The “K-Shaped” Economy: Why the Middle Class Is Getting Crushed

Dave:
Americans are divided and no, I am not talking about politics right now. I’m talking about economically, financially. Some Americans are doing great seeing their portfolio soar and they’re optimistic about the future, but at the same time, others are struggling just to make ends meet and are deeply concerned about what comes next. This is the so-called khap economy. And today on on the market, we’re diving into what this term is all about, what’s happening with American pocketbooks right now, what this means for the housing market, and I’ll share my opinions about what might come next. Hey everyone, welcome to On the Market. I’m Dave Meyer. Thanks for joining us. It’s pretty hard to read any sort of news right now and avoid headlines with this term, the quote unquote khap economy from social media to major newspapers, to cable news networks. It’s the term everyone seems to be using to describe the very unique economic moment that we’re in right now.
But what does this term actually mean? Is this a real thing? And if so, what trends is it actually trying to describe? What does a khap economy mean for you and me, for investors and Americans in general as we head into 2026? So that’s the plan for today. We’re gonna dive deep into this topic, so let’s get into it. First of all, I think that this term, khap economy in general is an attempt to try and talk about an economy that is pretty hard to describe right now. If you listen to the show often, you’ve probably heard me say this a lot, but I believe that the word recession is honestly pointless at this point. It doesn’t actually even have a definition. I know people think that it’s too consecutive quarters of GDP growth, but if you look at the actual definition of the United States, there is no definition.
It’s just completely subjective. And the reason it is subjective and it doesn’t have a definition is I think that economists and politicians in general want some wiggle room in trying to summarize something that is very complicated and nuanced in a binary way. The economy is just more complicated than that. And I know everyone wants a really simple way of describing things, but unfortunately that’s really not always possible because even in great economic times where everything’s growing, there are typically still areas of the economy that are struggling. And the opposite is true as well. Even during years of slow growth or quote unquote recession, some areas are still growing, some areas are probably still booming. And so that’s why I personally just think this like binary, good, bad recession, new recession is kind of silly. And it’s also why I think a lot of analysts and economists often try to come up with different ways of describing the economy in ways that make sense to people, different ways to visualize the way that the economy is performing.
And for some reason, people have just latched onto this idea of using letters, right? You may have heard of a V-shaped economy or a U-shaped economy or an L-shaped economy. The idea here is that they’re trying to project growth, economic growth onto a graph. And it might look like a V for example, that’s like when the economy tanks for some reason, but then rebounds really quickly. The best example of that being COVID, right? Like in April of 2020, everything went down, right? People were super scared, the stock market tanked. But then just like a couple of weeks or months later, there were stimulus, some things were starting to reopen. The economy rebounded really quickly. A lot of people were calling that a V-shaped economy. If it takes a little bit longer, they’ll call it a U-shaped economy. If things are just really bad and not recovering at all, they’ll call it an L-shaped economy because they’re not growing right Now, this new letter that’s really picking up steam recently is K.
It means that the economy is moving in two directions at once. Just think about a K, right? There’s the vertical line. I don’t know what that has to do with anything that don’t think about the vertical line. We’re really just talking about the upward part of a K and a downward part of a K. That is what economists and analysts are trying to say, right? That there is one part of the economy going up while the other part is going down. So you can probably imagine what’s going on here, right? A K is describing a bifurcated or a split economy where one section of the economy’s doing great, it’s going up the other section of the economy not doing so well. It’s going down. So which group is which? I am guessing you probably already are aware of this, but people who are already wealthy or who are high income earners continue to do well in the current economy.
They are the upper leg, we’ll call it the upper leg of the K. And although there have been some high profile layoffs, you see this in tech, you see this in finance and that probably will continue in my opinion. These people own stock. They tend to be asset holders, they tend to have retirements accounts. And yes, people who own real estate, they tend to do well because even though we have challenges in our economy, one of the bright spots has been asset prices, right? We see that cryptocurrency is doing pretty well. I mean, as of today, it’s December 1st, I’m recording this. Bitcoin has fallen 20, 30% all to off of its high. Bitcoin’s still been on an amazing run over the last couple of years, ha as have a lot of cryptocurrencies. The stock market continues to be near all time highs. Real estate in nominal home prices hasn’t fallen on a national basis.
So the wealthy who tend to own assets continue to do well. They’re sort of that upper leg of the economy. The downward arm of the K is lower wage workers, gig workers, service workers, people in hospitality. And honestly, the middle class like this is not necessarily just lower wage people, it’s just what I would call ordinary Americans who work for a living and who are just trying to get by that group of people. And that is a very big group of people tend to not be doing so well right now. If you look at pretty much all the data of how they’re spending money, their consumer sentiments, their savings rates, all of the data shows that this very large majority of the US population is struggling right now. And this split the fact that wealthy folks, high income earners are doing well while the middle class and lower class are not doing so well is on the mind of the Federal Reserve.
It’s on the mind of the administration and policymakers. In fact, in one of his most recent statements, fed Chairman Jerome Powell said, quote, consumers at the lower end are struggling and are buying less and shifting to lower cost product, but at the top people are spending at the higher income and wealth bracket. So this is a real thing, like when you see people talk about the quote unquote khap economy, in my opinion, it’s real. We are really seeing a big split in behavior, in sentiment, in spending power. And those things do really matter. And again, I just wanna reiterate why I think this is a reason why the word recession is kind of useless, is because right now, GDP is how a lot of people measure recession. Again, that’s not actually how it’s measured, but a lot of people use that as a benchmark and it is a useful benchmark, don’t get me wrong, but GDP is not the entire economy we are seeing right now that GDP is going up, but the majority of Americans are saying that they’re struggling, their sentiment is down, they can’t afford expenses in an emergency.
Those things are a problem that are not reflected in GDP, which is why we’re digging into this topic in the first place because whether we’re in a recession or not is not gonna tell you what’s actually happening with ordinary people. And as investors and just ordinary people, Americans, we actually wanna know what’s going on with our own pocketbooks, what’s going on with our tenants, what’s going on with our buyers and sellers? And so this K shaped economy, I think actually does a better job right now describing what’s going on than the idea of recession or no recession. So that’s my take on the khap economy, but we gotta get into what this actually means for the future of the economy, where things can go from here, what this means for the housing market. We’re gonna get into that, but we do have to take a quick break. We’ll be right back.
Welcome back to On the Market. I’m Dave Meyer talking about the khap economy. Before the break, we went over what the khap economy is. It basically means that by a lot of measures, not by every measure, but by a lot of measures, the American economy is split. We have an upward leg, which is wealthy folks who continue to do well in the economy. And then there are normal folks, people who are in the middle class or lower class who are generally struggling right now. And I’m guessing that if you follow the news, you’ve heard some stories about this, right? I’m sure this is not a shock to everyone, that the wealthier doing fine spending as usual and the rest of the US is starting to pull back one particularly notable. And honestly it is, this is hard to even conceptualize the stat. This is so crazy.
The top 10% of Americans, just 10% of all people who live in this country now account for 50% of spending. And according to economist and former guest on this show, mark Zandy of Moody’s, he said quote, their financial situation is about as good as it’s ever been. Now, if you are in that group, you might resonate with this and say, yeah, things are actually going really well in the economy right now, but if you’re in the middle class, you’re not in that group. I’m guessing you don’t resonate with that and are not feeling like the economy is working particularly well for you. Now, uh, we’ll get into this a little bit more, but I just wanna call out. The reason this stat is so crazy, I’m just going to rattle off a few things for you right now. But American consumer spending makes up 70% of GDP.
So all of the economic activity in the whole country, 70% of it is just normal people spending their money. I know a lot gets made about government spending or business spending, but in the United States, we are very much a consumer economy. 70% of GDP is consumer spending. And what I just told you before was that 50% of consumer spending is going to just 10% of Americans. So if you put those two stats together, that means that this spending behavior of the wealthiest 10% of Americans is 35%. One third of our entire economy is dependent on this 10% of Americans and just the everyday decisions they are making with their money. And we’re gonna move on to sort of why some of the things in the K shape economy are happening. But I want you to remember that stat as we go on and talk about what this actually means for the future of the housing market and the economy in a couple of minutes.
So let’s first though, talk about why this is happening. There are a lot of things going on here, but I’m gonna just pick some of the big buckets that have been going on. So first and foremost, it is inflation. That’s the thing that’s really on people’s mind. Now, there are some structural long-term things that have been going on for even further, which I will talk about in a minute. But when people answer surveys about why they’re not spending, why they’re worried about their financial future, inflation is largely the answer that they give. And it’s important to note that inflation is a lot better than where it was in 2021 or in 2023. We haven’t gotten our reading of September yet. It’s December now because of the government shutdown, but as of its last reading, it was about 3%. It’s supposed to come out this Friday actually.
So I think the day after the show comes out, we will get that inflation print. There are some advanced, you know, studies into this. People think it will go up a little bit Again, that would be the fifth consecutive month where it goes up. But it’s important to note, we’re not at 9%, we’re not at 8% where we were in 2021 and 2022. But I think what’s going on here is it’s the aggregate, right? It’s five straight years of inflation from 2008 to 2020. We really had very low inflation in the US historically low, lower than normal, right? 1% inflation, like we saw many of those years is not normal. But people got used to that, right? People got used to prices staying relatively stagnant in an aggregate way. And then all of a sudden over the last five years, the CPI, the consumer price index has risen 25%.
That’s a lot. In five years seeing prices across the board go up 25%. And although in the last year or two we have seen wages keep up, if you just look at the last five years, wages have not kept up. So in real measurable ways, people have lost spending power like that is just how it works. Even though most people have seen their paychecks go up over the last five years, inflation is higher. And so when you actually talk about how far your dollar goes, how far you could stretch your paycheck, it has gone down in the last five years. And this is honestly a trend that has been going on for decades. Yes, during the 2010s to 2020, we had a reprieve from this for a while. But if you look at real wages, how well wages have kept up with inflation for the last 41 years, since 1984, which is as far back as I have good data since 1984, real wages, which is just ingested for inflation have only grown 12%.
And so when I think about this, I often just think about the aggregate for 40 years. Yeah, up 12% fine. That’s not great, right? We’ve seen the economy just absolutely explode in those 41 years and the average American’s only getting 12% better spending power in 41 years of economic growth. Like that’s terrible. Like if you wanna know, in my opinion, the real reason people are mad about the economy, everyone’s mad about the economy, right? Uh, except if you’re in that top 10%, right? The the real reason is this, right? People’s wages are not keeping up with inflation and their spending power is going down. Like this is terrible in my opinion, for economy as robust as ours. And I just wanna call out that yes, it has been particularly pronounced for the last five years. And I think it, most people were asked, why are they mad?
Why are they concerned about the economy? They’d say the last five years, which I get it because it’s a big change from where we were in the 2010s. But this has been a problem with our economy for over four decades. I just want to call out that when I talk about the aggregate impact, this is sort of what I’m talking about. This is a longstanding problem. But yes, it is true. It has become more acute and people are particularly stretched right now. So this is happening across the board. Like everyone feels inflation, right? But this is probably self-evident. Those who have less wealth or lower wages are less able to withstand the challenge of high cumulative inflation for five straight years, right? It’s not hard to imagine that, right? That just kind of makes sense. Like the bottom 50% of households control only 2.5% of total household wealth in the United States, they have less cushion.
That 10% that they were talking about, that just 10%, they hold 67%, two thirds of all the total household wealth. And so inflation for these people at the top who have all of this wealth is not gonna impact them as much. Yeah, they still pay higher groceries, but they just inherently have more discretionary spending. Their asset prices are up. And so for them, continuing to spend is generally not as hard. But for those with lower incomes, lower wealth, who have lower disposable income, when prices rise, they have less cushion to dip into to pay for everyday expenses. So this is the main reason in my opinion, why we have this khap economy is that wages are not keeping up. Things are too expensive because of inflation. And even though the inflation rate has come down, it’s still above the fed target. It has grown for four consecutive months and it’s the cumulative effect of the last five years that is really starting to wear on people because they’ve been making things work for five years and it’s getting harder and harder to do it.
So that’s the number one. The second thing though, of course, I sort of alluded to this before, is just asset prices, right? Wages have stagnated. Like I said, I think that’s one of the main areas, but asset prices have certainly not, right? Because even though for 40 years we’ve seen somewhat stagnant wage growth, stock market and just the last decade is up 200% housing is up 50% depending on who you ask, 40, 60%, somewhere in there. So people who have owned and held onto assets in previous expansions are still doing really well. This is why, again, we’ll talk about this in a minute, we’re not seeing for selling in the housing market. This is why people who own stock are continuing to spend and feel good about the economy. And more and more people have been starting to own stock, which I think is a good thing given the way our economy works right now, things like Robinhood and EFTs and low cost index funds like these things have made the stock market more accessible to the middle class and to normal people.
But still, this is another crazy stat. 1% of Americans own 50% of all the stock. And so again, this is why you see this concentration of belief and spending in the economy. At the top, it’s people who own assets. The third answer that I think we need to talk about besides just stagnant wage growth and asset prices is debt. And even though debt is used throughout our entire economy, we have a lot of debt in this country. Most of the quote unquote bad debt is concentrated in lower income households. This is stuff like credit card debt, student loan debt, auto debt. If you don’t wanna default, you really can’t scale back on those things, right? You gotta pay your student loan debt, you gotta pay your auto debt, you should be paying your credit card debt. Those interest payments need to happen. So consumers get squeezed elsewhere, right?
They hold back on spending in other areas of their life because these groups tend to have more debt. So when you look at these things in aggregate, it kind of makes sense, right? Between inflation, the difference in asset prices, the difference in types of debt that people own. It sort of makes sense that there is a khap economy. I wanna be clear though. I’m not saying that just because it makes sense that this is a good thing or I like this or I want this to happen, it is the opposite. I think it is a stain on our economy that only one part of the economy, the wealthiest part of our economy is going well and everyone else, the other 90% of people are not doing as well. I don’t think that’s good. I’m just saying when you look at the data and you measure it, that is what is happening in the United States right now. That is what is reflected in the data. And if you dig into it, you can make sense of why that is. So that’s the detail. That’s why this khap economy is emerging in the United States. But what does it mean? What are the implications for the housing market and for real estate investors? We’ll get into that right after this quick break.
Welcome back to On the Market. I am Dave Meyer here talking about the khap economy that we’re seeing in the United States. We talked before about what it means, some of the causes for the khap economy, but I wanna turn our attention to the implications for the housing market for real estate investors. And we’ll start actually by just talking about what this means for the American economy in general. My view generally speaking is that this shows an unstable economy, the growth that we are seeing GDP growth, right? The thing that we keep looking at that economists like to point to that. Analysts like to point to that politicians like to point to and say, Hey, look, the economy’s doing well and it is GDP went up, I think 3.8% last quarter. People say it might go up 4% in Q4. That’s good growth. Like don’t get me wrong, that is good GDP growth.
But it is really concentrated in just two areas. First is consumption from high net worth people that we’ve been talking about, right? I did the math for you before over one third, a massive, massive amount of our GDP comes from the spending of just top 10% of people. The second thing is AI infrastructure. That’s a whole other show that we should talk about. I’ve been doing some research on AI potential bubble there, but a lot of GDP growth, if you look at this, is really concentrated on infrastructure spending, data center spending, hiring by companies that are in the AI space. Now, I’m not saying that’s wrong, like the fact that we have two areas that are growing is probably beneficial. It’s just not the diverse robust economy you wanna see. We can actually sort of draw a parallel or comparison here between what’s going on nationally and something we talk about a lot on the show in the housing market.
I often pick on Las Vegas when I’m talking about this, and I’ll use it again, sorry, Vegas, because it is a market, it is a region of the country that is heavily dependent on one industry, tourism, hospitality, right? If tourism declines in Las Vegas, Vegas as a city can suffer and that makes it a little more brittle, right? It’s easier to break when there’s just one leg of the stool. If you had five or 10 different economic foundations that were supporting the economy of a city, you’d probably feel pretty good because even if one area was not doing well or faced some setback or was in some challenge, the other nine would do well. But if you only have one, it’s kind of risky. It’s a boomer bust kind of thing. And that’s kind of what’s going on with the entire US economy right now.
We are dependent on AI infrastructure spending, which again, whole can of worms, let me just call it. There’s a lot of reasonable concerns that that can’t keep going at the same rate that it was. And then the second thing is we’re dependent on the just personal decisions of 10% of consumers to keep fueling growth, but they could change their behavior at any time, right? If the stock market declines, if crypto goes down, people just decide that they don’t wanna spend as much. We could see the entire US economy getting worse. And the thing that worries me about this is I just don’t see how that changes right now, right? I don’t see something in the immediate horizon in the next couple of months, let’s say, where the middle class and lower class all of a sudden start to do better. The solution in my opinion, is higher real wages or for prices to come down.
But frankly, I do not see prices coming down that is very rare. I might do a show about this as well. Let me know if you’re curious. But the idea of deflation prices going down, consumer goods, consumer services going down doesn’t really happen. I gotta say in aggregate, it doesn’t happen. There are things like TVs, yeah, individual goods sometimes get less expensive. Asset prices could go down. But when you look at goods and prices, generally speaking over long periods of time, they don’t really go down. And like I said, asset prices could go down, stock market could go down. Housing prices I’ve told you I think will go down next year. But that actually doesn’t improve everyday expenses, right? There’s a reason asset prices are not included in inflation. And some people argue with that. But the reason is that because that doesn’t really impact your day-to-day expenses, right?
Housing may be a little bit, but like if the stock market went down 20%, right? If the stock market went down 20%, would that change how much money you’re spending at the grocery store? No. This is why they keep it out of inflation data. And so even if those things crashed, it’s not making it more affordable for the people who are struggling right now. And in fact, it could just stop the people who own a, a lot of the stock top 10% who are fueling a lot of our growth from spending more. So like that is another reason why it feels like the economy is a little bit flimsy right now. And unfortunately I’m not happy about this, but I do think times are gonna be kind of tough for the average Americans going forward. I think this is kind of reality. I don’t see what comes around and changes this.
The labor market, it’s slowing, and that will, as it always does, put downward pressure on wage growth. That’s the thing we need. We need wage growth. But when the labor market is weakening, that gives employers more leverage in wage negotiations. And so wage growth tends to lag in economies like the one that we’re in. We’ve already seen wage growth go from where it was a year ago at like two or 3% now to about 1%. And so it’s already on that downward trend, and I think that is probably going to continue. Uh, companies could just elect to pay their workers more, but I don’t see them doing that, especially big corporations. They like to protect their all time high profits. So that’s probably not gonna happen. Labor union participation’s super low, so they’re probably not gonna be able to collectively bargain for higher wages. So unfortunately, I just don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Of course, something could come up. I hope something does a new policy idea, maybe just a shift in consumer behavior or sentiment, but right now it doesn’t seem like it’s coming at least in the next few months. So that’s the first takeaway that I have in all this data in doing this research, is that I am expecting low consumer sentiment, low consumer behavior. Even if GDP keeps going up, even if AI spending keeps up, even if the stock market stays up, I think spending patterns for average Americans are going to stagnate. And that has implications for us as Americans of course. ’cause 90% of us fall into that bracket, and so that’s going to matter for us. But it also, this is a real estate investing show matters for real estate investors and the housing market because just like in the broader economy, there is an upward arm and there is a downward arm in the housing market, and we’re probably going to see that for a little while.
Redfin actually just came out with a recent study that showed that luxury homes in the United States, I bet you can guess they grew way faster than average priced homes. They grew 5% year over year last year, which is three times higher than non-luxury homes. So you see this emerging, right? The folks who have a lot of money whose stock portfolios are doing well, they’re still buying homes, they’re buying luxury homes, and prices of those homes are going up. So as an investor, that’s something to keep in mind. Not saying you should go and buy and invest in luxury homes, but it is something to, you know, on the show. What we try to help you understand is some of the nuances of the housing market, not just say the housing market is up, the housing market is down. There are different areas of the housing market, like there are different areas of the economy, and the luxury segment is actually doing well right now.
Whereas when you look at, for example, starter homes or first time home buyer areas, it’s not doing as well. That’s in the lower arm of the K in the housing market. There’s actually been this stat that’s been going around a lot in the media and on social media right now showing, in my opinion, just how messed up the housing market is. The median age of a first time home buyer is now 40 years old. 40, 40 years old for the median age of a first time home buyer. That is insane. Back in 1991, it was 28 years old. That seems right to me. Late twenties buying a home, that seems about right, even just five years ago in 2020 was 33. That’s a little bit later. But you know, it’s still in the realm of reason 40. Like that to me isn’t good. I think this is just terrible for the housing market.
It’s not good for our society. It kind of undermines the whole idea, the American dream and home ownership. If you have to wait till 40 to buy your first home, that just seems wrong. And again, there’s so many reasons for this, it goes back so long. But I just want to stress that this shows us that a huge segment of the population is currently priced outta the housing market, right? You know, let’s just say working adults start at, I don’t know, 20, so I’m just rounding up to 40. It’s like 20 years. All these people that is Gen Z, that is a lot of millennials, which is our biggest demographics in the United States right now, are clearly priced out of the housing market. If the average first time homeowner is 40 years old, and this is one reason I think that going into 2026 sales are going to stay slow.
I do think they’ll pick up a little bit because I think mortgage rates are gonna come down a bit. But unless rates really fall into like maybe the low fives, high fours, I don’t think we’re getting back even to normal average levels of home sales next year. And this is something I want everyone on the show to remember, that we might have a pretty slow year in the housing market again, unless we get some quantitative easing, unless there’s a big, you know, decline in bond yields, which I don’t see coming right now, but it certainly could happen. There’s so much uncertainty in the market right now. So that’s the second thing. You know, I think sales are gonna be really slow, especially in that first time home buyer segment. I still favor and really like affordable homes, but I just wanna call out that clearly what we’re seeing is people in this segment of the housing market are not going to be as active until something changes.
The third thing I wanna call out is the lockin effect. We have been waiting for this thing to break for years, and I think that if this khap economy continues, it’s going to be increasingly difficult to break the lock-in effect, because middle class people who maybe want to move but are struggling with day-to-day expenses are not gonna be in a position to give up their low rates, even if rates come down to 5.5%, right? If they’re sitting on a 3% mortgage and a ton of equity, maybe they want to move. But if you are stretched in non housing categories, I think it’s gonna be tough for people to give up a 3% mortgage rate, even if that just saves them a couple hundred bucks a month. If this trend continues that we’re in this khap economy, those couple hundred bucks a month matter, they matter a lot to a lot of people.
And so that’s going to impact the housing market as well, and could constrain a little bit of supply. And along those same lines, I just wanna say, I’m not sure if rates come down to six, right? You know, there are six and a quarter right now. If they come down to six, if they even come down to the high fives, I am not sure people are going to jump into the housing market as rapidly as other people are saying. Even if rates come down, it will bring some demand. Like I said, I, I have no doubt that it will come, bring some demand, but there are people on social media saying if rates fall, we’re gonna see a flood of people entering the market. Maybe, maybe, right? But if people are struggling to pay their bills, they’re not gonna be go eager to change into a new home or buy their first home.
Like yeah, it will prove affordability a little bit. But unless prices come down too, I don’t think we’re gonna see some massive influx. We also might see some more supply. So I don’t think prices are necessarily gonna go crazy. I don’t think we’re gonna see a frenzy like we did in COVID. Conditions were just different back then. There were stimulus checks. There hadn’t been five years of inflation eroding, people spending power eroding their savings. Were just in a different world. So I just want to call that out as well. I’m not trying to be super negative here, but I wanna just be realistic about some of the realities that we’re seeing on the ground. The last thing is, even though I’m telling you some negative economic things right now, I still don’t expect panic selling, right? Because homeowners are still in good shape, and I think people who have good housing situations have locked in their homes and have a predictable mortgage are not gonna want to get rid of that.
That’s one of the last things that they’re likely want to get rid of. So those are my expectations for the housing market. I, I just think that we are going to see a continued bifurcation. Luxury homes continue to do well. I don’t think we’re gonna have a lot of activity in the first time home buyer segment unless we see a combination of prices really falling and rates coming down a lot, which I don’t think is the most likely scenario in 2026. And so I think we’re gonna see another relatively slow year heading into 2026. Of course, things can change, right? Like I’m just kind of talking about the first quarter of next year, the first half of next year, because so much is up in the air, it’s hard to see past, you know, the next six months. But that’s what I’m expecting, at least for the next six months.
Once we get a new Fed chair, everything can change. And so we’ll obviously keep you posted on what’s happening there. Generally speaking though, just to sum up this episode, I am, you probably can tell a little bit concerned about the economy. I think if the stock market stays strong, maybe these top 10% of consumers keep spending GDP keeps growing and maybe things stay okay, but honestly, like I don’t personally really care if GDP is going up that much. If 80% of Americans are financially strapped and struggling, and this is why I think that we’re in for a tough couple of months, at least I expect the housing market to get a little better next year because I think affordability will improve, but not that much better unless affordability really starts to improve across the board, not just in the housing market. We need peoples to start feeling better about their savings, about their financial position to fuel the housing market.
And I don’t think that’s gonna be coming in the next couple of months. I’m not saying this as a reminder to scare you. I actually think when you think about some of these broader conditions, it does provide opportunities. It creates better buying opportunities in some areas of the country in some segments. I have been flipping higher end homes right now, even in this kind of weird, funky market, and that’s been working. And I’ve said before that there are other kinds of opportunities that come in these kinds of markets. The reason I tell you these things, not to fearmonger, I just wanna tell you truly, I spend all day researching the economy and looking at these things. I try to be as unbiased as possible, and I see some risk in the broader economy. That doesn’t mean risk in the housing market, but I wanna share with you the ones that I’m seeing in the broader economy and how they could translate into the housing market. So you can make smart and educated decision about your portfolio. There are opportunities out there, but to capitalize on those opportunities to make sure that they go really well for you, you have to understand where the risks are and how to properly mitigate them. Hopefully this episode has been helpful to you in that effort. That’s all we got for you today on this episode of On The Market. I’m Dave Meyer. Thank you all so much for watching. We’ll see you next time.