Housing transactions happen for a lot of reasons that real estate professionals are intimately familiar with—new job, new baby, new marriage. In the aggregate, though, most of these events can be classified as “household formations”—in simple terms, a new family is formed, and that family (usually) needs a new place to live. According to Harvard’s…
In the pandemic boom market, a lot of people did very well. Listing agents could sell a home for 10% over asking in a weekend; homeowners refinanced or cashed in on big equity jumps; middle-income families took advantage of low rates to snatch up their dream homes. But there is one group that maybe didn’t…
Another year is almost in the books, and with it, a cavalcade of economists and experts seeking to peer into the future and predict the subsequent year’s housing market. As brokers and agents parse out their path forward, these big national trends are not always the most useful guidance—even when they are accurate. After many…
It has been hard to predict the housing market in recent years. From the fastest ever tightening of interest rates in 2022, which brought the pandemic boom market to a screeching halt, all the way through tariff panic that appeared to derail the 2025 spring buying season, experts have had a difficult time anticipating shifts…