Bigger. Better. Bolder. Inman Connect is heading to San Diego. Join thousands of real estate pros, connect with the Inman Community, and gain insights from hundreds of leading minds shaping the industry. If you’re ready to grow your business and invest in yourself, this is where you need to be. Go BIG in San Diego!

Each week on The Download, Inman’s Christy Murdock takes a deeper look at the top-read stories of the week to give you what you’ll need to meet Monday head-on. This week: As investors see local markets and rental prices soften, they’ve started to unload underperforming inventory at a record pace.

Not long ago, real estate looked like a one-way bet. Prices were climbing, inventory was tight, and rental demand seemed bottomless. Investors banked on the idea that the market would keep delivering year after year.

Now, it seems, the tide is turning. Interest rates, economic pressure and shifting supply dynamics are starting to reshape the landscape, and even large investor-adjacent companies are struggling to regroup.

READ: Opendoor sheds more employees amid Nasdaq delisting threat

At the same time, however, there are bright spots and opportunities that make this the time to take a long, hard look at your holdings and find out what else is out there. If you’re working with investors, reach out and see what they’re looking for on both the buy- and sell-sides.

Real estate investors are selling off portions of their portfolios at a record pace, hoping to stem losses as the housing market cools and rental prices soften, a new report from Realtor.com has found.

Investors in the Midwest and South — two of the country’s most affordable regions — are seeing the most offloads. The top five investor seller states were Missouri (16.7 percent), Oklahoma (16.7 percent), Georgia (15.9 percent), Kansas (14.3 percent) and Utah (14.3 percent).

Despite the sell-off, there are still deals to be had. Purchases by investors ticked up slightly last year, with 13 percent of all 2024 home purchases made by investors, up from 12.7 percent in 2023.

Whether you’re holding investment property, working with investors or trying to plan ahead for a potential portfolio of your own, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

Inman contributors regularly write about all things investment and business building, so that you’re always armed with the knowledge and insights you need to make the smartest decisions.

READ: 25 accelerators, podcasts and courses for agent entrepreneurs

Bigger. Better. Bolder. Inman Connect is heading to San Diego. Join thousands of real estate pros, connect with the Inman Community, and gain insights from hundreds of leading minds shaping the industry. If you’re ready to grow your business and invest in yourself, this is where you need to be. Go BIG in San Diego!

The Trump administration is looking to bring mortgage rates down by encouraging South Korean investors to step up purchases of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Ginnie Mae and the Korea Housing Finance Corporation (KHFC) signed a memorandum of understanding this week aimed at strengthening the relationship between the U.S. housing finance system and South Korean institutional investors.

HUD Secretary Scott Turner met with Kyung-Hwan Kim, president and CEO of the KHFC — Korea’s version of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — for the June 10 signing.

“Working strategically with our South Korean allies, we are expanding the global understanding of American housing finance, while increasing capital flows in the United States, strengthening our domestic capital markets, and unlocking strategies to benefit American borrowers,” Turner said in a statement. “This agreement signals that, under President Trump’s leadership, our allies are ready and willing to do business in America again.”

Overseas investors hold about $1.36 trillion in so-called “agency” debt, with Japan, China, Taiwan and Canada accounting for 60 percent of that total.

U.S. agency debt overseas holdings

With $35.5 billion in U.S. agency debt holdings (MBS, notes and bonds), South Korea ranks 10th, behind banking strongholds like Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands and Ireland.

Ginnie Mae President Alanna McCargo led a delegation to Asia in April 2023, meeting with MBS investors, financial institutions, and regulators in Taiwan and South Korea.

On that trip, Ginnie Mae officials “assured investors that the structure of Ginnie MBS will help to protect them from any potential issues tied to a possible U.S. debt default,” Inside Mortgage Finance reported at the time.

“Formalizing our partnership with KHFC through this MOU is a meaningful step in addressing housing challenges that extend across borders,” Ginnie Mae executive Joseph Gormley said in a statement Friday. “Korean institutions continue to play a significant role in our capital markets, and we look forward to working together to advance a shared understanding of global capital markets and to ensure the strength of our mortgage-backed securities.”

Although President Trump has berated Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting short-term interest rates this year, mortgage rates are largely determined by investor demand for MBS.

MBS are seen as a comparable, if slightly riskier investment, than 10-year Treasury notes. Overseas investors own about 15 percent of the nearly $9 trillion in outstanding Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae MBS.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guarantee payments to MBS investors even if borrowers default on their loans. Ginnie Mae securities are backed by single-family mortgages originated through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development (RD), and Public and Indian Housing (PIH) insurance programs.

Mortgage rates surged in May after Moody’s Ratings became the last credit agency to strip the U.S. of its most favorable debt rating over concerns that Congress and “successive U.S. administrations” have failed to tackle annual budget deficits.

Fears that tax cuts Trump is attempting to push through Congress will lead to even more borrowing have investors demanding higher yields on 10-year Treasurys and MBS.

Trump adviser Peter Navarro has said investors believe the tax cuts aren’t paid for, and “are pricing in a future where the government borrows trillions more with no offsetting revenues.”

But Navarro and other Trump administration officials maintain that tax cuts will help the economy grow and generate more tax revenue than critics expect.

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Email Matt Carter

Bigger. Better. Bolder. Inman Connect is heading to San Diego. Join thousands of real estate pros, connect with the Inman Community and gain insights from hundreds of leading minds shaping the industry. If you’re ready to grow your business and invest in yourself, this is where you need to be. Go BIG in San Diego!

The ongoing saga of the commission lawsuit settlements involving eXp and Weichert continued this week, as the homesellers behind one of the industry’s biggest antitrust cases worked to keep their fight with the companies alive.

The fight boils down to the homesellers’ claims that eXp World Holdings and Weichert Real Estate Affiliates engaged in a “reverse auction” when settling their antitrust litigation. In other words, the homesellers — in this case, those who filed a major suit known as Gibson — believe the two brokerages shopped around among similar class action lawsuits to find the best deal.

EXp and Weichert both settled in a case known as Hooper, but the Gibson plaintiffs want to force the companies back to the negotiating table in their own case. The parties have been going back and forth over the issue for months, though the Hooper judge granted the settlements preliminary approval last month.

After winning preliminary approval, eXp and Weichert on May 29 filed a motion to stay — or, pause — Gibson proceedings. The motion states that if the settlements win final approval later this year, that will “extinguish” the Gibson plaintiffs’ claims against the companies. Put another way, the brokerages want to put their part in the Gibson litigation on ice indefinitely.

But the news this week is that on Thursday, the Gibson plaintiffs filed their own document in court pushing back on the brokerages’ motion to stay. The document criticizes what it describes as “inadequate reverse-auction settlements” and notes that a previous motion to stay the case was denied. The document also states that the judge in the Hooper case has not yet considered the Gibson homesellers’ arguments.

Inman has reached out to the brokerages and will update this story with any comments they provide.

Among other things, the new document also claims that the companies “misstate the legal standards regarding a stay,” and that the Gibson homesellers “would suffer significant prejudice if all proceedings were stayed.”

It remains to be seen how the judge in the Gibson case will respond to both the brokerages’ motion to stay and the homesellers’ argument against the stay.

But either way, the settlements have proven to be among the most contentious in the industry. Following the Sitzer | Burnett jury verdict in 2023, the National Association of Realtors and various large companies moved within a matter of months to settle. And while various appeals in the cases are ongoing, the most headline-grabbing litigation involving those companies is now in the rearview mirror.

In the case of eXp and Weichert, however, legal wrangling over the settlements shows no sign of stopping.

Read the Gibson plaintiffs’ latest filing here:

hert

Email Jim Dalrymple II

Bigger. Better. Bolder. Inman Connect is heading to San Diego. Join thousands of real estate pros, connect with the Inman Community, and gain insights from hundreds of leading minds shaping the industry. If you’re ready to grow your business and invest in yourself, this is where you need to be. Go BIG in San Diego!

Housing and mortgage experts polled by Fannie Mae have dialed back their expectations for home price appreciation this year and next, but most don’t expect national home prices to fall. Some markets, however, are looking vulnerable to price declines.

Fannie Mae’s quarterly Home Price Expectations Survey (HPES), released Friday, showed panelists surveyed in May now expect national home prices to rise by an average of 2.9 percent this year, down from their previous forecast of 3.4 percent.

Similarly, the survey’s housing, mortgage industry and academic experts now expect 2.8 percent home price appreciation in 2026, down from the 3.3 percent envisioned in February.

U.S. home price scenarios

Pessimists on the panel think national home price appreciation could cool from 5.3 percent in 2024 to less than 1 percent this year and next. A small minority — 15 percent — say the odds are better than even that national home prices will turn negative by the end of next year.

As national home price appreciation cools, some markets could see prices fall. The latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices showed home prices in Tampa were down 2.2 percent from a year ago in March.

While Tampa was the only top 20 metro to post a decline, price appreciation “barely stayed positive” in Dallas at 0.2 percent, S&P Dow Jones Indices analyst Nicholas Godec said in a statement.

Most of the largest housing markets tracked by Case-Shiller — 14 out of 20 — posted seasonally-adjusted price declines from February to March.

Nicholas Godec

“These results underscored how markets that experienced sharp run-ups earlier in the cycle — particularly in the Sun Belt — continued to adjust under the weight of higher mortgage rates and strained affordability,” Godec said.

Mortgage rates aren’t coming down, but improving inventory in many markets helped drive up homebuyer demand for purchase loans to the second highest level of the year last week, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Wednesday.

Only one in five Americans (21 percent) polled by Fannie Mae in May said they expect home prices to come down over the next 12 months, with 45 percent expecting prices to go up and 34 percent expecting that they’ll stay the same. While only 26 percent said May was a good time to buy, that’s up from an all-time survey low of 14 percent a year ago.

Housing and mortgage experts polled by Fannie Mae in May saw Austin, Tampa, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Phoenix, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta as markets where home prices are most likely to underperform national home price appreciation over the next 12 months.

Among the 20 largest U.S. housing markets, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Nashville and San Diego were viewed as places where prices are most likely to go up faster than the national average.

Fannie Mae economists update their home price appreciation forecast four times a year, in the first month of each quarter.

In their April forecast, Fannie Mae economists predicted that home prices will rise 4.1 percent this year before appreciation cools to 2 percent by Q4 2026.

Fannie Mae economists think home sales bottomed at 4.75 million last year and will grow by 3.6 percent this year and 6.8 percent in 2026.

Home sales expected to bounce back

Source: Fannie Mae housing forecast, May 2025.

If Fannie Mae’s forecast of 5.25 million 2026 home sales pans out, it would be the first time since 2022 that sales of new and existing homes surpassed five million.

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Email Matt Carter