Prof G Markets - America Finally Has a Housing Plan. Trump Is Blocking It.

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

Ed Elson is joined by Daryl Fairweather to break down whether the housing bill that just passed in the Senate will bring down housing prices in a meaningful way — if Trump lets it through. Then, Mike Issac joins the show to discuss his reporting on Meta’s prediction markets play. Finally, Ed checks in with Scott Galloway for a dispatch from Cannes. Daryl Fairweather is the chief economist at Redfin. Mike Isaac is a technology correspondent at The New York Times.  Subscribe to the Prof G Markets Youtube Channel  Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Follow Scott on Instagram Send us your questions or comments by emailing [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-4-3 at O-D-O-O-O-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-com. If money is evil, then that building is held. Welcome to Profi Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is June 25th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The S&P 500 and NASDAQ declined as chip stocks extended their losses. However, Micron stock popped more than 9% in after hours, as it quadrupled its revenue in the latest quarter.

We will see how those results impact the rest of the chip sector today. Oil dipped below $70 for the first time since before the war. The yield on 10-year treasury. fell. The dollar climbed as Bitcoin crashed below $60,000 to its lowest level since October of 2024. And finally, Alibaba shares sank 3% after Anthropic accused the company of, quote, illicitly accessing its AI models. Okay, what else is happening? America finally has a plan to make housing affordable, but President Trump is holding it hostage in a rare bipartisan feat.

Congress passed the most significant piece of housing legislation in 36 years on Tuesday. The 21st Century Road to Housing Act aims to lower housing costs and increase supply. It cuts red tape on new construction and makes loans easier to secure. It also sets limits on the role of institutional investors in the housing market, a policy which Trump himself has championed. But yesterday, Trump abruptly canceled. cancelled plans to sign this bill. He said he wouldn't sign it until Congress passes a separate voter ID bill called the Save America Act. Homebuilders rallied anyway with KB Home up 17 percent,

DreamFinders homes up 13 percent and Century Communities up 10 percent, joining us to discuss this bill. We're speaking with Darrell Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. Daryl, thank you so much for joining us on the show. I'm just going to tell you how I feel about this right off the bat and hear your response, I'm pretty disappointed by this because I saw that bill, which I was very optimistic about. It seemed like we were finally making a bipartisan effort to get the cost of housing down, which has exploded. I mean, we can go through many different metrics, but the fact that, you know, I often look at the age of first-time home buyers, which is now 40, and back in 1991, it was 28, we could go through the list, and then the president shuts it down at a moment

where I thought we all agreed. Could you just walk us through this bill and then also your reactions to it either happening or perhaps not happening? Yes, I was excited that this bill passed through Congress because there is a lot of great stuff in it. There are provisions that tie government money to local municipalities increasing their supply of housing and making it easier to build, which I think is so important. There are provisions about manufactured and modular housing, making it easier for people to finance those types of homes, which could unlock a lot of additional housing supply. You can put an ADU in your backyard that's manufactured or that's modular, and that's a great way to increase the housing supply. There are also provisions in there about

providing money for homes that are at risk of natural disasters. And then you have some stuff in there about investors buying homes. You know, I think overall this bill ended up in a really great place that housing advocates can get behind. And it is disappointing that it's not going to become law today. But I remain optimistic that this will get over the finish line. Why do you feel optimistic that this will ultimately happen? Because it's so supported on both sides. I mean, just looking at how it passed, 358 to 32 in the House, 85 to 5 in the Senate. Like, this is as bipartisan as they come. Is that why you feel optimistic about it? Yes, it's bipartisan. Both Republican and Democrat lawmakers support it, and also people support it. People recognize how unaffordable it has become to buy a home or even to

rent a home, and they want their leaders to take action. So I think that this is the future that people have gotten and on board with the idea that we need to increase the supply of housing if we really want to make housing more affordable. And this is the direction that the country is headed in. I don't think that just one person is going to be able to stop it. One of the provisions that's been a little bit controversial, it seems that everyone agrees that we need to do whatever we can to increase the supply, I think. I mean, I'd be interested to hear if maybe there's some pushback that you're seeing from the NIMBY community, perhaps. But I feel like we're making headway there. But there is some controversy over this bill to limit the ability of institutional investors to buy up

single-family homes. That is part of this bill. What is your view on that provision? This has been kind of a popular topic in the world of housing. Like, should we be letting Black Rock go out there and buy thousands of homes? And is that having a bad effect on the price of housing? What is your view on that debate? I think that this final bill came to a very logical place with respect to that issue, I do not think that private equity or institutional investors are the reason why housing has gotten so unaffordable. I think they're more a symptom than a cause. And although the bill claims to ban them from the market, what it really does is it caps the number of homes that they are allowed to own and puts in some regulations on how they can

rent those homes out. They need to allow renters to have an opportunity to buy the homes, and they also need to keep records of rental payments, so that those renters have, you know, history for when they go to buy a home that can be used for their credit history. So I think where we ended up in the end is actually a pretty logical place. And I know that Elizabeth Warren is going to say that they banned institutional investors. I don't think that's what actually happened. It's, it was moderated. I think that's a good thing. Where are we in terms of housing prices at this point? I mean, I think we all know they're high. But how, how? high and how have they changed over the past year or so? So it was actually just last week that the median

home price crossed over $400,000 for the first time, according to our Redfin data. And I think that's one of the reasons people are so upset. It's really difficult to find those $300,000, $200,000 homes that are affordable on a middle class salary now. And then on top of the home price, mortgage rates are high. They are nearly, they're more than double what they were during the, the pandemic. So if you were buying, say, a $400,000 home a couple of years ago during the pandemic, you would actually have to pay about $1,000 more per month just because of the difference in interest. And that's why people have gotten so frustrated because mortgage rates went up so quickly in 2022. They've remained high, partially due to the trade war and due to the conflict in

Iran. And that continues to make housing just so inaccessible, especially to first-time home buyers who have to get a mortgage in order to be able to afford a home. Cash buyers can navigate around interest rates. Wealthy people can navigate around interest rates, but regular people can't. Could you explain further the connection between what we've seen in the Middle East, in Iran, and how that ultimately funnels through to housing prices, or I guess housing becoming less affordable overall? Yeah, so the reason why mortgage rates are so much higher now than they were during or before the pandemic is because of inflation. When inflation heats up, the Federal Reserve has to raise interest rates in order to suck money out of the economy to get demand to come down and inflation

to come down. And this has a disproportionate impact on the housing market. The housing market is very interest rate sensitive because you have to borrow in order to buy a home. So when inflation started going up because of the trade war and then because of the conflict in Iran, that directly made mortgage rates higher. Mortgage rates for 30-year fixed rate were 5.99% the day before the conflict in Iran started, and now they're above 6.6%. So you can definitely see the difference that the conflict in Iran is causing to the market. And that lowers demand for housing, but it also makes it less likely for homeowners to sell,

because many homeowners have these record low mortgage rates they got during the pandemic back when everybody was refinancing or buying. And if they were to give that up and to buy again, they would have to pay much more for that new interest rate. So these high interest rates are really just suffocating in the housing market. We're seeing near record low amounts of homes being sold because both buyers and sellers can't afford to make it happen when these mortgage rates are so high. It's this terrible combination. You've got higher prices because there's lower supply plus all of these other exulgence factors which are causing higher interest rates. So you're paying more to borrow and then also paying more to buy.

Seems like, you know, this is exactly what you don't want. And it does seem that this is becoming more and more a political issue that is at the center of our politics. I mean, the idea of buying a home is central to everything we do in America. It's central to the American dream. And increasingly, it's becoming impossible. Let's assume this goes through. let's assume that the bill pauses, Trump does sign it. Is there anything, I mean, are you optimistic that once this passes, we might actually see housing prices come down?

And is there anything that might get in the way of that outcome? So I don't think that home prices will go down in terms of the sticker price that you see. But what will happen is that home prices won't go up as much as they would in the absence of this bill allowing more supply to be billed. And we're projecting that over the next decade. Home prices will still go up, but they will go up slower than wages and slower than inflation. And effectively, buying a home will become more affordable over time. And we can make it more affordable over time even more if we add more supply. And that's what this bill really does.

It's not just the federal bill. There's also a lot of action happening at the state level and the local level. And I think in general, the Yimbis, the people who have been advocating for more housing supply in general, are winning all across the country. All right. Darrell Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. Daryl, this was extremely informative. Thank you so much.

Thank you. After the break, meta gets into prediction markets. And for even more markets insights, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter, Simplyput, at simplyput.com. Support for the show comes from Vanguard. To all the financial advisors listening,

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We're back with Profji Markets. The world's largest social media company may soon be expanding into prediction markets. Mark Zuckerberg recently directed his team at Meta to create a prediction markets app similar to Kalshi and Polly Market called Arena. An initial version of the app involves making bets on real-world events using in-game points, although wagering with real money has not yet been ruled out. So here to discuss this potential new direction for META, we're speaking with the reporter who actually broke this story.

We're speaking with Mike Isaac, New York Times technology correspondent. Mike, great to see. Thank you for joining us. Meta's working on a prediction markets platform, I guess. Something like Cal Street, something like Polly Market. What do we know about this? So when I found out about it, my jaw kind of hit the floor just because I, It's kind of an intense thing to do, especially right now.

You know, it's a moment where all of these markets are being heavily scrutinized, even if they are technically playing in a legal gray area, according to every analyst. But Zuckerberg, as far as my sources have told me, Zuckerberg himself has ordered this up. It's one of these things where he's really an astute, I would call him an astute student of just like obsessing over what people do online and leaving, let's say leaving value judgments out of it some of the time, but like, like just saying prediction markets, Calishean Polymarket, are two of the largest, fastest growing activities on the internet for a while. How can we bring some of that activity into Facebook? As far as I know it's a, you know, going to be a standalone app, but also have the

social graph from Facebook and Instagram kind of integrated somehow because their whole point is, you know, do it with your friends and family. That's where you make bets on things in the world. It is striking because, I mean, for a guy who's led a company that has been scrutinized for engaging in the kinds of digital addictions and digital habits that a lot of people would say are bad for you health-wise, bad for you mental health-wise, this is sort of the next controversial thing is prediction markets because it's controversial for the fact that it's quite similar to gambling in a lot of ways. And I guess I'm just struck by the fact that he doesn't seem to care about that, or maybe he does, and he decides that the money's worth it. I mean,

do you know if that's been part of the calculus for the people over at Meta? It's a great point, and I was, after the story broke, it was actually great because a lot of people started coming out of the woodwork and sending me more stuff. And there's a few things. One, there are a lot of people inside of meta right now who are not happy that they're actually working on this. I think there are people, like, as you might imagine, prediction markets are very controversial.

Like a lot of folks call them pathways to gambling. A lot of folks call them outright gambling under a different name and are upset that they're not called gambling apps. Again, they're still in this process of where does regulation exist? at all around them. You know, it's like stalled in Congress as far as some of these bills are going. So like, it's controversial to begin with

and not a ton of people knew about it. It was a small team working on it under the direction of Zuckerberg. That said, I saw another document that was talking about what they do is a lot of these risk assessments internally, like essentially pros and consless. And one of the things they had a category

that specifically was about regulatory risk. And because they're playing with not real money, they said this was like low risk and that's how they can sort of justify it. I still think that's probably a rosy view. Like it's, you're in the middle of exactly what you're saying. You're in the middle of a bunch of high profile court battles, class action lawsuits,

essentially calling your app addictive in a lot of ways. And then you bring about like a, it's just like invited. more pain and scrutiny, but I think Mark Zuckerberg has a high pain tolerance threshold, especially if he believes this is something that can benefit him and meta in the long run. Yeah, and I would add on to that the fact that we've got the sequel to the social network, which is going to be all about this, so it's going to be even more public pressure, which I guess he's not that worried about. The fact that they're doing in-game points is striking.

It seems to me that maybe that means that they don't want to delve into the regulatory cesspit too aggressively. But I do wonder, I mean, how are you going to make money doing that? Or is that really even the point? Do you think that ultimately the strategy would be tested, see if it works, and if people like it, then we'll start using real dollars? There's a version of this where, you know, the folks I talk to have not ruled out, as you noted, have not ruled out ever making a financial component, a real money component to it. I think Zuckerberg, again, he cares about behavior and activity.

And if there's a way to capture behavior, even if it's not directly financially motivated, there are indirect ways. He's all about indirectly monetizing a lot of stuff that's on their platform. And at the end of the day, we'll always go back to scale. We have 3.5 billion users. The two things we need to think about is how to keep them coming back and then shoving different forms of monetization in there.

So I can imagine a world in which this highly – I'm not even going to say a word addictive because that comes loaded. But like, let's say this highly engaging activity brings people back to Facebook more often. How many more – what does your ad inventory do there? It opens up. You get more time spent. And so even if they never make it a for-money thing, I think if it works, it could yield some sort of benefits to them. It is striking just how good of a copycat Mark Zuckerberg is. If it's, you know, starting reels as a copy of TikTok and Instagram stories, which copied Snap, now he's copying Calci and Polymarket.

I mean, it's been a winning strategy before. So, I mean, I feel like we have every reason to believe it might be a winning strategy again. Just going back to what you said about how the team at Meta feels about this, the idea that people, they don't want to be working on this, they're not excited about this. It's an interesting point because we're at a time in the markets where investors are starting to feel the same way about Mark Zuckerberg, specifically when it comes to spending on AI, which is he's spending all of this money on these data centers. He hasn't communicated a clear vision for where we're going to see a real return. I mean, that was already a concern, and he's doing probably the worst job of all the hyperscalers in communicating. Here's how we're going to make money off of this thing.

I'd be curious to know, is that a feeling that is growing among the staff at META? Do we know if there is a lack of trust or faith or concern that is growing aside from the prediction markets? Yeah, you nailed it. I think the, so this sort of controversial app that they're building also comes at, I was talking to someone there who's been around for a long time who was telling me this is probably one of the worst times they've had for the company. Like people are, morale is really gnarly. They made the case like, look, we're still making money and we're building things or whatever. but like AI and the threat of competition around them has got a level of paranoia across the board

that they're going to get unseated, I think, at the top ranks. And then at the bottom ranks, you're just sort of going through enormous layoffs and real structural change on how they've rejiggered a lot of the engineering teams in a way that is actually having them bleed attrition going up because other companies are coming in and taking those engineers. So it is like a very tumultuous time inside of meta right now. And I think the, I've only seen a few, like, moments inside over the years where folks are outright sort of on the verge of mutiny.

And one of them was around the Trump election stuff and misinfo suddenly being a thing. And really now in the wake of the layoffs and all this sort of turbulence, like it's pretty gnarly inside. And the top is trying to calm the troops, but it's been hard, I think. All right. Mike Isaac, New York Times, technology correspondent. Really fascinating stuff, Mike. We appreciate your time. Thank you for having me. The Cannes Festival, the advertising world's biggest annual gathering, kicked off this week in the south of France. Over five days, thousands of executives from advertising, media tech, and entertainment all descended onto Cannes to network,

handout awards, and debate where the business is headed. So we wanted to hear from a Cannes, our very own Scott Galloway, who's going to give us this dispatch from the ground. Scott, good to see you, takeaways, learnings from this year's can. Well, first and foremost, what is on everyone's mind is the absolute invasion of the tartan army here. You're going to see a bunch of ginger babies who want haggis, not mother's milk, in nine months. The tartan army is just taken over the south of France. That's very exciting.

If the tartan army were one 51-year-old Jewish professor wearing a team Scotland, go! You're going to need to put that in the laundry soon. I think you're on day seven. Well, I bought my team England jersey, so I'm ready to switch loyalty. Okay, so three, I think three major things. One, I think last year everyone was, AI is a threat and going to take over everything. And this year, it's more about how do we incorporate AI. And also, I think, a little bit of a sigh of relief that creativity is one of the places that it's not under attack from AI.

And that is, remember, about this time last year, there was the AI co-commercial. Do you need your media agency? Do you need creative? And the answer is that with AI, you probably need, like, creative is even more important in terms of standing out, right? You got this giant chip and needs salsa, and the salsa is creative. So 13,000 people, biggest can ever in 90 countries. The biggest trend here is creators, and that is there's now, last year there were 400 creators. This year, there's 500. Brands are going to spend about half their marketing budget on some sort of creator economy, whether it's an influencer or

YouTube. The stars, the ironic thing is the industry used to be about celebrating the industry itself, and they seem to have not woken up and realize they're no longer the protagonist, that it's no longer the means of production deciding what good advertising is. It's consumers deciding which creators they want without the middle, without the people actually, you know, he used to be Madison Avenue giving awards to each other. Now it's a bunch of studios or people with ringlights. And then I would say the other really big trend is sports, and that is there's now lion sports. Sports is the ultimate cultural religion. Whether it's the World Cup, whether it's advertising, finding the only place you can get live is on sports.

It does seem that that is the new kind of cultural touchstones. But those are sort of the takeaways I get from Cannes this year. What about some of the tech companies like Snap? I know you had that. There was the Snap party, which we were wondering if you would actually get invited to that party, given what we said about the Snap specs, you were not too complimentary of that new product. But then also METAs come out with these new glasses as well. Is that getting a lot of play, the SNAP specs, and then also the new meta glasses?

Not really. I would say I went to the SNAP dinner and I met a bunch of very impressive people. And one of the most, one of the amazing things about the market, Snap is hired a bunch of really talented people from meta and alphabet. And I said, why would you, I mean, these are talented people who've decided to join SNAP. And I'll say, why did you come over? I share Evans' vision and a scrape culture. They're lying.

This is what I believe is happening. If you're in charge of recruiting for SNAP, you call a VP at META and you say, okay, we'll give you options worth a million bucks. If the stock triples, it's worth five or ten million. Where is the stock more likely to triple in the next 24 months? Meta going from $2 trillion to $6 trillion or Snap showing any sign of life and going from $4 to $12 a share? So it's weird. despite, it's almost like their low stock price is a bit of feature, not a bug, but I was very impressed by their ability to recruit people.

And I don't think it's because they share Evans' vision of a computer on your face future. And the other thing about big tech, Open AI had a big party with a bunch of creators. Their first time at the festival this year. And it reminds me so, it's like deja vu. It's like 10 or 12 years ago when the most sought-after event was to go to Cheryl Sandberg's book signing party. And I felt like this is just so hilarious as she runs her fingers through their hair before she shoots them in the fucking face. These guys are basically inviting the people whose house they just robbed while they were sleeping. So the notion that a bunch of creators

start showing up to Open AI, it's like inviting a hijacker to an air show as a way I would describe it. But we've been here before. It was one of the bigger events. People have been talking about it. But, yeah, I don't, you know, I'm focused on, quite frankly, I'm focused on the Spotify party tonight. Mumford and Sons and then the Yahoo party, DJ Tiesto, because I know you were wondering about that, Ed. I don't be honest. It doesn't sound that cool, but you did get invited to the Snap party. Wait, I saw Ludacrest last night. I'm like 1990 called and wants its hardest back. Yeah, it could do better than that. So you, but you, final question, you did get the invite from Snap. They didn't rescind.

Yeah, because the show didn't air until Monday. Monday. There we go. The event was Sunday night. Good. Now, to be fair, they're smart people. They're, I actually, this is going to sound weird, but as much of shit posting of Snap I've done, at four bucks a share and nine billion or whatever it is in market cap, I actually think Snap's a pretty decent buy right now, because I think at some point Evan wakes up from this fever dream, either spends the group or closes it down, and the company's actually the core platform. Shareholders have had to spend $3.5 billion on a stupid wearable to figure. out that Evan is more Mark Zuckerberg than he is Steve Jobs. And by the way, that's just

fine. A core platform of the half a billion people a day is a great business. But I would say the tech companies have taken a backseat. The stars of this can are the five or six hundred people walking around and you see a crowd around them. You know, like, oh, she does the most famous food blog in Sweden. Yes, creators, influencers. Yeah, influencers. And the most encouraging thing about the creator economy is 50% of the spend is going to the next. nano and micro-influencers, meaning the long tail. So it's different than kind of social media or podcasts where it's a winner-take-most. There does appear to be a lot of opportunity for little niche players, which is encouraging for the ecosystem. You're in Europe. Are you seeing any

interesting European companies in Cannes as well? I actually think, and this is a prediction, the best performing one-day IPO, the biggest pop of a tech company of an IPO in June is not SpaceX at 22%. There's a company being taken out by J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs. I think it's pricing next week sometime. And it's actually an Italian company. And it's the Berkshire Hathaway of forgotten but beloved brands. Any idea what I'm talking about? I do not. Nobody does. And that's the strange thing. AI and American companies have sucked so much oxygen out of the room. There's a company called Bending Spoons. And it's a roll-up of all of these kind of forgotten but beloved brands. So Evernote, Eventbright, Meetup, AOL, Vimeo, all of these really interesting companies that never got quite iconic status, but were good companies that spent hundreds of millions, sometimes billions, to establish a great customer base and recurring revenue.

And this company has gone in and bought them on the cheap, uses AI to clean up the back end, cut costs. this is a company that Q1 of 2025 million lost 120 million. Q1 of 2026 is going to do over 600 million and just went profitable to 27 million. It's going out at a valuation of around 19 billion, so technically six to eight times revenues, which looks cheap in this market. And the thing about this is while their consumer brands, 88% of their revenue is recurring revenue. So it's sort of SaaS meets Berkshire Hathaway meets consumer internet. And I think this company is going to be, is going to register a stronger first-day pop. Because no one's heard of it, I would bet the bankers price it pretty aggressively.

And when people look at the financials and the momentum they have, I think this thing's going to get a lot of attention. And then once they have a public currency, think about the hundreds, if not thousands of companies that are on the list of great internet companies that never got iconic or got public on their own that are looking for. a home. So I'm, and the thing I love about it, it's not AI and it's not American. It's Italian, and it's doing really well, and that's why no one's heard of it, because the AI companies have sucked all the attention oxygen out of the room. Anyways, bending spoons, my prediction, the biggest first-day pop of a tech company is going to be this little-known company out of Italy that has found all these orphaned brands that are great businesses. Okay, Scott Galloway, thank you. Enjoy the party tonight.

Thanks, brother. Congratulations on Team England. That should have been a penalty for Ghana. I got to admit it. You got to be honest. But I'm glad they're doing so well. Yeah, we should have scored at the end there. We're doing okay. Nill-nil draws. Not the best, but we'll see. We'll see. Panama soon. All right, brother. Okay, that's it for today. Tune in tomorrow for our conversation with AI researcher and skeptic Gary Marcus. We're discussing why AI models are actually dumber than investors think and what that means for the AI trade. Also, be sure to join us on Monday. We've got Robert Armstrong joining us for a market's halftime report as the first six months of the year come to a dramatic close. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Brad Williams. Our research team is Dan Chalon, Isabella Kinsel, Kristen O'Donohue, and Mia Silverio. And our social producer is Jake McPherson. Thank you for listening to Profite Markets from Profitry Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson.

I will see you tomorrow.