The Great American Housing Depression: A Collapse in Slow Motion

What you’re witnessing isn’t a downturn. This is a calculated collapse, an engineered freeze of one of the last pillars of middle-class wealth. The housing market isn’t just depressed—it’s under assault. And like every economic war waged from the boardrooms of Wall Street and the mahogany halls of the Fed, the casualties are never the elite. This is a six-alarm inferno dressed up in the sterile language of economists. Let’s tear off the polite veneer and call this what it is: an elite-manufactured housing depression—designed to consolidate power, hoard property, and push working families into permanent debt peonage. 1. Sales Collapse: A Return to the Recession Abyss April 2025 home sales have dropped to levels unseen since 2009—the heart of the Great Recession. Back then, we had 306 million people in this country. Now we’re 340 million strong and still selling homes at a rate that screams collapse. And what happened in 2009? Mass foreclosures. Banks devouring entire neighborhoods. The Fed bailed them out. Nobody bailed out the people. Now, history’s rhyming in a darker key, and the powers that be are playing dumb. The market’s not frozen by accident—it’s being suffocated by policy. High interest rates aren’t just a reaction—they’re a weapon. 2. Listings Rise While Buyers Vanish: The Market's Hollow Core Let’s get one thing straight: when supply goes up but sales go down, that’s not a healthy market correcting itself. That’s panic at the edge of the cliff. A 16.7% spike in active listings means homeowners are trying to offload before prices crater. Why are they bailing? Because the job market is bleeding. Because confidence in this economy—propped up on debt and tech hype—is disintegrating. You’ve got federal workers dumping investment properties and retirees running for cover. This isn’t just a housing story. It’s a slow-motion credit shock. 3. The Vanishing Young Buyer: America’s Permanent Rent Class The average homebuyer in 2025 is now 56 years old. Let that sink in. This country is economically euthanizing its youth. While boomers cash out their fourth refinancing scheme, young families are locked out, staring down $3,500 mortgage payments and 7.5% interest rates. The National Association of Realtors doesn’t want to talk about the real cause: monetary policy tailored to the investor class, not wage earners. This is how a nation becomes feudal. Homeownership, once the foundation of generational wealth, is now the exclusive domain of the already wealthy. Everyone else? Pay rent, shut up, and hope the landlord doesn't sell. 4. First-Time Buyers? Endangered Species. Since 2023, the median age of first-time buyers has jumped from 35 to 38. That’s not a trend—that’s a generational blockade. And the first-time buyer share of the market has dropped to 24%—a 43-year low. If you think this is just market dynamics at work, you’ve been drinking the Fed’s Kool-Aid. This is systemic. This is engineered scarcity. The same institutions that fueled inflation are now locking the doors behind them, waving the ladder goodbye. 5. Price Cracks Are Appearing—And The Avalanche Is Coming Zillow reports falling home values in 27 states. That’s more than just noise. That’s the beginning of price capitulation—the moment the paper wealth evaporates. Remember 2008? The banks told us everything was fine—until Bear Stearns was gone, Lehman was rubble, and Fannie Mae begged for oxygen. What happens this time when values drop, homeowners default, and mortgage-backed securities start turning toxic again? The difference is this time, the average American has far less cushion. We’re still letting the same criminal financial class manage the show. 6. Layoffs Are the Final Nail in the Coffin Walmart just axed 1,500 white-collar workers. Not warehouse staff. Not cashiers. Corporate. These are the so-called “safe” jobs. When the core of the consumer economy starts pruning its brain trust, you know the rot is deep. And every one of those layoffs means another household priced out, another forced sale, another repo on the horizon. Mass layoffs mean rising foreclosures, ballooning defaults, and a liquidity vacuum the size of Texas. And don’t count on your regional bank to handle it. Most of them are still reeling from the bond losses they won’t admit to. The Fed’s Faustian Bargain Some still pray that Jerome Powell will ride in with rate cuts like a monetary messiah. But don’t hold your breath. This is the same Fed that waited too long to tighten, then tightened too hard, and now acts like it’s playing 4D chess when they can’t even forecast inflation with a compass and a flashlight. They’ve engineered a trap: lower rates and inflation roars back. Hold rates and housing implodes. Either way, the bottom 80% loses. Historical Context: This Ain’t the First Time America’s housing crises follow a pattern as old as Andrew Jackson's war on the central bank: cheap money, speculative bubbles, hard landings, and elite bailouts. From the land speculation bust of the 1830s to the Savings & Loan collapse in the 1980s, housing has always been a battlefield of power. The people build. The banks skim. And when the pyramid crumbles, the people bleed. What Comes Next: A Nation of Tenants, Forever If nothing changes, we’re headed for a neo-feudal landscape where corporations and hedge funds own the roofs over our heads, and you rent your American Dream by the month. The middle class? Slaughtered in the crossfire. The solution isn't another bailout. It’s breaking the financial chokehold—audit the Fed, end predatory land use laws, and smash the Wall Street buy-to-rent cartel before it owns every front porch in America. Bottom Line This isn’t a market correction. It’s a controlled demolition. And when the dust settles, the question will be: who still owns the land? You better hope it’s someone with a conscience. Because right now, they’re buying your future at 7% APR.

The Great American Housing Depression: A Collapse in Slow Motion

Bill Brocius May 23

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