Home Depot CFO triggers alarm (biggest crisis in 30 years)

One of America's biggest corporations just issued a devastating warning for the U S housing market and economy. This company is the 25th largest in the U S they have annual revenue of over 160 billion and they just said the quiet part out loud. That company is Home Depot and they are warning you about what's going to happen in the second half of the year. Their CFO just came out and said that we are now dealing with a frozen housing market in the U S Home Depot only reported 1.3% year over year, same store U S sales growth, which adjusted for inflation is minus 2.5%. Additionally, Home Depot reported a contraction in the number of visits to their stores. And the reason that they're saying we're in a frozen housing market is due to the collapse in buyer demand with the NAR reporting that pending home sales just dropped again in July, 2026 down 2.3% month over month. You can see that this level of sales and contract signings in the housing market is now 33% below the pre pandemic norm. And now 40% below the pandemic peak. And that's a big problem for a store in a company like Home Depot because they make a lot of their money off furniture sales, appliance sales, landscape and gardening folks. You can think of Home Depot is basically the pulse on the U S housing market on fixed residential investment in the U S economy. And when people are not buying homes, they aren't buying countertops. They aren't buying flooring. And one particular issue for Home Depot especially is the big decline in home flipping in the U S home flipping activity is plummeting. And according to Adam data solutions, home flipping profits in 2025 hit the lowest level since 2008. And we're here now in the lumber section, the lumber section is hugely important for Home Depot's revenue for their profits, as well as a signal on what's going on in the market. And you could see lumber prices in the last month are down about 10% reflecting lower demand. In fact, housing starts in the U S just plummeted in July to their lowest level, more or less in the last three to four years. And the danger is this housing recession will soon spill over into other parts of the economy. This housing everyone accounts for 15% of GDP. According to the national association of home builders using Bureau of economic analysis data, 15% of GDP is tied up in the U S housing market. So with housing performing so poorly, how is the U S economy going to keep trudging along up until this point? It was trudging along due to consumer spending. Consumers were still spending largely money. They didn't have savings rates were low credit card usage was high and spending in the first half of 2026 was solid. However, in July, retail spending had its biggest drop in the last year. So I'm wondering if we're starting to see a spillover, could the weakness in housing be now impacting consumer spending? And could we eventually see this big stock market bubble that's propping up much of the economy also popped. We're already seeing that economic pain happen on some of these listings here. Everyone I'm walking around St. Petersburg, Florida right now. It's a beautiful day. This was one of the markets that's gotten hit hardest by the housing correction the last two years. And I'm standing in front of some relatively new townhomes right now. Some of these townhomes were built in 2023. Some other ones in the back were built in 2020, but there's this interesting listing I found here in this group of townhomes that tells you a lot about what's going on in the market. I'm wondering what you guys think about this listing. And if you think it's a fair price, it's a townhome built in 2020, four bed four bath, 2200 square feet. Pretty nice on the inside. Everyone leaves a pretty nice townhome, three stories and unit. It's currently listed at a $50,000 loss from what the owner bought it for in 2023. They bought it in 2023 for 749. Now it's on the market for 699 minus 50,000 on price. If you include realtor fees and closing costs, potentially the loss that seller is taking is closer to 70, 80, maybe even $90,000, which just shows you what can happen, right? If you buy at the wrong time in the wrong area in real estate, you can lose money over the last week, folks. I've been showing you sellers taking huge losses all across Florida. It's indisputable that Florida is in a housing market correction. And I believe this correction is a signal fundamental weakness, but going back to that listing, it still reveals a problem. And the problem is this even at 699,000, the monthly payment to buy that townhouse is 5,200 a month, according to Zillow and that townhouse originally sold for around 500 grand in 2020 at pre-pandemic pricing. So it's still close to 200,000 above pre-pandemic. And that's the problem in the housing market, right? Even though prices have started dropping in many areas, they're still so far above where they were in 2019 and 2020, that I think a lot of buyers look at the market today and they say, Hey, I'm still not interested until you lower this price further. And that helps explain why the demand to buy is so low, why Home Depot is struggling to grow their same store sales. Why also a company like Lowe's is reporting really weak earnings. Lowe's reported only half a percent same store sales growth year over year, heavily negative in real terms. Lowe's is saying that there's a big downturn in home improvement with a muted outlook. Well, that's all related to buyer demand folks. The buyer demand in the market is low and it's particularly low here in Florida. In Florida home sales activity has been low now for four years. And we're seeing maybe a little bit of an increase year over year in 2026 up 7% from 2025. However, when you look at the long-term graph, you could see in Florida, we're still about 30% down from peak on sales. We're below the long-term average on sales by about 11%. We came up with a metric on reVenture app, everyone called home sales surplus and deficit. This metric is meant to help you all understand the demand levels in your market is demand to buy above normal or below normal here in Florida, as you could see it's 11% below normal, despite being up 7% year over year. However, Florida is not the worst state for housing demand. In fact, the worst state for housing demand is actually not a state it's Washington, DC demand in Washington, DC is down 22% from normal. According to reVenture apps, home sales surplus deficit. The second lowest demand is Rhode Island also down about 22%. And then we got sales in Washington down 22%. That's really rough. Folks have been warning you all about Washington state for a while. Big buyer strike there. Georgia is down 20%. California is down 18%. Maryland is down 18%. Colorado is down 18%. Oregon's down 17%. Nevada is down 17%. Utah is down 16%. One thing that you can notice everyone by seeing those states where the demand to buy is down most is that there's a heavy downward concentration on the West coast. Like if we look at this map from reVenture app on the home sales surplus deficit, you can see the West coast is heavily in blue, meaning low demand. There's something going on on the Western half of the U S in terms of real estate demand. That's not good. And what you all should do is research these demand trends for your zip code. Does that's going to be really important to understand if it's a good or bad time to buy is where is the demand in your zip code. If the demand is down 30% in your zip code, that's actually good. That means you have negotiating leverage. There's not a lot of buyers and you combine that low demand with higher supply. You could actually get a good discount. Check that home sales surplus deficit under market trends on a premium plan at www.reventure.app. Now folks, this is an interesting house. I just stumbled upon right now here walking around this neighborhood. It's a three bed, two bath, 1500 square feet priced at 475. That is 318 a foot. I don't know, folks. What do you think about that price? Do you think 318 a foot 475 is the right price for this house? I actually just ran this through the reVenture listing analyzer tool, and we just got an offer range for this house. I'll tell you about in a second, but first I thought the commentary on this listing description is actually very amusing. It says that this is a quirky house with HGTV history featuring on HGTV's house hunters in season 148 episode nine quirky Florida home. Now I think that's an interesting and amusing description for a couple of reasons. The first is that apparently there's been over 140 seasons of house hunters on HGTV. I don't know if you've, you've watched that show before. I used to watch it back in the day. It's basically a pretty simple concept. A couple tours, three or four homes with an agent and they have to decide what the right one for them is and they pick it. I guess I just did some research and there's 280 seasons of house hunters. It started in 1999. It was like one of the first like HGTV shows, but I'm actually curious what you guys think. Would a house being on house hunters previously or on HGTV in the past, would that make you more or less likely to buy it in the future? I actually just posted a poll on this because I was really curious what you guys thought. Only about a hundred of you have voted in this poll so far. So far, none of you would be more likely to buy the house because it was on HGTV. 40% of you would be less likely. 60% of you say it doesn't matter. And ultimately what I think you guys do care about is price and affordability. We ran that listing through our re-venture listing analyzer tool. We're showing an offer range about 15 to 20% below current list. One of the big issues on that house that I see, they bought it in 2017 for $195,000. They're trying to get $475,000 today, meaning they're trying to get 144% appreciation in nine years. The zip code is up 88% in that span. So while there has been good appreciation here, they're trying to get way more appreciation than the zip code is rendered. And of course this is now a downturn happening here in Pinellas counties. And those metrics are really key for you guys as buyers or investors or sellers out there. Understanding how much your zip code has changed in value versus how much the price has changed on the listing. That's one of the first metrics I look at to determine whether a house is over or undervalued is just seeing, is this seller even in line with what's happened in the market? If they're listing way above the market growth, then that's one signal. Maybe you should be more conservative on your offer. Another signal would be our 2027 price forecast as well as what the true days on market is. That house has still only been on the market about a month. So when a house is on the market for a month, you know, it still might be overpriced. The seller still might be somewhat delusional. I'm not saying that seller is delusional, but many sellers are delusional out there. Here's another house for sale just down the street, folks. I mean, you can tell there's a lot of inventory here in St. Petersburg just on one short walk, finding three or four different listings. This house has a two bed, two bath listed for 465, 1200 square feet. It's actually more expensive than the one down the street, 395 a foot. It's been on the market 90 days, I guess $3,000 in brand new landscaping. Actually, this is a good example folks of a house that has been on the market longer than 90 days. We actually just looked at the listing history and ran that through the ReVenture listing analyzer. This house was originally listed for sale back in 2024 by this owner. They tried to get 510,000 back then. So the true days on market here is almost two years on that house. That's also really good for you to know if you're going to make offers, understand that when people pull homes off the market, put them back on the market, that resets the DOM on Zillow, realtor.com and homes.com and Redfin. But ReVenture will provide you with that true days on market. So you know how long it's been on the market for. In this case, we like the value on this house a little better. It sold for 380 in 2021. They're at 465 today, which is about 85,000 above 2021 prices. We still think there's probably some downward room on price there, given how long it's been sitting, given the downward pressure. But we think that house is closer to a realistic asking than that one. So pretty clearly, even though the market's declining in many areas is declining in Florida and demand is down. Many sellers still have, let's just call it high expectations of what they want to sell their houses for. And this is just a simple reality of how a housing downturn operates everyone. I know it's frustrating out there to see all the signs of us being in a big housing recession, but at the same time seeing sellers still not really totally giving into that across the board. And that's abundantly normal. You know, a lot of these sellers, they aren't tracking the market day to day. They don't really know what's going on in the market. They might even have a listing agent. That's not really telling them the truth about what's going on in the market because the listing agent just wants to get the listing and figure it out later. Additionally, a lot of sellers have emotional attachment to their homes. They don't want to let their homes go for less than what they think it's worth. Even if the market says it's worth something else. And so we just have to work through that in a downturn. And you know, that is fundamentally happening. Prices are getting cheaper. I'm showing you almost every day on this channel, sellers taking losses, home values going down, but unfortunately it's going to take some more time, especially with the stock market still kind of at all time highs and the unemployment rates still at 4.1%. So long as those two things remain, we're not going to see a 30% national decline in home prices. These sellers are just going to feel like there's no reason to sell if those situations persist. However, if the unemployment rate were to go up and the stock market were to go down, I think you would see a rapid change in seller psychology. And I think you would see a quicker correction to market equilibrium on prices. Now, if you are someone who's interested in buying a house at a cheaper price, one thing I would encourage you all to look at is the seasonal best time to buy in your area. Because this is one thing that's been really interesting to me in my study of the U S housing market is that different locations, different cities and zip codes have different seasonal best times to buy. For instance, here in St. Petersburg, seasonally speaking, the best time to buy is October. October is when you have the best combination of supply on the market, home sellers doing price cuts and home sitting on the market for the longest period of time. Meanwhile, the worst time to buy in St. Pete and the best time to sell is March. And that's a hugely important differential to understand because even if the market is like heavily in a correction, if you go to buy in March, it's not totally going to feel like a correction. It's going to feel like there's competition because that's just the period of time where supply is more limited. Buyers are getting into the market. Sellers haven't had their homes on the market for a long time. You're going to have a more difficult time getting a good deal in March. You're gonna have a much easier time getting a good deal in October. And those months differ for every single state County Metro and zip code in the U S fortunately for you guys, we just added to ReVenture app on our scorecard, the best month to buy, best month to sell for every single zip code. So you all know from a seasonal standpoint, when you're going to have the best opportunity of getting a good deal, buying a house below market and avoiding overpaying. Look at that best time to buy in your area. Combine that with the 12 month forecast and our listing tool analyzer arm yourself completely with the data. You need to make a more informed home buying decision in 2026 and into 2027 for only $39 a month. Everyone, we keep adding features to ReVenture app. We've kept the price the same at 39 since launching it, head to www.reventure.app right now and search your zip code to get started.