Report: 2025 home sales gradually picking up

Andrea Riquier

USA TODAY

As real estate’s spring selling season gets underway, Thai Hung Nguyen has his fingers crossed.

Nguyen, a real estate agent with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Premier, works in the Washington D.C., area, where a significant percentage of residents are employed by or contract with the federal government.

So far, there are slightly more listings coming on the market than at this time last year, Nguyen said – but not enough to suggest a full-fledged retreat from the area as the Trump administration tries to slash the federal workforce.

At the same time, he said, he’s also fielded a few more calls than in past years from would-be buyers, even though some later decided to step away from the house hunt amid the uncertainty about jobs.

Nguyen’s experience is a snapshot of the national housing market, as buyers and sellers enter what is traditionally the busiest season of the year hopeful about moderating interest rates but wary of tariffs, stubborn inflation and consumer fears about jobs and the economy that could keep the market mired in a rut.

Some observers even think the 2025 spring season might be one not seen in a number of years: an almost normal housing market, as close to evenly balanced between buyers and sellers as anything we’ve seen in a while.

Selma Hepp, chief economist with Cotality, the real estate data provider formerly known as CoreLogic, predicts 2025 home sales to be 'slightly above' the pace set in 2024. In 2024, sales of previously owned homes were at the lowest level in three decades, so any improvement would be welcome.

A few months into the year, Hepp is still cautiously optimistic. The pace of sales hasn’t been gangbusters – up one month, down the next – but seems to be gradually picking up, she said.

Since mortgage rates this month have been slightly lower than a year ago, the overall monthly payment may be a bit more manageable for buyers – as long as they remain employed and confident.There’s another big concern, however, in some corners of the housing market. Lots more inventory in the new-construction corner of the market isn’t necessarily a good thing, and it seems builders may have overestimated demand in the past few months.

New-home sales were strong in February, the U.S. Census Bureau said March 25, but inventory was at its highest in 18 years. 'Builders may need to continue to offer price cuts to clear their inventories, although that may become more challenging if tariffs significantly raise building costs,' Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist for Oxford Economics, said after the release.

'We need to acknowledge that the 2025 spring selling season is off to a dismal start across the industry,' Raymond James Analyst Buck Horne wrote in a March25 research note following the quarterly earnings report from national builder KB Home.

On the other hand, Nguyen said he thinks consumers are more adaptable than some experts realize.

When it comes to mortgage rates, he said, 'now people are comfortable in the sixes.'