A year after earning top honors for predicting U.S. home prices, Eli Beracha has done it again.
Beracha, director of the Hollo School of Real Estate at Florida International University Business, has won the 2026 Pulsenomics Crystal Ball Award for the second consecutive year, recognized for the most accurate three-year home price forecast among more than 150 economists and housing experts.
The back-to-back recognition places Beracha among a small group of repeat winners in the widely followed Pulsenomics Home Price Expectations Survey, a benchmark used across the housing industry to gauge market direction.
“For me, this validates that when you stay disciplined and focus on market fundamentals, you can consistently produce accurate forecasts over time,” Beracha said. “It’s rewarding to see that approach recognized two years in a row.”
Beracha’s forecasting methodology centers on core housing fundamentals — supply constraints, demand drivers such as wage growth and employment, interest rates and shifting demographics — rather than short-term market noise. While unexpected shocks can disrupt projections in the near term, he maintains that long-term accuracy comes from grounding predictions in underlying economic conditions.
The repeat win also reinforces the broader momentum of FIU Business’ Hollo School of Real Estate, which is ranked No. 1 in the world for real estate research productivity, according to the Journal of Real Estate Literature. The distinction reflects the school’s sustained output of high-impact, data-driven research and its growing influence in shaping industry insights.
“This recognition reflects not just individual work, but the strength of the research environment we’ve built at FIU,” Beracha added. “We’re focused on producing insights that are both academically rigorous and directly relevant to the real world.”
As housing markets continue to face uncertainty tied to interest rates, inventory shortages and economic policy shifts, Beracha said his outlook remains grounded in the same principles that earned him consecutive awards.
“The future is never perfectly predictable,” he said. “But if you understand the fundamentals, you can get remarkably close.”