Counting What Actually Changed

[Rob Bergeron]

Big changes don’t usually arrive with a bang.
They arrive quietly, at the edges, where incentives begin to shift.

Over the last few days, three signals lined up in a way that’s worth paying attention to — not because they’re dramatic, but because they’re measurable.

Start with the labor market.

According to the latest JOLTS report, U.S. job openings have fallen to 7.15 million, down nearly 900,000 year-over-year and more than 5 million below the 2022 peak. For the first time since 2021, there are now more unemployed workers than open jobs. The quits rate has cooled to about 2.0%, down from roughly 3.0% during the post-pandemic surge — a sign people are less confident jumping ship.

Wage growth hasn’t collapsed, but it has slowed into the 4% range, well below the pace that fueled aggressive housing demand a few years ago.

Now housing affordability.

The National Association of Realtors’ Housing Affordability Index recently printed around 92, well below the long-term baseline of 100. In plain terms, the median household can no longer comfortably afford the median-priced home. At roughly 6% mortgage rates, monthly payments on a median home remain 40–50% higher than they were in 2020, even before factoring in taxes and insurance.

This is the most strained affordability environment on record when adjusted for inflation.

That backdrop matters when you layer in the third signal: renewed policy attention on large institutional ownership of single-family homes.

Here’s the part that often gets missed.

Despite the narrative, the single-family rental market is not dominated by giant institutions. According to John Burns Research, more than 76% of single-family rentals are owned by landlords with fewer than ten properties. Push the definition all the way up to owners with ninety-nine homes, and you’re well past ninety percent. The largest owners — those with 1,000+ homes — account for only a small single-digit share.

And yet, they mattered disproportionately.

Because markets aren’t shaped by who owns the most.
They’re shaped by who sets the marginal price.

For much of the last decade, that marginal buyer was often a spreadsheet — a national rent-growth model applied locally. When that buyer steps back, not everywhere and not all at once, the tone of the market changes.

Apply the same logic locally.

Greater Louisville has roughly 55,000 to 65,000 single-family rental homes. Even under aggressive assumptions, only a few thousand homes would realistically be affected by institutional pullback over time.

That means we should expect to see some additional inventory hit the market.

But not a flood.

This isn’t what you’re seeing in parts of Alabama, Mississippi, or Georgia, where rental supply grew faster, institutional concentration ran higher, and unwind pressure is showing up more visibly. Louisville never over-rotated that hard.

What changes here is subtler — and healthier.

Negotiations slow down.
Inspections matter again.
Appraisals regain weight.


Local knowledge starts outperforming national assumptions.

Homes begin moving back into the hands of homebuyers.
Or into the hands of local stewards who actively manage what they own.
Or into the hands of out-of-state investors who know what they’re doing — and who are plugged into the systems, data, and infrastructure that exist here.

Markets always change. That part is constant.

What makes this moment interesting is where the change is happening — quietly, at the margin — and who is best positioned to respond to it.

For Louisville, this isn’t a fearful moment.
It’s an engaging one.


Main Street Renewal currently has over 100 vacant rentals listed on the MLS. In light of Trump's announcement around institutional buyers, it might not be a bad idea to shoot them an offer and make them say no. Many of these have been sitting with real days on market — no tenants, no cash flow, just carry costs. Shoot your shot.