When someone tells me the crash is coming, the first thing I tell them is that I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve seen what a real crash looks like in this city, and this isn’t it. When I got licensed, mortgage rates were around 10 percent, and people still bought houses, raised families in them and did fine.1
Then I bring it back to them. Headlines are national. Real estate is local. In Northwest Dallas I’m looking at what sold on your street, how long it took and what the buyer paid. That tells us where you stand, not a video with 300,000 views. We fact-checked both headlines on Episode 359 of our show and in our Homeownership 101 guide. This is my take.
01
What a real crash looked like
I started investing in Dallas in the late ’80s, when the city was coming out of the oil bust and the S&L collapse. We bought, renovated and sold a lot of condos, and we targeted FHA-approved buildings so buyer financing would never be the problem. We also bought small single-family homes we could put a little money into and make more attractive. First-time buyers weren’t as picky as move-up buyers, so we aimed at that price range, knowing the buyer pool would be bigger.
Honestly, I was a baby investor then and didn’t see the big picture the way I do now. The stretch that scared me was 2007 to 2011. People across the country were walking away from their homes because the economy was so bad and jobs just weren’t there.
And Dallas still came through better than most. Our economy was more diverse than the places we called the sand cities, like Phoenix and Las Vegas. At the end of 2010, Dallas prices were about 8 percent below their 2007 peak. Las Vegas was about 58 percent below its peak, and the 20-city national index was down about 31 percent.2
Texas lending law helped too. Since 1997, the Texas Constitution has limited a home equity loan plus your first mortgage to 80 percent of the home’s value, and that kept a lot of people from over-borrowing against their house. The Dallas Fed found that in 2011, 7 percent of Texas first mortgages were underwater, against 27 percent nationally.3
A real crash needs owners who can’t pay and can’t sell. Today’s owners mostly have low rates and a lot of equity.
02
Seven percent is closer to normal than 3 percent was
Seven percent isn’t a crisis. Freddie Mac’s 30-year average has been about 7.7 percent since 1971, and the 3 percent years were the exception, not the rule.1 I understand why it stings if you remember 3 percent. But the people I sold houses to at 9 and 10 percent built real wealth in them.
That wealth comes from time in the house. In the S&P Case-Shiller index, Dallas home prices nearly tripled from January 2000 to mid-2026, about 4 percent a year, and that counts the 2008 to 2011 dip.4 This year prices have been roughly flat, so I plan on 3 to 4 percent a year as a long-run expectation, not a promise for next year.
03
What people are really afraid of
It’s almost never the rate itself. When I listen long enough, it’s one of these:
“I’m going to make a mistake I can’t undo.” A buyer is afraid of overpaying right before values drop. A seller is afraid of leaving money on the table, or of selling and then being priced out of the next house.
“I’ve lost control of the timing.” Many of my sellers are moving because of life: downsizing, divorce, an estate, a job. They didn’t pick this market, and the headline makes them feel trapped by it.
“I’m giving up my low rate.” For an owner sitting on a 3 percent mortgage, “rates are at 7 percent” really means “my payment doubles if I move.” That’s a fair concern, and it deserves real math, not a pep talk.
“Am I going to look foolish?” Nobody wants to be the person who bought at the top while their brother-in-law warned them.
So my real job is to swap the headline for their actual numbers: what the home is worth today, what the next payment would be, and whether the move still makes sense for their life.
04
Put the numbers on paper
A few years ago, with rates in the 6s, we had clients who wanted to sell and move up but didn’t want to give up their 3 percent rate. So we sat down and did the analysis. They had owned their home for more than ten years, and between paying down the loan and appreciation, they had built a lot of equity.5
That equity went into the new house, so they didn’t need to borrow nearly as much as they’d assumed. Once we broke down the real additional monthly cost of a loan in the 5½ to 6 percent range against their 3 percent loan, the payment wasn’t as much as they had feared. A higher rate on a smaller loan is a very different number than a higher rate on the whole house.
Putting numbers on paper brings clarity to people’s fears.
Once people see their own numbers, the fear usually gets much smaller. Or it turns into a clear “not yet,” and that’s a fine answer too. We walk through the mechanics of a move-up on selling and buying at the same time.
05
Who I tell to buy now, and who I tell to wait
Buy now: my younger friends. I tell them they need to be buying a home, a condo or a townhome right now. If you wait until your late 30s or 40 to buy your first home, you miss a big cycle of appreciation, and that makes a dramatic difference to your wealth by the time you turn 50. We laid out that math as the wealth clock.
Wait: anyone with an unknown in their life that might keep them from staying in the house at least five years. With appreciation running around 3 to 4 percent a year over the long run, someone who buys and has to sell two years later won’t even break even once you count the costs of buying going in and selling going out.
If you can stay five years, buy. If you can’t, wait. The rate is the smaller question.
06
Headlines freeze the people who can wait
Here’s what I noticed this year: we haven’t had a single seller who was moving and got scared off by the headlines. Most of our sellers are moving because of one of the five D’s that cause real estate to sell:
Diamonds. Engagements, weddings or joining households lead couples to buy their first home together or move up to something bigger.
Diapers. A growing family needs more bedrooms, a bigger yard or a more family-friendly neighborhood.
Divorce. A separation means untangling two lives, selling the shared house or finding a new place.
Downsizing, or debt. Empty nesters and retirees move to something smaller and easier to keep up, or financial strain forces a sale.
Death. Settling an estate, selling an inherited home or moving closer to family.
Life doesn’t wait for a better headline. The people who are frozen are the ones who can choose to stay where they are. If that’s you, my advice is simple: look at what the real numbers would be at the end of the move you want to make. What your home would sell for, what you’d walk away with, and what the next payment would actually be. Many times it’s not as bad as you think.
And if you’re staying put, the thing worth your worry isn’t a crash. It’s your insurance renewal and your property tax bill. Shop the policy and make sure your homestead exemption is filed.
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