New listings hit a 4-month high

A brand that commands attention

I'll admit it — when social media first showed up in this industry, I didn't get it. I didn't see its power.

Daniel Heider did. Years before content and digital marketing became standard practice in luxury real estate, he was already investing in both — building what is now the largest social media audience in the industry. And that audience isn't just a vanity metric. In 2025, Daniel closed more than $540 million in sales volume, the highest annual total ever for an agent at TTR Sotheby's.

In today's Foundation Plans, I sit down with Daniel to find out how he built it — and, more importantly, how he turned visibility into volume.

Relationships will always matter in luxury real estate. But today, the agents who stand out are also building brands people can't ignore.

- James

New listings hit 4-month high while demand slips

New listings rose 0.4% week over week during the four weeks ending August 23 —their highest level since April — even as pending home sales fell to a six-month low, according to Redfin's latest market update.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Inventory is climbing. Active listings rose 0.5% week over week to their highest level since May, up 1.6% year over year to 1,504,085 homes.

• Buyer demand is cooling. Pending sales dropped 1.1% week over week and 3.1% year over year, hitting their lowest level since February.

• Mortgage rates remain elevated. The weekly average 30-year fixed rate sat at 6.65%, down slightly from a recent peak but still near a 13-month high.

• Prices keep climbing, but slowly. The median U.S. home-sale price rose 1.9% year over year, topping $400,000.

• It's a buyer's market in many metros. Months of supply rose to 3.8 (4–5 is considered balanced), with Miami, Nashville, and much of Texas offering the biggest opportunities for buyers to negotiate.

My take

This is becoming a market where sellers have to get the price right from day one. Inventory is rising, demand is slipping, and more than 1 in 5 listings have had a price cut. But buyers haven't disappeared — 26.3% of homes are still selling above asking. For agents, the message to sellers is simple: don't price based on what your neighbor got in 2024. Today's buyers have more options and more room to be selective, which means an overpriced home can get ignored quickly. Price it right from the start, and there's still plenty of demand to make a deal.

Bitcoin can now be used to fund a down payment

Homebuyers can now put Bitcoin toward a down payment and never sell a single coin. On August 26, Better Mortgage and Coinbase built that idea into a mortgage product and opened it to the public.

Here are the key points to know:

• The structure: Buyers take out two loans at closing — a standard conforming first mortgage and a second loan secured by pledged Bitcoin, which funds the down payment. The Bitcoin stays in custody with Coinbase Prime until the second loan is paid off.

• The math: Pledged Bitcoin is credited at 40% of its value toward the down payment, based on a 250% collateralization ratio. A $100,000 Bitcoin pledge yields a $40,000 down payment credit.

• The cushion: Bitcoin would need to drop more than 60% before the collateral cushion runs out — a scenario Better considers rare enough that it doesn't run margin calls or require top-ups.

• The tax angle: Because the Bitcoin isn't sold, buyers avoid triggering a capital gains tax bill and keep any upside if the price rises.

• Eligibility: Available for single-family homes, condos, and townhouses, with 15-year or 30-year fixed terms. Buyers need a Coinbase account holding transferable Bitcoin. Coinbase One members also get a closing cost credit — 1% of the loan amount, capped at $10,000.

• Demand so far: The pre-launch waitlist represented more than $260 million in projected loan volume. 76% of waitlisted buyers were Coinbase One members, and 60% planned to buy within six months.

My take

For a long time, people thought crypto was just a flash in the pan. It isn't. This is a genuine use case. But don't think of this as an accessibility play — the waitlist is the giveaway: with 76% already Coinbase One members and a median buyer age of 40+. Instead, think of this as a financing and tax strategy for crypto-rich buyers who want to buy a home without selling Bitcoin and triggering capital gains. That's a real advantage, but so is the risk: Bitcoin has fallen more than 60% twice in the last decade. For the right buyer, this creates genuine flexibility — it just doesn't make homeownership cheaper, or Bitcoin safe.

States with the most equity-rich homes

In Q2 2026, 41.1% of mortgaged residential properties were equity-rich — meaning homeowners owed no more than half their property's market value — according to ATTOM's latest update. That's down from 43.3% last quarter and 47.4% a year ago.

Even with that decline, equity levels nationwide remain well above pre-2020 norms, and a handful of states — mostly in the Northeast and Mountain West — continue to lead the country by a wide margin.

Here are the top states with the most equity-rich homes by percentage:

1. Vermont – 78.9%

2. Montana – 59.0%

3. Rhode Island – 54.9%

4. South Dakota – 53.6%

5. New Hampshire – 53.1%

6. New York – 52.7%

7. Maine – 52.0%

8. New Jersey – 51.6%

9. Hawaii – 51.2%

10. Massachusetts – 50.4%

My take

The equity boom is cooling, but homeowners still have a real cushion: more than 4 in 10 mortgaged owners owe less than half what their home is worth, even after that share dropped more than six percentage points over the past year. For agents, this is a conversation starter — plenty of clients are sitting on substantial equity, and that equity can become the down payment that makes their next move possible. Affordability is still the biggest hurdle to trading up, but for equity-rich sellers, their current home may already hold the solution.

Schematics

The news that just missed the cut

• Ranked: The 25 cheapest places to live in America

• How homebuyers are using AI-powered brokerages and agents

• Forget Florida – boomers are now flocking to this state for low taxes and sandy beaches 

• The worst personal branding advice agents keep getting

• How the private-listing wars between Zillow and Compass could cost home buyers and sellers

Foundation Plans

Advice from James to win the day

Daniel Heider didn't just become the youngest Executive Vice President in TTR Sotheby's history by working harder than everyone else — he built a brand that made attention unavoidable.

In today’s episode of Rise Above the Ranks, I sit down with Daniel, founder of the Heider Company, to talk about how a fifth-generation Washingtonian built one of the most recognizable names in D.C. luxury real estate — and why he decided that being a top-producing agent wasn't the ceiling.

We get into:

• How he built the largest social media audience in real estate, and why he was investing in content and digital marketing years before it was standard practice in luxury

• How that reach helped drive over $540 million in sales volume in 2025 — TTR Sotheby's highest annual volume ever

• What it takes to lead a team ranked #1 in sales volume for six straight years

• The line between discretion and visibility in a business built on privacy — and what happens when an industry of closers becomes an industry of content creators

It's one of the more candid conversations I've had on the show. I think you’ll love it. Watch it here:

Breezy

Feature of the Week — Efficiency

Breezy runs alongside real estate agents throughout the day and acts as an AI personal assistant in real time.

At a high level, Breezy does these things:

• Captures and organizes conversations so no follow-up or detail gets lost

• Generates branded comps and reports on the fly, ready for clients

• Keeps your pipeline current automatically, without manual updating

• Reveals how you can reposition and develop your property through proprietary software we call Underbuilt

Instead of agents juggling spreadsheets, notes apps, CRM updates, and presentation tools, Breezy brings those workflows together.

Get Breezy here!

Just in Case

Keep the latest industry data in your back pocket with today’s mortgage rates:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” — Steve Jobs

Each day is a gift – a chance to live the life you want. Ruthlessly focus on your goals. Don’t let your past or the fear of being judged distract or paralyze you. Choose to live with an integrity that you can be proud of.

Have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you back here next Friday!

- James