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I know it may sound counter to everything you’ve been taught, but just because a market has a lot of population growth DOES NOT mean it’s good for home price appreciation.

In fact, the opposite is often true.

The U.S. population grows at less than 1% per year (usually around 7/10th of 1 %). So, when a large metro-sized market’s population grows by, let’s say, 2%, it’s considered to be a red hot growth market.

A 3 % population increase is a crazy strong growth market.

It’s very rare – almost unheard of – for a metro market to hit 4% annual population growth like my hometown market of Ocala, FL did in 2024.

Ocala has THE fastest growing population in 2024 and ALSO the 4th fastest in population growth in 2023.

In fact, Ocala ranks in the top 2% nationwide for population growth since 2020.

Home prices must be shooting to the moon, right?

WRONG!

For the last couple years Ocala Home Price Appreciation has been DISMAL while AT THE SAME TIME Ocala had the hottest population growth IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY.

Ocala’s WEALTH PHASE also ENDED in 2023.

If you think that’s surprising…

The metro next door to Ocala – “The Villages” – was the #1 FASTEST Growing metro in the U.S. for BOTH 2022 & 2023.

Imagine that – the fastest growing city in the entire U.S. for the last 3 years was either Ocala or it’s next-door neighbor – The Villages.

…but much like Ocala in 2024, having the strongest population growth for two years running did NOT cause home prices in The Villages to skyrocket.

In fact…

Home Prices were flat nominally and
DECLINED on a real (inflation adjusted ) basis.

Hmm…

If you thought that these metros would have strong real estate markets SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY HAD THE FASTEST POPULATION GROWTH, you’d be making the same mistake I’ve been warning against for the last 20 years…

Do NOT use FUNDAMENTAL ANALYSIS (‘FA’) – things like population, job growth, affordability, unemployment, tariffs, blah, blah, blah – to predict real estate cycles.

If you think these were isolated ‘flukes’ or anomalies, you may want to read our next email sitting down!

Fundamental Indicators are interesting,
but useless for ACTIONABLE decision triggers.

This is just the tip of the iceberg…

Happy Investing!