Marketplace - Home prices won't stop rising

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

It’s been a trend for a year now — home prices are up even though demand is sluggish. As Americans face growing economic uncertainty and rising costs, many are staying put. So why won’t home prices cool off? We’ll explain. Also in this episode: Tighter budgets mean fewer orders at Domino’s, air taxis take to the sky in New York City, and banks fret over new stablecoin legislation.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

On the program today, a slice of pizza and a video game. What more could you possibly want? From American public media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdahl. It is Monday. Today, this one is the 27th of April. Good as it always is, everybody, to have you along. We begin today with a slightly philosophical bent,

that ever-changing balance that we all do between needs and needs. wants. And we're going to do it on the fulcrum of a slice of pizza because it seems spending a night in and ordering delivery is becoming something of a luxury for a whole lot of Americans. Domino's reported slower than expected sales growth today. Consumers got shy, starting in March, said the company. So Marketplace's Nova Sopho gets us going with needs and wants and that other thing that started a couple of months ago. Pizza delivery is a nice to have, not a need, to have. And as consumers tightened their budgets in March, Domino's had to offer deals and discounts to keep orders flowing. CEO Russell Weiner, in a call with analysts, said the pizza giant will

keep that going while gas prices remain elevated. Starting as soon as May, you're going to see things on the calendar or in media from Domino's that weren't on our calendar to start the year. Broadly speaking, fast food skews lower income. Sarah Senator is Senior Restaurants analyst at Bank of America. Lower income consumers feel the impacts of higher gas prices most acutely. So Senator says it stands to reason that fast food restaurants are feeling a consumer pullback first. You're just going to see a lot of value competition, and I think that will be true for the traditional QSRs. That's quick service restaurants. But we also are seeing it, that emphasis all the way up to casual diners. That's your Chili's or Olive Garden. So it's happening up and down the price

spectrum. It could go further up as the impact of higher tax refunds tapers off, says Matt Schultz, chief consumer finance analyst at LendingTree. We're at that point now, and gas prices aren't rising to the degree that they were a few weeks ago, but they're still really, really high, and it's a big deal for folks. There's no question about it. In a recent Lending Tree survey, 62% of respondents were worried about higher gas prices. Schultz expects changes in summer travel plans. as well as a decline in savings rates. And while Domino's plans to offer discounts to counter that worry, analyst Brian Harbor at Morgan Stanley says

not all restaurant chains will be able to do the same, because higher gas prices mean higher costs. And obviously that's something that could flow through to the consumer. It would stand to reason that higher oil prices do flow through to a lot of other commodities. Commodities, as in the raw ingredients that go into and onto your pizza. If chains are squeezed on costs and demand, more could go out of business. In fact, Domino's executives predicted more store closures among their competition. I'm Novosafo for Marketplace.

Wall Street, to start the week, a couple of indices hit new record highs. Both oil benchmarks went up. Bond yields mostly status quo. We will have the details when we do the numbers. Play a game from time to time with our Friday regulars. It's called What is Jay Powell thinking in five, words or less. Turns out there is an actual game along those lines. It's called the Federal Reserve Simulator. It's on Steam. And the other day, I played it with the guys who made it.

So my name is John Dobson. Yeah, I'm Andrew Dobson. I'm John's twin brother. They've both got backgrounds in finance and economics, got econ degrees together at the University of California, Davis. John is a data scientist by trade. I got a Masters of Science in Economics from Cal Poly. I graduated in 2017. After that, I got a job with Walmart. And Andrew? I was just trading stocks for like the past few years. During the pandemic, like I was watching my niece.

I did really well with Nvidia in 2024. Yeah, I bet. The brothers have been making video games together since they were in middle school. They released this one back in February. Yeah, we wanted to actually make this an informative game, educational for people, to actually learn what the Fed does. Because I have a master's in economics, and we didn't really talk about the Federal Reserve in any of my classes.

So I think this is an important thing for people to learn. Yeah, absolutely no argument there. The game is fun, but it's a little complicated video games, as you can imagine, are tough to do on the radio. So we're going to spare you the play-by-play of the half hour that it took me to play this thing. But the first thing you've got to know is that you get to pick the Fed chair you want to play as, going all the way back to Paul Volker. I went with the guy in charge now.

I'm going to choose the Powell era, so I'm clicking a historic start here. Yep. All right. Yeah, go ahead. Click it on, Powell. We started when Powell did in 2018 and played through eight years of this economy, crises and all. Entering the 2020s, the pandemic era, what lies ahead? What lies ahead?

We all know what lies ahead, you guys. We want people to have an easy experience, so we give them a little bit of help. Well, that's fair. That's fair. That's fair. A little help by the way of clues about what's to come, supply chain problems, and recession risks, and you get to do, you know, Fed stuff. Am I raising rates yet?

I think I'm raising rates. Okay. You have the chair? There is another piece of this game that's important, though. Something we have talked about a lot. There is a Fed credibility index in the game where if you do raise things too much. Yeah, it's to the right of the Dow index. So if you do act erratically, then people might not trust you.

Fed and things get worse. Did you raise interest rates too fast? Is the unemployment rate too high? All of that factors into the Fed's credibility. There's a relationship between your credibility and the impact your policy has on the economy. There is something else that can make that credibility index drop. John and Andrew put threats to the Fed's independence in the game, too. The OJ investigation of the Fed chair, you've got real life in here, man. Yep. Look at this. Credibility takes a hit. Yeah, credibility's down. Ooh, 77%. That DOJ investigation was dropped last week. Kind of. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on whether the president can fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook.

There is a committee vote on Chair Powell's replacement set for Wednesday the same day as it happens that the central bank wraps up its interest rate meeting. And in the meanwhile, inflation is still not under control and the labor market is kind of stuck. There's a war and an energy shock. Oh, and by the way, at the end of the game, you get a great. Oh, you gave... You gave me a B? What is this? Tell you what, that whole central banking thing? It's harder than it looks.

We're all familiar, I think, with perhaps varying degrees of fluency, with the supply demand curve, right? And how the disparity between the two helps determine price. As a quick aside, by the way, I once called it the law of supply and demand and got a very stern email from a very annoyed economist pointing out that it is not a law. that supply and demand thing, but rather a mechanism of the market. That aside becomes relevant when you consider the American housing market, circa early 2026.

We are going to get a sense of the real estate supply demand price equation tomorrow when we get the Case Schiller Home Price Index for February. Best guesses are that home prices rose that month slightly year over year, even though the housing market is actually pretty tepid right now. That has been the case for a while, actually. The price is trending up even though demand is sluggish, which is, thinking back to where we started this introduction, unusual. Marketplace's Samantha Fields explains. In a typical year, this is when the housing market should be taking off.

We'd see a lot of listing activity get going in February and into early March, and the buyers would be coming in the second half of March and into April. Lisa Sturdivant at Bright MLS says that's a typical year. Which we really haven't had in a while, to be quite frank with you. Instead, not much is going on right. now. More sellers have been listing. But it's still not clear that the buyers are out there yet. Some of that is the affordability issue we've had since the pandemic. Mortgage rates and home prices are both still high. Daryl Fairweather at Redfin says some of it is also because of political and economic uncertainty. The Iran war, tariffs and fears around what AI could do to the job market are

holding prospective buyers back. We have about 600,000 more sellers than buyers nationwide. And normally, when you have that gap between the number of sellers and the number of buyers, prices come down to get those homes sold. But that's not happening. Home prices have continued to rise in much of the country. In order for prices to come down, you need to have sellers who are pretty much desperate to sell. That's what we saw during the foreclosure crisis. But this time around, homeowners are in a very secure position. They have lots of equity in their homes. Which means they don't have to sell if they don't want to. They can hold out for more money. That, along with the fact that there's just not enough building going on in many markets, has helped keep prices rising. But Chris Herbert at the Joint

Center for Housing Studies at Harvard says they are rising much more slowly these days than they were a couple of years ago. Right now, we're seeing house prices are growing, you know, low single digits, basically less than inflation. And so while we say that house prices haven't fallen, they are falling in real terms after we account for inflation. And if that trend continues, then more than mortgage rates come down, he says in the next few years, we'll eventually get back to a place where home prices are more affordable. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace. I had a conversation last week with Lori Stewart. She runs Sound Community Bank up in Seattle. And we were talking about some of the things that smaller banks like Sound are keeping an eye on, one of which is stable coins, a digital

currency that's designed to keep its value, unlike, oh, Bitcoin, just for instance. There is, of course, lots of towing and froing in Washington right now about how stable coins are actually going to work, how they might be regulated, and what they might do to the traditional banking system. Marketplace is Justin Ho as today's explainer. The reason why stable coins are supposed to hold their value is because the company's issuing them back their coins with safe financial assets. In this case, mostly U.S. Treasury securities and a few other types of related very short-term assets. That's Todd Baker with Columbia Business. in school. He says when someone buys a $100 worth of stable coins, the company issuing them will

use the money to buy $100 worth of U.S. treasuries, for instance. And if you want that money back, you go back to the stable coin issuer, and the stablecoin issuer sells some of those very safe assets and gives you cash. Right now, the companies that issue stablecoins are mostly tech companies. And Baker says most people use stablecoins to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, since stablecoins can make those transactions easier. But they can also be used to make. make payments instantly. If the person you're paying is willing to accept a stable coin as an alternative to a bank transfer or a credit card or another structure for making payments.

In other words, stable coins are kind of like traditional bank accounts. You can use them to make payments or you can let the money sit there. That's why many banks are concerned about what will happen if stable coins become more popular. Small banks, community banks are right to be afraid. That's Hillary Allen. A law professor at American University. She says the fear is that stable coins will draw depositors' cash away from banks, especially if stable coins pay competitive interest rates.

Right now, stable coin issuers aren't allowed to pay interest. But Allen says there are loopholes. They're affiliated exchanges or partners with other crypto industry infrastructure. They can pay yield, which is effectively interest. Ellen says the concern isn't only about bank competition. It's also about where that money will end up. because the company's issuing them store that money in treasuries and other safe assets. They're not making loans to people for mortgages.

They're not making loans to small businesses to get up and running. That said, some banks themselves have been getting into Stablecoin, says David Schiff, with FTI consulting. The larger banks, particularly those that have a global footprint and are working with very large commercial clients that have cross-border operations, are absolutely starting to experiment. Schiff says that's because those banks' big commercial clients, are interested in the instant payment services that stable coin technology can provide. It really is about helping to grease the skids of the payment system and make it easier for those institutions. But Schiff says smaller banks have been more reluctant, in large part because offering stable coins would tie up money that they would otherwise lend. Plus, banks don't necessarily

have the resources to offer stable coins, even if they wanted to. Dominic Miatin, the CEO of American Pride Bank in Macon, Georgia. I can't just set aside a few billion dollars. of my earnings or my capital to go and build infrastructure, the cybersecurity, compliance, and all the other components of launching such a product. Miartan says he is worried about what will happen if stable coins become more widespread. We bank some large insurance companies, and they're definitely talking about how they could possibly benefit from accessing some of these new exchanges or new ways to store and move money. So instead, Miartan says his bank is going to focus on doing what it does well.

We're going to find ways to support our customers with faster services, with safer services, and we're going to continue to pay very strong returns on their deposit accounts. Miartan says if his bank can keep doing that, he'll at least have a shot at hanging on to his customers' deposits. If stable coins start luring them away. I'm Justin Hough for Marketplace. Coming up. So I was able to find a used chainsaw off Craigslist for 300? Wait, what?

All right, first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial is down 62 points today. One-tenth of one percent, 49,167. The NASDAQ went the other way of 50 points, 2 tenths percent, 24,887. The S&P 500 added eight points, about a tenth percent, 71 and 73. Dominoes, novo was talking about them, which is by and the world's biggest pizza chain. Forecasting weaker sales for the rest of the year, it fell eight and eight-tenths of one percent. Papa Johns edged up nine-tenth-percent pizza.

Hut owner. Young Brands also owns KFC, by the way, and Taco Bell, dipped three and two-tenths of one percent. New home price data coming tomorrow. Sam Fields was talking about that. The nation's biggest home builder, D.R. Horton slipped three-tenths of one percent. Florida-based Linar fell eight-tenths percent. Elsewhere in real estate, the real brokerage, that's an AI-powered firm that foregoes, traditional brick-and-mortar offices. What could possibly go wrong? It announced the deal by longtime real estate brand remax for a reported $880 million. Remax. than 24% on the news. The real brokerage, on the other hand, fell more than 24%. The straighter Hormuz, is it a standstill? Well, traffic therein, anyway. Exxon Mobil down about a half percent. Chevron

lost a quarter percent. Refiner Valero gained 1%. You're listening to Marketplace. If you're a business leader, Intuit QuickBooks payroll is an essential tool that completely integrates payroll, time tracking, HR, and your financials in a powerful all-in-one command center. No more juggling platforms or switching between vendors. All your data synced into one platform offering clarity and confidence to make smarter decisions and focus on what matters. This summer, QuickBooks payroll evolves to support the entire team life cycle, HR, time, benefits, and payroll all working together in one connected system that fully integrates with your books. You'll be able to on board employees in one seamless flow that feeds directly into payroll, configure automated HR work. for things like promotions or offboarding and track performance, time off, and benefits alongside payroll.

Upgrade your workflow with QuickBooks Payroll today and get ready for the brand new tools coming soon. More at QuickBooks.com slash workforce. That's quickbooks.com slash workforce. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdon. I did a season of our climate podcast, How We Survive, a couple of years ago. It was all about what the military is doing to. what it can do about climate change. And one of the episodes, I flew a simulator of an electric air taxi made by Joby Aviation.

Let's have you jump into the seat, the pilot seat, and we're going to have you scoot forward, and I'm going to ride along behind you. What could possibly go wrong, Kai? What could possibly go wrong? Technically speaking, I crashed the thing, but if you listen to the episode, you will hear it wasn't entirely my fault. Anyway, two-ish years later, Jobie's getting into the air taxi business for reels. Starting today, it's flying demonstration flights in New York City.

Electric air taxis between Manhattan and JFK Airport, part of a federal pilot program meant to help air taxis become a regular site in U.S. skies. Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes has more. If a small plane and a helicopter had a baby, that's kind of what these air taxis look like. Eric Allison is chief product officer at Joby Aviation. It has a wing, but it has six propellers that can tilt. And they can tilt from pointing up to take off vertically to pointing forward to fly like an airplane. Allison says that vertical lift lets the vehicles move nimbly around cities. And they're also much quieter than helicopters.

It's basically inaudible as it flies overhead. Allison says the company is working hard to get its aircraft FAA certified. And that the demonstration flights this week act as a kind of preview of what tailing a ride on one of these aircraft could look like. So you get a card to wherever the nearest takeoff a landing spot is, or if you're right across the street, you can walk, you get pooled onto the Joby aircraft with other people, and then you can fly up to 200 miles an hour to your final destination. One key question is how much this ride to the airport, or wherever, will ultimately cost.

Allison says the goal is to be on par with a premium car service. And the air taxi business does face some real hurdles, according to Samuel Engel with the consulting firm ICF. He says, one, there are only so many places you can land an aircraft in the city, even a small, nimble one. And two, those aircraft are small. Jobie's fit four passengers plus a pilot. You can assume that the demand is going to have peaks at particularly popular times, and these small vehicles will have a hard time providing enough seats for all of the people who want to take them at those popular times. One way to make space, says Bloomberg intelligence analyst George Ferguson is to try to make these vehicles autonomous. That means they won't have to save room

for a pilot. If you have a four-seater or a five-seater, you don't want to occupy 25 or 20% of the space with a non-paying passenger. But Ferguson says it'll be a minute before we have autonomous aircraft that's able and allowed to navigate above crowded cities. I'm Stephanie Hughes. Markowitz. It is a sad truth of our changing climate. the Western United States no longer has a monopoly on more frequent and more intense wildfires. See also Southern Georgia the past couple of weeks. Wildfires cost this country hundreds of billions of dollars every year. A total not likely to fall on its own.

So it's a good thing then that there are people and businesses trying to mitigate some of the risks before a fire even starts. Here's today's installment of our series, My Economy. My name is Jessica Davison. I'm a former wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service. I currently own and operate firebreak management. We're based out of Bozeman, Montana. We go in and do fuels reduction, which could be anything from limbing trees to cutting trees out,

to leaving big clumps for wildlife habitat. The idea is if we can do something before the fire starts, before the firefighters show up, it really lessens their load both mentally and physically and gives them a chance to fight a fire for us. Getting fire break started, was a work of love and a bootstrap like no other. So I was doing wildland fire for many years, and then I took a season, what I thought was maybe a season off was maybe the end and worked on an

ambulance. I did not have a lot of money in the bank account, but I had this huge passion to do what I love, to keep doing what I loved. So I was able to find a used chainsaw off Craigslist for 300. And then a couple weeks later, I found another used chainsaw on Craigslist for around 300. We got to work, and by job two or three, I was able to buy. a nicer professional chainsaw. And I think we started getting shirts that matched. We currently have two chainsaw folks in the field and one full-time equipment operator. Hopefully, you know, within a year, everyone's making a minimum of 30 an hour.

We're trying to do we do have a high living wage here in Bozeman. I respect that. Paying people a little of a wage is part of why our rates are a little higher. I mean, there is a reason this is the most dangerous industry in the U.S. they should be compensated for that. I think firebreak management's been able to grow so much over the years for a combination of stuff. And the biggest one, I think, was right place, right time. We're seeing a big shift across the United States,

but specifically in the Western United States on how we understand and live with and interact with wildland fire. And I think I hit the private market at a pretty good time. Seeing firebreak in five years is so hard for me to quantify because the sky is the limit. I didn't see firebreak being here five years ago. I hope we're running multiple crews. I hope we have a travel crew. I would also love to have, again, two or three crews and one's doing government contracting all summer, back to our roots in wildland firefighting. I dream.

I'm a dreamer. That's how fire breaks got where it's am. I am a dreamer. Jessica Davidson. fire brick management is her company. It's in Bozeman, Montana. We cannot do this series without you, whether your job takes you out in the field or keeps you tied to your desk. I feel that. Let us know what's happening. Would you Marketplace.org slash my economy? This final note on the way out today in which we peek into our petroleum future, straight open or straight closed for a while, doesn't much seem to matter which, when you're talking about oil prices.

Goldman Sach said over the weekend that by the end of this year, If Persian Gulf Petroleum Exports normalized by July, let me say that again. If they normalized by July, Brent Crude could average almost $120 a barrel. That is their severely adverse scenario. But I would ask you to remember here that the head of the International Energy Agency said the other day it would take two years for the Gulf to get back to normal. Amir Bimbawe, Caitlin Esch, John Gordon, Neuerkar, Steve Mullis, and Stephanie Seek are the Marketplace editing staff. Kelly Severe is the news director. And I'm Kai Rizdahl.

We will see tomorrow, everybody. This is APM. You may have learned recently just how far a barrel of oil has to travel before it makes it into your gas tank. And a lot has to happen to that oil before it even becomes gas that you can actually use. So this week on Million Bazillion, Ryan and I venture on a road trip with stops in Texas and Dubai to learn all about oil and why the price of gas goes up and down. And we even meet Derek, an oil. drill who knows a lot about the global economy.

OPEC is a group of oil producing countries that work together to decide how much oil they're going to drill and release for sale. They can drive the price down by releasing a lot of oil. Listen to Million Bazillion on your favorite podcast app.