Redfin’s recent housing market report delivers a kind of uncommon moments the place the headline and the lived expertise simply don’t add up.
On paper, 2025 has formally been the strongest purchaser’s market the corporate has ever tracked, with a staggering 36.8% extra sellers than consumers nationwide.
That’s a transparent structural shift, however anybody who’s been house-hunting currently in all probability isn’t celebrating.
Costs proceed to climb, and whereas mortgage charges are “better,” maybe within the loosest sense, affordability hasn’t improved.
Therefore, what Redfin is flagging isn’t your regular market flip, however extra of a slow-building imbalance that’s damaged into the open.
A shifting housing market offers consumers theoretical leverage, however affordability pressures and uneven regional traits complicate issues.
Picture by Bloomberg on Getty Photographs
The client’s market that doesn’t really feel like one
Redfin’s numbers recommend that consumers ought to lastly be catching a break in what’s been a tough patch, to say the least.
Nevertheless, the fact on the bottom speaks to a special story. Although stock ranges are enhancing, the expertise of house buying nonetheless feels something however easy.
Provide surges, demand slips, however costs nonetheless received’t crack
Redfin’s numbers level to a buyer-tilted market, but in addition one which has clearly pulled off form.
By October, the U.S. had a 36.8% vendor surplus, that means that over 528,000 householders had been itemizing their properties with out sufficient consumers to satisfy with them.
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That wholesome imbalance is constructing since mid-2024, however the Solar Belt is the place issues are at full boil, with metros comparable to San Antonio and Austin posting triple-digit gaps between sellers and consumers.
Sometimes, that type of provide strain would cool costs.
As a substitute, nationwide house costs are nonetheless rising, up 2.3% yr over yr, with October exhibiting the largest month-to-month value achieve in seven months.
It’s the unusual contradiction the place there’s overflowing stock on one aspect, whereas stubbornly agency pricing on the opposite.
Affordability nonetheless feels punishing
Mortgage charges eased off their highs, however they nonetheless haven’t budged sufficient to vary how brutal shopping for a house feels.
For extra coloration, the common 30-year charge is hovering within the 6.2% to six.3% vary. This gave October closings a small bump, but it surely was removed from an actual restoration.
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Consumers aren’t trying to rush again in, which partially has to do with the maths concerned in catering to the tens of millions of households.
Stock has climbed to 1.52 million properties, but it surely’s nonetheless far beneath pre-pandemic ranges, and hardly any of these listings fall into something “affordable.”
For first-timers, the ache is probably the most pronounced.
They successfully made up simply 34% of October consumers, dropping behind the historic 40% norm, and simply 21% of consumers over the previous yr, an all-time low.
Nationwide value gauges underscore the development, the place the Case-Shiller index tracks nearer to 1.5% to 1.7%, which is nominally greater however nonetheless basically flat and even worse, contemplating the affect of inflation.
That metric is principally what I’d wish to name the housing market’s “price truth serum,” seeing how house values change over time by measurements of repeat gross sales of the identical properties.
Solar Belt oversupply meets Northeast shortage
The Redfin report in some ways reveals off a housing market that’s principally shifting in two completely different instructions concurrently.
On a nationwide stage, the numbers present that consumers lastly have leverage, however the shift is much from being evenly distributed.
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We now have some areas which might be cooling faster attributable to oversupply, whereas others behave just like the previous three years by no means occurred. Put merely, geography issues greater than any headline.
The client’s market Redfin is protecting is finally spearheaded by the Solar Belt, the place oversupply has caught up with sluggish migration and stretched affordability. Texas and Florida dominate the checklist:
- San Antonio: 117% extra sellers than consumers
- Austin: 115% extra sellers than consumers
- Dallas-Fort Value & Houston: Additionally deeply seller-heavy
On prime of that, the pricing information underscores the cooling.
Case-Shiller reveals year-over-year drops in Tampa (-2.8%), San Francisco (-1.9%), and Miami (-1.3%), together with the primary month-to-month nationwide drop of 2025.
Builders are additionally pulling again, with single-family begins within the South having fallen 17% by one estimate.
Equally, the Northeast and elements of the Midwest are nonetheless tight, with the Tri-State space nonetheless leaning towards sellers.
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