2 months ago
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Crypto-powered prediction market platform Polymarket has partnered with Parcl (a data company that tracks daily home values) to let Americans gamble on whether housing prices in major U.S. cities will go up or down.
The two companies will work together to let users put money on what they think will happen to median prices in cities like Miami and Los Angeles for starters.
These markets will close on February 1, using Parcl’s daily price index to determine winners. But according to Polymarket, there will be new housing prediction markets every month, so people can keep trading based on fresh data.
Right now, most Americans still can’t use Polymarket; access is limited to a waitlist. But its competitors, like Kalshi and Robinhood, are already open to the public.
Users bet on real-time housing price movements
The housing market has always been full of stale data. Most price indicators use past sales and come out months after the fact. Real estate agents and analysts say that’s still the most reliable way to judge demand in a city. But the problem is that these reports move slower than the market itself.
Polymarket wants to change that by giving people real-time exposure. And supporters say prediction markets have a major advantage, as people are literally betting their own cash. When money is on the line, people pay more attention. These types of bets aren’t just about opinion. They’re about incentives.
And apparently, those incentives work. Polymarket traders were closer to predicting Donald Trump’s 2024 win than most political polling firms. The idea is simple: when a lot of people put skin in the game, the average of their bets often beats expert guesses or surveys.
This is happening as the U.S. housing market hits a new, weird milestone. There are now more homeowners with mortgage rates above 6% than below 3%. During the pandemic, loans under 3% were common. Now they’re rare. The average 30-year mortgage rate has stayed above 6% for more than three years, according to Federal Reserve numbers.
People who locked in those low rates are staying put. They don’t want to trade a cheap loan for a more expensive one. This has made the housing supply tight. Fewer listings means higher prices, a situation known as the mortgage lock-in effect.
Market stays frozen as rates discourage sellers
Even though rates are high, people still sell when they have no other choice. Life happens. Jobs change, families grow, divorces hit, people retire. That’s why some homes still hit the market. But most of the new 30-year mortgages are now in the 6% range, so the pool of ultra-low-rate owners keeps shrinking.
Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, said the shift from sub-3% to over-6% mortgages won’t fix things fast.“It’s becoming less of a problem the more that time goes on, but it’s a slow unwinding,” she said.
To her, anyone with a rate under 4% is still basically stuck. That includes over half of all current mortgage holders. Even rates under 5% are too good for most people to walk away from. “It’s probably going to be another four, five years of it being a major factor in the housing market,” said Daryl.
A Bankrate survey in July found that 54% of Americans wouldn’t sell their homes no matter what the mortgage rate is. That’s up from 42% the year before. About 32% said they’d only sell if rates dropped below 6%, and 23% said they’d need to see them below 5%. That 1% difference might not sound like a lot, but over a 30-year loan, it can add up to tens of thousands of dollars.
Not everyone is sold on the idea of betting on housing data. Stephen Kates, a senior analyst at Bankrate, said there’s already enough tracking happening in the space. “This partnership simply allows participants to speculate on existing trends,” he said.
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