Real Estate the Ramsey Way - Should I Wait for Home Prices to Come Down?

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

Should you wait for home prices to come down? We break down how to think about timing the market and making a smart homebuying decision. Next steps: 🏠Not sure what to do next when buying or selling your home? Check out our ⁠⁠Real Estate Home Base⁠⁠ for free tools and resources to guide your next steps. 🏠And if you’re ready to buy or sell your home, ⁠⁠connect with a RamseyTrusted® real estate agent⁠⁠. They’re experts who’ll help you confidently navigate homeownership the way we teach. Explore more from Ramsey Network: 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💰 George Kamel 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

I am currently living with my daughter while I'm looking to buy a house. And what I've been looking at, it feels like the prices are way high for what the houses are. You're breaking up on us, Kathleen. I don't know if you're in a bad sell zone, but we can't hear you. Let's come closer to the window. I'm by the window. Can you hear me now? I was going to suggest that, but I didn't want to be too bold.

So you feel like house prices are very high right now, and you want to buy a house. What's the question? The question is, should I go ahead and throw all my money into the house, or should I hold off and wait for a housing bubble if there is, in fact, one to burst while we recover with our energy production and reduce regulations? Wow. You're very trusting.

Well, Kathleen, let me tell you what Kathleen is. Kathleen is paying attention to the headlines, aren't you, Kathleen? You're in the news. Well, I'm watching it, for sure. I know. That's where that comes from, George. Tell her about the bubble. The bubble, we talked about this when the last time this came up, which was around kind of post-COVID. Everyone was freaking out, and we did a whole real estate event talking about, hey, there's not going to be this market crash.

It's not going to be 2008 all over again. And there's a lot of reasons for that. We covered it in the event. The TLDR on this is, I would not wait. I would not sit on the sidelines waiting, hoping for some bubble. and here's how I know that. If mortgage interest rates go down, what's going to happen? It's going to cause more buyers to flood the market, right?

Correct, correct. What happens when more buyers flood the market? Prices don't go down, they go. They go up. Exactly. Right. Right. And so I don't see a drastic change in home prices.

We've seen a little fluctuation here and there, and I think you're going to look back six years from now and go, oh my gosh, why did I wait? That house that was 600 is now $750. And so the right time to buy a house is when you're financially ready. So when you said I put all my money, what does that entail? I shouldn't say all my money. I'm retired and I have my retirement investments and that's set aside that to not be touched.

Okay. But this is money that I have from when I sold my last house. Okay. How much are we talking? We're talking 350, $350,000. And how much is the house that you would like to buy? I'd like to buy a house for $350,000, but they are not looking like anything I can actually live in over the lawn course.

I want something that I'm retired, that I can age in, age and plates. Okay, so what would that cost? Is it $400, $450, $500? Yeah, it's looking like to touch it, it's $400. Okay, so let's say you took out a $50,000 loan. Could you afford the payment on that with your retirement income, where it's 25%? or less of your take-home pay? I believe so, yes.

Then I would do it, and I would pay it off, and in a few years it'll be gone. I mean, most people have car loans bigger than that. And so taking on 50 grand to get into a house now before it becomes a $500,000 house, four years from now, I'm going to do that. So you don't have a moving target on your hands. I agree. That's a smart play. Thank you, thank you.

That's the lesson of inflation, and you wonder, well, okay, which side should I be on the inflation or the bubble burst. Yeah, I just, I don't have a crystal ball. And so I live my life, like I'm getting control of what I'm in control of. And I hope they change the regulations and that were flooded with more supply in the market. And that helps the housing market as a whole. But I don't, I don't put a feather in my hat. I've got to live my life. Yeah, and Kathleen, this is a little extra advice you didn't ask for. I'd look at your cell phone carrier. I might switch carriers. That's a good call. You don't want to be near the window all the time. Hey guys, thanks for listening to Real Estate the Ramsey Way.

Now, if you're here, you're probably thinking about buying or selling a house. It's exciting, and one of the biggest financial decisions you'll ever make. But you don't want to do it with an inexperienced agent who will rush you into costly mistakes, like the ones some of our callers find themselves in. You need a pro who knows what the flip they're doing and will keep you on track with your financial goals. That's why we only recommend Ramsey trusted real estate agents. These are vetted, hand-picked pros who actually listen to your needs, guide you through the process, and fight to get you the best deal. To find a Ramsey trusted agent near you, go to Ramsey Solutions.com slash trusted agent.

That's ramsysolutions.com slash trusted agent. How long is too long to save for a down payment on a house? We're expecting a baby soon and we'll go down to a one-end, income once he arrives, to purchase a modest but well built home in our area, we would have to save over $120,000 as a down payment in order to qualify with one income. We're debt-free, but it will take us years to get there. So there's a couple of things that I'm thinking about here. When we teach the baby steps, baby step 3B is when you're saving for a down payment, and then after that comes baby step four where you're investing your 15%. And I,

I think, Dave, what happens is people go, okay, I want to do 3B, but I don't want to sacrifice baby step four in the time in the market. Like we talked about the last segment, how do I kind of juggle that together? Because the truth is, obviously, if you have focus and you take all the money, you're going to put more money towards the down payment. But with a long horizon like this, do you want to really go five, six years or whatever the time frame is and not invest? So I would probably split the difference. Probably once I got past the two, I would say two to three years. Is that what you would say? Two to three years is when I'd say, okay, no more putting every dollar to the down payment. Now I'm going to split it and I'm going to try to do some towards retirement,

not miss out there. And I know that that's a sacrifice. We rarely say to do multiple things at one time, but in this case, it's all good. It's all good for you. I would do 100% towards the down payment for two to three years and then you have to adjust after that if you haven't gotten there. But the other thing, Lucas, is this. You know, your income during that time is probably going to up, your personal income. Her income's going to disappear. Oh, wait a minute. Maybe we don't need to do that exactly that way if we want to buy a house. That's true. You can think through that. Maybe she needs to find some work at home type work, something that's flexible where she's home with the kid and does some work at home. Well, a baby is sleeping and so forth. And so, yeah, we need an alternative

where mom creates an income. And that'll change the picture too. And then, of course, also, you know, what you're saying is, here's the thing, you can't just yell at the sky and say, my wife's going to stay at home and we're going to buy a house in our 20s, in our 20s. Happen. Yes. It doesn't, you know, Shazam. It doesn't work, right? And so you are making a choice. and it's a good choice if you ask me to say,

Mom wants to be home with the baby. That's a fine choice. I would never shame you for that choice. But it is a factor in an equation. You just cut your freaking income in half. That's right. And so you are deciding not to be able to afford a house as quickly. You're sacrificing one for the other.

Or you could say the opposite of that. Like a lot of ladies that work here at Ramsey, full time. I'm looking at several of them while I'm saying this, right? Jade, my daughter, Rachel, and, you know, Kelly across the glass and so on. You know, we have kids. We are raising a family, and we are professional ladies. And, you know, we work around that, and that's not only for money, but it's also what you've chosen to do with your life, okay? It's also for money.

And so I've noticed that we pay y'all. And so that kind of stuff. So it plays a big part. It's for money. Hello. So, you know, and so I think that's the thing. You can just decide that that's what you're going to do. But by deciding that, you're also deciding some other things.

That's right. There's some unintended consequences or they should be actually intended consequences, as my point. You say, by definition, I'm going to choose to live in that neighborhood because we have one income instead of this other neighborhood. because we have one income or this other type of house or whatever this nicer property right and by definition we're going to have to buy something that's a little different to get our foot in the door to get started on this home ownership thing because we're choosing to do this on one income and i don't think it's a bad thing but you don't get to just say i i do whatever i want and yell at the sky you can't yell at the sky it doesn't work you know you know you still have to there's mathematics

involved in all this and it's it's um you know the the this idea that when money is one place it by definition can't be another place it's a fixed thing it doesn't it doesn't float around it's not omnipotent