The CEO of a real estate brokerage says the weekend that determines the direction of the housing market every year is right around the corner

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The newly built luxury residential tower 56 Leonard Street stands below the top of One World Trade Center on July 24, 2018 in New York City. Manhattan real estate prices have suffered their worst second quarter since the financial crisis.

• The housing market is in trouble: Home sales dropped in every month of 2018 except for February, Business Insider's Alex Morrell reported.
• A bad housing market is a bad indicator for the state of the overall economy.
• But there's one particular day that Glenn Kelman, CEO of online real estate brokerage Redfin, says sets the tone of the entire year's real estate outlook: Super Bowl Sunday.

Super Bowl Sunday is a long-awaited moment for sports fans across the US - but it's also an indicator of how the year's housing market will perform.

That's according to Glenn Kelman, CEO of Seattle-based online real estate brokerage Redfin.

In December, NPR's Stacey Vaneck Smith spoke to Kelman on a segment of The Indicator From Planet Money. When Vaneck Smith asked him if he expected 2018 to end with a whimper or a bang, Kelman's answer was simple but definite: a whimper.

Redfin

Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman.

While the downward trend could smooth out in 2019, "a deeper drought in housing is dark news for just about everybody, not just the banks," wrote Business Insider's Alex Morell. "Significant housing declines have foreshadowed nine of the 11 post-World War II recessions in the US, according to another note by UBS from December examining the housing slowdown."

And there's one weekend that, Kelman says, will indicate the direction of the market: Super Bowl Sunday.

Read more: Redfin's CEO explains why competitors should fear him

"That weekend is the weekend where the housing market either goes crazy, or it takes a nap," Kelman said on NPR, even referring to the weekend as a sort of "Groundhog's Day" for the housing market.

"What I'll be watching that weekend is just how many people are touring houses and, on Sunday night, how many of them decide to make an offer," Kelman continued.

With the Super Bowl now just days away, 2019 has already seen a variety of notable real estate transactions: Most recently, billionaire hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin shattered the US real estate record with the purchase of a $238 million NYC penthouse. The previous US record was set in 2014 when hedge-fund manager Barry Rosenstein purchased a $137 million Hamptons mansion. That news, however, is matched by a decline in home sales in 2018 that reached every region of the US - including the Hamptons.