Today’s track: People Everywhere (Still Alive) — Khruangbin
I woke up groggy this morning. Stiff, uncomfortable, a little off.
And my first real thought was — man, how dope is it that this almost never happens?
For years I woke up groggy every single day. That was just the baseline. Sleep apnea had me surface-level present, half-awake, dragging through the morning and not even knowing it. I walked around like that for years. It was so normal I didn’t have anything to compare it to.
Now I wake up groggy once — and I notice. Because it’s rare. The disturbance isn’t the norm anymore, so it actually stands out.
Think about how fortunate that is. The thing that used to define every morning is now the exception I’m surprised by.
What’s not groggy is the market — at least in some ways.
Rates dropped twenty-five basis points since Monday. We’re down to 6.17%, which is awesome, and pretty much what we expected with oil prices coming down. That should help inflation too, which could open the door to more cuts. Unemployment’s steady right now, so that’s not doing us any favors on the rate side. But if we can get into that 5.9% to 6.1% range, I think that’s what really turns the market heading into the rest of summer and fall. I think this would likely prolong our buyer’s market into November.
Statewide backs it up. Kentucky’s median hit $281,500 in May, up 2.4% year over year — prices aren’t cracking. But 4,187 homes sold, up 10.4%, so buyers are still moving. And active inventory? 18,807, up 11.4% — the 30th straight month of year-over-year growth.
Thirty straight months. Inventory has been climbing for two and a half years, and now it’s stacking up faster than it’s clearing. Buyers are picking up as well though. Such a curious market!
And there’s a bigger tailwind brewing. Congress just passed the Federal ROAD to Housing Act — 85 to 5 in the Senate, 358 to 32 in the House. Biggest housing bill since 1990. It cuts building and permitting barriers, expands construction financing, speeds up HUD inspections, and lets new landlords request an advance inspection — a real win if you’re running Section 8. There’s also language to push large institutional buyers out of the single-family market. Vouchers and inspections are fixes that hit your bottom line directly.
One catch: it passed, but it’s not signed. Trump pulled the June 24 signing and tied it to the SAVE Act. So watch the standoff. But think about the direction — Congress just voted to make it easier to build, easier to finance, and easier to run voucher-backed rentals. For a local operator, that’s good news if it gets across the line.
Here’s another tell. Builders are betting on the Louisville commuter ring. Century Communities is bringing about 150 new homes to Arlington Center out in Radcliff — easy commute into the city, Hardin County prices. And statewide, Kentucky new-construction sales just hit their highest April in nearly two decades, up 6% year over year. Notice where the shovels are going. Not the core — the affordable edge, where the volume actually is. Follow the rooftops.
Right here in Louisville, we are looking at the most properties that have ever been on the MLS in my entire career. I’ve been an agent since 2014, and right now there are 3,766 active listings. 1,336 of them have sat sixty-plus days. 789 of them, ninety-plus days.
So I’m going to make this easy for you.
Here are 197 single-family homes that have been sitting 200-plus days. Two hundred days. Think about what that feels like as a seller — six-plus months, barely a phone call, watching the days tick. Every one of those owners is desperate for a solution. Pull up that list, find one you like, and send me an offer. Lowball it. Seller-finance it. Get creative. They want to hear from somebody — let it be you.
Same on the commercial side. Here’s every multifamily property currently available — 157 of them, including 49 deals at ten units and up. Value-adds, seller-financing plays, whole portfolios. Go shopping.
So whatever you’re holding, we’ve got a move for it.
Hunting for deals? The two lists above are your grounds. Find one, send me an offer — lowball it, seller-finance it, get creative, doesn’t matter. I’ll run it down.
Need to move something? That’s the other half of what we do. Got a property that won’t sell? We’ll list it and blast it everywhere — The Morning Bergeron, OffMarket.deals, Facebook Marketplace. Sitting on an assignment you need to flip before it expires? We’ll put it in front of our buyers fast. Want to stay off the MLS? We’ll run it straight to the top twenty buyers in that asset class — something nobody else in town can offer.
Listed, off-market, assignments, JVs, seller financing — there’s more than one way to get a deal done, and we work every one of them.
So whichever side you’re on, reply to this email. Tell me what you’ve got or what you’re after — buying, selling, or sitting on an assignment — and I’ll point you at the fastest path.
Every day, we’re looking for one more creative way to serve. Let’s go.
Warmly,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Schedule a time to discuss your goals, bottlenecks, or whatever’s on your mind.
The Morning Bergeron daily track playlist: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/the-morning-bergeron/pl.u-pMyl2GlSW1N3qv