people prophesize.

You don't open your house and let people walk through it. A bunch of strangers walk through your house unless you're serious about selling your house. They're just stuck on the price. They can't get the price that they want and they get upset and they pull it off and say, "I'm going to put it on next year." That's why more it's not going to get better next year.

If you're a seller in the sunb belt, I would consider selling sooner rather than later unless you have a very unique property and you don't have to move um for the next 5 to 10 years. But if you do need to move in the next couple of years, I would consider doing so sooner rather than later. And of course, you want to contact an adviser for that. But for now, Zillow's even saying, "Hey, we're seeing the majority of prices across the United States, the entire United States drop, you know, from this time last year." And this ratio is starting to move up.

So, as of October 2025, 53% of homes have lost their value over the past year as measured by their estimate. We expect this ratio to continue moving up every single month that this report comes out. So, love to hear from you. Do you think that sellers are better waiting off until next year if they're in the sunb belt or will they get stuck with a sea of supply next year and will that really cause, you know, prices to come down?

I certainly think so. I'd love to hear from you. And what other options do sellers have? A lot we're seeing a lot of people have short sales right now.

We're have we're seeing foreclosures start to, you know, 10x from what we had the previous year. All of this stuff is filtering through the system here in Florida. Love to hear what you're seeing on the ground in your area. As always, if you want more information, you could subscribe to my Substack.

I come out with articles two times per week. This Friday, by the way, I will not be having a live, but we'll be starting a live every single week on Fridays around noon. I'll put that information out there. I'd love to get the questions from the week.

You can come on there and ask a live question. I'll be here to help you uh in any way that I can. And thank you as always for watching. Every week I've come out with the newest charts that come out from housing.

I explain them on a detailed level level and give them my point of view so that way we can start a conversation and I think it's really badly needed in the housing space right now. Thanks so much for following.