The Biggest Homebuyer Discounts in Over 12 Years | Feb. 2026 Update

February 20, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

🎙️ The Voices & The Context

The Format: Solo monologue in the style of a professional market update podcast episode, structured like a news briefing with data dives, forecasts, and sponsor breaks.
The Key Players:
- Host: Dave Meyer, Chief Investment Officer at BiggerPockets, 16-year real estate investor and housing market analyst. He's the sole voice, delivering expert analysis with credibility from his role and experience.
The Vibe: Educational and optimistic—professional yet energizing for investors, focusing on opportunities amid cautionary data, with a "fun again" tone for analysts like Dave.

🗝️ Key Themes & Topics

The episode unpacks the February 2026 housing market shift toward a buyer's market, blending hard data on pricing, inventory, rates, and risks to guide investors.

Topic 1: Buyer's Market Emergence & Discounts. Home prices up just 1% YoY (below inflation/wages), affordability improving (mortgage payments 8.5% lower YoY per Zillow). Redfin data shows average 3.8% discounts off list ($16K on median home); negotiators get 8% ($32K). Biggest in FL/TX (10%+), even hot markets like Milwaukee/Indy at 3-5%.
Topic 2: Inventory Trends & Market Direction. National inventory +10% YoY but 18% below 2019 levels. Midwest/Northeast still 50-80% below 2019; Southwest (San Antonio +52%, FL +60%) sees price drops. Check Redfin

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **February Housing Market Update: Buyer's Market Shift**
2 (06:22) **Sales Volume Challenges**
3 (12:51) **Inventory Trends**
4 (17:01) **Mortgage Rates Outlook**
5 (24:00) **Monthly Risk Report: Crash Assessment**
6 (28:43) **Summary and Investor Advice**

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Homebuyers are getting the biggest discounts on properties in over 12 years—and it’s only getting started.

At this point, nobody can refute that a full-on buyer’s market has arrived. Homes are selling below list price, buyers are waiting out the market, and sellers are getting increasingly desperate. All the while, mortgage rates are a full percentage point lower than a year ago, inventory is up, and mortgage payments are actually down.

This is it. The “shift” that investors and homebuyers have been waiting for.

In this month’s housing market update, we’ll get into it all—how much of a discount you can get on your next property (and markets with the biggest deals), why nobody is buying right now and how that gives investors an advantage, whether mortgage rates will drop below the low six-percent range, and how likely a housing market crash is with inventory rising but demand staying stagnant.

In This Episode We Cover

These housing markets are seeing 10% discounts off list price

Signs pointing to a “full-on” buyer’s market, and whether it will last

Inventory is rising by double-digit percentages, but is it enough to cause a housing crash?

Will mortgage rates keep falling throughout 2026?

The real reason so many homebuyers aren’t jumping back in as prices fall

And So Much More!