Three weeks ago, Atlanta, Nashville, and Charlotte were each posting positive year-over-year home-price growth. The April 18th data hit, and all three flipped negative. They join eighty-six other metros — 89 of America's 300 largest markets are now in the red. Last month it was 99. Two months ago, 106. The list of declining markets is shrinking, not growing — and that's the part the doom headlines are missing.

In this episode of the 5-Minute PRIME Podcast, host Martin Maxwell walks you through "The 89-300 Split" — the data trajectory, the three Sun Belt safe-bets that just crossed zero, and what an actively-underwriting investor should do with their buy-box this week.

Tune in to learn:

• The 89-300 Split — Why the count of declining metros falling from 99 to 89 is more important than the count itself, and what Lance Lambert's bifurcation tracker is really measuring
• The Three Flips — Atlanta -3.8%, Nashville -3.0%, Charlotte -1.3%. The Sun Belt safe-bets that institutional money said would hold, and what their crossing-zero means for Q3 2026 underwriting
• The Hartford-Austin Spread — 11 days to pending vs 82. The single concrete fact that proves there is no national housing market, just two
• The Disappearing National Market — Why the framing "the housing market is..." (cooling, heating, accelerating) is the wrong sentence to read in 2026
• The +3-Point Rule — How much extra cap rate you need to make a Sun Belt deal pencil against an appreciating-Midwest comp this year

Have you been holding onto a Sun Belt thesis from 2023? Is your buy-box still aimed at metros that have flipped onto the negative list?

Subscribe now to read the housing market the way the data actually shows it — not the way the press release frames it.

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