While Trump’s tariffs dominate headlines, ACME Real Estate’s Courtney Poulos says interest rates and pandemic-era pricing dynamics are the real story.

The real estate industry loves a narrative. Right now, everyone’s selling “2026: The Great Housing Reset.” But Courtney Poulos, founder and CEO of ACME Real Estate in Los Angeles, isn’t buying the hype.

“Everyone’s calling 2026 the great housing reset, but Trump’s tariffs just added $17,500 to new home costs while his housing reforms remain undefined,” she notes. “Is this actually a reset, or just industry wishful thinking?”

“The contractors in my world have not seen any impact as a result of the tariffs,” Poulos says flatly. In her market, Los Angeles, where new construction exists but isn’t the dominant housing stock, the tariff impact has been negligible. She’s currently selling a new construction project, and according to that developer, tariffs haven’t meaningfully affected their costs.

“It’s not the tariffs that are making things unaffordable,” she explains. “It’s the fact that trillions of dollars were printed and pushed into our economy during COVID without any plan for how that would impact housing prices.”

What’s actually constraining the market is more straightforward: a mismatch between what sellers paid during the COVID boom and what buyers can afford now.

“People who bought houses during COVID bought with cheap money, low interest rates, and pushed the values to a place where, when interest rates get higher now, it makes it less easy to sell that house,” she explains. “You’d take a loss if you were going to sell it right now, which creates a little lock.”

This dynamic, sellers unwilling to accept losses on homes purchased at COVID peaks with sub-3% mortgages, and buyers unable to afford those same prices at 6-7% rates, is what’s truly stagnating inventory.

Poulos believes the solution lies in creative financing options and realistic rate adjustments. She points to rate buy-downs, where developers prepay mortgage rates with builder credits, allowing buyers to experience lower rates for the first few years or even the life of the loan.

Recently, she’s seen rates in the fives on seven-year jumbo ARMs. “When you have interest rates in the fives, all those people who are sitting on the edges are going to start making moves,” she says.

The challenge is balance: rates can’t drop so low that they trigger inflation, but they need to come down enough to unlock inventory held hostage by low COVID-era mortgages.

Unlike doom-and-gloom narratives, Poulos is cautiously optimistic. “Buyers are coming to the table who were not in the market in the fall,” she reports. “People who are tired of waiting and willing just to give it a go. And sellers who are willing to come down a bit in price to make a deal work.”

She recently had a property that received 19 offers. In a normal LA market, that might push a property $400,000 over asking. This one went $300,000 over, still strong, but showing buyers have a ceiling based on borrowing costs.

“There has been an uptick in buyer enthusiasm this fall, even into November, which is typically the beginning of the quiet time,” she observes.

So is 2026 really “The Great Housing Reset”? “I don’t see the truth in that sentiment,” Poulos says. “But I do feel optimism in our market.”

What she’s witnessing isn’t a reset, crash, or boom. It’s a market doing what markets do when participants stop waiting for perfect conditions and start working with reality. Buyers are returning, sellers are becoming more realistic, and rates are slowly improving.

“I’m rooting for us to be able to continue to experience the American dream because I believe it’s the number one way to build wealth for people who are not already wealthy,” she says.

And sometimes, reality is better than the narrative.

Courtney Poulos is the Founder & CEO of ACME Real Estate, a boutique brokerage in Los Angeles that achieved $155M in sales volume in 2024 with a team of 35 agents. She hosts “The Clean Close” podcast covering real estate industry news and trends.

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