The Das Group

Rate lock is real.

But life still happens.

Right now, roughly 20% of U.S. mortgages are under 3% and nearly 70% are under 5%.

On paper, those homeowners should never move.

But people don’t make housing decisions on spreadsheets alone.

They move because of life:

Marriage.
Kids.
Divorce.
Job changes.
Aging parents.
More space.
Less space.
A new chapter.

At some point, the home that made financial sense stops fitting the life being lived inside it.

That’s the part the market is starting to feel.

The low rate was powerful.

But it was never permanent handcuffs.

So… If you’re watching housing inventory, don’t just watch mortgage rates.

Watch new listings, days on market, and price cuts.

That’s where you’ll see whether rate lock is easing… or sellers are starting to lose leverage.

People don’t just move when the math is perfect.

They move when the need becomes real.

The housing market math is getting weird.

In some U.S. cities, home prices have moved so far ahead of local incomes that affordability barely feels connected to reality anymore.

This ranking compares home prices to median household income, and it shows something bigger than a list of expensive places. It shows where wages have stopped keeping pace with housing, where local buyers are getting squeezed harder, and where strong incomes no longer go as far as they used to.

California dominates the list, which won’t surprise many people. What’s more interesting is how a few other metros are starting to show the same disconnect. That’s usually the early sign of a market where pricing has pulled away from local fundamentals.

For buyers, that means a much higher barrier to entry.

For renters, it often means ownership gets pushed further out of reach.

And for investors, it raises the more important question: which markets are still supported by real income growth and demand, and which ones are simply being carried by momentum?

That’s really the distinction that matters.

When affordability breaks down, markets tend to split in two directions. Some can keep sustaining premium pricing because they have real supply constraints, strong incomes, and durable demand. Others start to look stretched, where prices ran ahead of what the local economy can realistically support.

That’s why this isn’t just a story about what’s expensive. It’s a story about what’s justified.

Because price by itself doesn’t say much.

Price relative to income says a lot more.

Which city on this list surprises you most?

Everyone’s talking about AI like it’s a software race.

It’s starting to look a lot more like an infrastructure race to us.

Nearly half of the AI data centers expected to come online in the U.S. by 2026 are now facing delays or cancellations, including major projects tied to OpenAI’s Stargate initiative.

That’s a loud signal.

Because while everyone’s busy obsessing over bigger models, better chips, and what AI can do next, the real issue is a lot less glamorous: The physical backbone needed to power all of this isn’t ready.

And the bottlenecks aren’t exotic. In fact, they’re painfully basic:

👉 Not enough power
👉 Not enough electrical equipment
👉 Hardware supply constraints
👉 Trade tensions making key materials harder to get

In other words:
AI may be moving at warp speed… but the grid is still tying its shoes.

And that’s where this gets interesting.

Out of roughly 12 gigawatts of expected new AI data center capacity, only about one-third is actually under construction right now.

So while AI demand is accelerating, the real world is basically saying: “Great. Now where exactly are you plugging all this in?”

That means this isn’t just a tech story anymore.
It’s a power story. A land story. A logistics story. A who-got-there-first story.

The winners in the next phase of AI may not just be the companies with the smartest models.
They may be the ones that secured power, land, fiber, equipment, and permitting before everyone else showed up.

And that’s where real estate comes in.

Because as power gets tighter, the most valuable land may not just be in the fastest-growing markets.

It may be the land closest to substations, transmission access, fiber, and jurisdictions that won’t take forever to approve a project.

So yes, AI is changing software.

But it’s also starting to reprice industrial land, powered sites, and secondary markets that can support large-scale compute.

Turns out the next AI gold rush may be won less by code… and more by whoever controls the dirt under the power lines.