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BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast
March 2025 Housing Market Update: Are Price Declines Coming?
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Dave Meyer
Your real estate buying window is open. Well, maybe that's right. The housing market is softening after several years of supreme seller power. Potential price declines can be a boon for real estate investors looking to negotiate, but they also create risk if you buy at the wrong moment. So which way is the housing market heading and how can you take maximum advantage in your own portfolio? Today, I'm giving you my March 2025 housing market upd. Hey, everyone, it's Dave, head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets. And if you know me, I believe being a successful investor is about learning and continuously improving on your skills. Things like deal finding, tenant screening, managing rehabs, all that stuff is super important. But you also need to understand the broad trends that are happening in the housing market in order to optimize your portfolio to find the best deals and to avoid any unnecessary levels of risk. For this reason, I like to provide a summary of what is going on in the housing market. And I also like to provide my personal analysis and read on the situation. I'll even tell you what I'm thinking about and doing with my own portfolio. This is for March 2025, so trends may be different. If you're watching this a little bit further into the future now, I want to just say that I've been analyzing the housing market for a very long time. I've been an investor for 15 years. I've been working at BiggerPockets for nine. And right now things are changing pretty much as quickly as they ever have. And that makes it more important than ever to understand what's happening for your own portfolio and achieving your financial goals. All right, so let's talk about this softening market and what it actually looks like in the numbers and of course, what it means to you. Now, if you look at certain websites like Redfin, you'll see that home prices are up 4% year over year according to what data they have collected and when they seasonally adjust it. When you look at some of the other data sources, there's a source called the Case Shiller Index, and that uses a different methodology where it basically tracks how the price of the same home change over time. And what you see when you look at the Case Shiller is it's much closer to flat. And so we're probably in somewhere in between those two. There's no perfect measure, but we're probably, you know, flat ish. Housing prices maybe up a little bit depending on what market that you're looking at. So that is by no means any sort of correction. Or crash at this point. It's also not really exciting data in terms of appreciation. But I think the important thing here is that the trend is just really flat or a little bit down. We're not really seeing appreciation or price growth start to accelerate again. And so this is just one of the reasons I'm saying that the market's flat now. To understand if this trend is going to continue or if we're going to see the market reverse in some sort of way, we have to dig in a little bit deeper, go one level lower to try and understand why the market is somewhat flat. And I always talk about this, but we have to do it. We got to talk about supply and demand. That's what dictates prices in the housing market. And so we need to see what's going on with supply, which is just how many homes are for sale at any given point, or how many people are listing their homes. And we got to look at demand, how many people want to buy homes. Let's start with the supply side. There's really good data about this. It's a little bit easier. So we're going to talk first about something called new listings. This is a measurement of how many people put their properties up for sale in any given month. And that is up year over year. It's up 6%, according to Redfin, which is good in some ways, but it's not crazy, right? Like, we have seen really low inventory. And to return to a healthier housing market, long term, there need to be more properties listed for sale. And so having that go up, at least in the short term, is generally seen as a good thing. But you have to look not at just how many people are listing their properties for sale. You also have to look at how long those properties are staying on the market. Because if they're getting listed and going quickly, right, then prices can keep going up. But if more things are getting listed this year than last year and they're just sitting there and not really selling, then prices are probably going to go flat or go down. Because as property owners who want to sell their property are seeing their properties just sit there on the market week after week or month after month, they lower their price or they're willing to offer concessions, and that's what ultimately pushes prices down. And what's happening right now is that active listings are up 10% year over year. And again, that's not crazy, because we have to look at the historical context here. So you might know this, but back in 2019, active listings were averaging like somewhere around 2.3, 2.4 million. Then during the pandemic, they went down to 1.6. We actually bottomed out at like 1.1 million. And although they're going back up right now, they're still at like 1.5 million. They'll probably go up over the summer and get somewhere close to 1.9 million. So they're just, they're going up, but they're still not at pre pandemic levels. And that's one of the main things, as we talk about the housing market that you need to remember is when we compare what's happening now to what was happening during the pandemic, it's not the best comparison, honestly, because what happened during the pandemic was just so unusual. So to say, oh my God, inventory has gone up compared to the pandemic. Yeah, of course it did, because that is, it had to. It was like at all time lows. I personally like to look at that still. But compare it to 2019. And so we're seeing things come back, Tom, to closer to pre pandemic levels, but we're not there yet. And so this is the reason why I'm saying that the market is softening. It's returning back to where it was. I would even say it's just sort of a normalization of the market, but because we've gotten used to this super heated market that's very tight, right? It is. There are not a lot of things on the market. There are still a lot of demand and so things are moving really quickly. That's why I'm saying it's softening because we're just moving back to a more balanced housing market. So you definitely see that in the active listings numbers. You see that in some other data that you can look at for these things like days on market, those are going back up, or months of supply. These are just other ways to measure the housing market. We don't need to get into them today. But what you should probably know is that all of the measures of housing market health are just saying that we're getting closer back to pre pandemic levels of the balance between supply and demand. Now, of course, what I've been talking about so far is about the national housing market, but they're huge regional differences. We're actually seeing a lot of signs that the market is kind of splitting. Some markets are growing in one direction, others are going in the other direction. So we're going to break down those regional differences in just a minute. 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These deals will not last. Text REI to 33777 or visit biggerpockets.com retirement to start investing in top cash flow markets today. Foreign welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. We are here doing our March housing market update. Before the break, we talked about how a lot of the data suggests that the national housing market is moving to a more balanced market, a more a buyer's market. But that is not happening everywhere in the country. So let's just take a minute here and talk about how inventory changes are different in different regions of the country. First things first, what you need to know is that every single state in the country is experiencing increases in inventory except North Dakota. North Dakota is down 2%. Everywhere else is up. This is just year over year since 2024 in February to 2025 in February. And again, I'm recording this in early March. So the last month that we have data for is February. The state that has the highest shift in inventory over the last year is Nevada. We see California at 44%, Arizona at 41%. Vermont is up there. Hawaii is near 50%. So that's happening everywhere. Where, if you want to know regionally where things are happening the least, it's mostly in the Northeast and the Midwest. So, you know, I said North Dakota, that's kind of an outlier. But New York, for example, only up 3%, New Jersey's 9%, Illinois is 9%. So it's sort of a continuation of the trends where the hottest or the strongest housing markets, I should say, are in the Midwest and the Northeast. Some of the weaker ones are in the Mountain west and west coast and the Southeast as well. Like Georgia's up 37%. Florida is up 34%. That's just at a state level. But given what I was saying before about the utility and usefulness of comparing data from this past year to the year prior, it's helpful. We need to know it, because you need to know how the market's changing. But I also like to provide this context of how things have changed since before the pandemic, because that will really give us some clues about where prices are heading in any given market. And when you look at the data this way, it is very, very different. Remember, I just said that everything's going up year over year because it was super low. But when we look at how February 2025 compares to February 2019, it's a pretty different story. We have certain markets where we are still nowhere even close to the levels of inventory that we were at in 2019. When I look at a state like Pennsylvania, it's down 50% still over 2019. Maine is down 61%, New Hampshire, 61%, Illinois, 63%. Almost all of it is concentrated in the Northeast and the Midwest. So Wisconsin, Michigan, Virginia, all of these states are really down. Actually, Alaska is down, too. That's kind of the only one that's out there, other than North Dakota. Again, those are sort of the most significantly down. But even throughout the rest of the country, most states are still down compared to pre pandemic levels. If we look at the Carolinas, California, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, all of them are still down. So that is sort of the big picture thing that you should keep in mind is that although inventory is returning, most states are still down compared to pre pandemic. So they're still not back to what would be considered a quote, unquote, normal market. There are four states, however, that are above pre pandemic levels. The number one with the most inventory growth above pre pandemic levels is Texas. It's 15% above where it was in 2019. Then comes Florida with 9% above, Colorado at 7%, and Tennessee actually with 2% as well. So, again, the regional differences really matter. And I'm talking about states because I can't get into every individual metro area on the podcast. It's just too much to do. But what my recommendation for all of you is to look at these two things for your individual market, because even within Texas, which has rising inventory, there are certain markets and there are certain neighborhoods where inventory is still down. Or if you look at Pennsylvania, which has 50% declines in inventory. I'm sure there are still neighborhoods in areas where inventory is increasing. So I really recommend you look at two things in your market. Go and compare inventory levels right now in February of 2025 to where it was last year. See how much that's growing, and then Compare it to 2019 and you'll get a sense of how quickly the market is shifting from that really strong seller's market that was kind of universal for years back to what would be a more normal sort of balanced kind of market. So what does this all mean, the stuff I said and the research you should probably be doing on your own as well? Well, any market where inventory is going up rapidly has the biggest chances of price growth slowing. And in some markets that mean it might go from 10% appreciation to 5% appreciation. And some markets that might mean 6 to 2. Some markets it might be going from flat to negative. Right. And so it really depends on the scale of the inventory changes and what's going on in your particular market. But as a whole, just going back, zooming back out to the national level, I do think that given inventory is rising and demand hasn't picked back up, at least in the last couple of months, we're going to see further softening. And this is one of those reasons why I've said repeatedly that I do think prices will be maybe modestly up this year or somewhere near flat. Right. Especially when you compare those things to inflation, they might be a little bit negative based on the data that we're seeing here today. Now, again, that is not going to happen in every market. And what that means for real estate investors is not as obvious as you think. Declining prices are not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of people, I'd say maybe even most investors, think that is actually a good thing. So we'll talk more about what a softening market means. But we sort of have to address one other big thing before we get into what you should do next, which is, of course, mortgage rates. Rates. Mortgage rates have been in the news a lot, and as of this recording, they've dropped down to 6.64% for a 30 year fix, which is down nearly 0.6% from where they were mid January. They had shot up all the way to 7.25%. They've come down a lot. And that is generally good news for real estate investors. But of course, the reason this is happening is because there is bad economic news. So we have to dig into this a little bit and sort of unpack what's happening and what this means. So why have rates fallen so much over the last couple of weeks? We've talked about this in other episodes you can go hear about in further detail. But we've seen a bunch of soft economic data. The first thing was we had low consumer sentiment. We actually had the biggest month over month drop in four years. It's not like this is going crazy. It's lower than it was over the last few months, but it's pretty much in line with where it's been from 2022 to 2025. But after the election, consumer confidence had been growing and that has reversed itself over the last couple of weeks. And that decline in consumer confidence worries investors. Right. And so we've seen some weakness in the soft market. I'll get to that in a second. The other thing that we've seen is an uptick in unemployment claims. There are lots of ways to measure unemployment. This is one I like to measure because it basically looks at the number of layoffs. And so we've seen layoffs start to tick up again. Nothing crazy, but these are just small things that start to spook the market. Right. And what we're talking about when we talk about mortgage rates is essentially how bond investors and stock investors are reacting to all this news. And right now, given the level of uncertainty in the world, given the level of uncertainty in the markets, people are very sensitive. They're reacting pretty dramatically back and forth to all the news that they're getting. And so little changes in unemployment claims, little changes in consumer sentiment are probably impacting markets more than they would if this was 10 years ago in the middle of just like a normal economic cycle. Right. So that is two things that are happening. And so there's actually one thing that has happened over the last just two weeks that I think has further spooked investors. Not tariffs. Those are sort of obvious. That is definitely something that's been weighing on people's mind. But something that I think got lost in the shuffle over the last few weeks is that there is this tool called the GDP now tool. It's put out by the Atlanta Fed and it basically predicts where gross domestic product is going to go for the current quarter that we're in. If you don't know what GDP is, gross Domestic product, it's basically the total measurement of economic output and it's super important. Right. If the economy is growing, that's generally a good thing for the United States. If the the economy contracts, that means people's quality of life, spending power is generally going Down. And anyway, what happened was the Atlanta Fed Tool, which has proven to be very accurate historically, has changed its prediction. Just two weeks ago, it was predicting 2% growth for GDP, which is not great. It's not like an amazing quarter, but it's not bad. It's kind of just like a normal kind of quarter. It basically plummeted. And the estimate now went to about negative 2.5% and has held there for three consecutive weeks. And so now they're predicting that GDP is actually going to decline here in the first quarter of 2025. And that is super significant for all the reasons that I just mentioned. So between softer consumer sentiment, an uptick in unemployment claims, softer GDP projections, uncertainty around tariffs, this is just basically spooked investors and it has led to a large stock market sell off. We've seen the Nasdaq was down 10% at certain points, which is correction territory. That's a significant decline. We're basically seeing the entire boost in the stock market that we saw after the Trump election erased. We're back to basically where we were before the election. And what happens for real estate investors, for mortgages is when people sell off their stock market. Typically what they do is they take their money and they put it in bonds. And I'm not talking about me, like if I sold off some of my stock, I probably wouldn't go do this. But we're talking about the big money movers, people who manage pension plans or hedge funds. They need to put that money somewhere. And so when they take it out of the stock market, they typically put it into bonds because they're seen as safe. When they're spooked about what's happening in the stock market, the economy as a whole, they take the money, they put it in bonds. And that increases demand for bonds because everyone wants them and that pushes down yields. Right. If a lot of people want to lend money to the government, the government can borrow that money at a lower interest rates. That's yields coming down. And since yields and mortgage rates are almost perfectly correlated, that will take mortgage rates down with them. Right? And so that is why mortgage rates have come down. Of course, no one knows for sure what is going to happen, but I'll give you at least my opinion and what I'm thinking about and doing with my own portfolio. But first we have to take a quick break. 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All the data, everything that I've shared with you the future and direction of the housing market, to me is really about economic sentiment. And that basically just sucks because it's hard to predict, right? I'm sorry, but I know other influencers, creators, they're going to tell you definitively what's going to happen. But they're misleading. I am an analyst and the only thing I can tell you with certainty is that right now things are particularly uncertain. And that's the most important thing to remember. It is okay for your investing thesis or hypothesis to be that it is uncertain. It is better to admit that than to act on a false interpretation or false certainty, because you don't really know. But here's how I'm personally seeing this. It seems to me that economic pessimism is gaining steam and people will have different opinions about what's going to happen in the future. I am looking at data, I'm looking at trends, and this is what the data shows. It shows that investor confidence is down, the stock market is turning, the housing market is starting to soften. And does that mean we're going to a recession? I don't know. I think it is far too early to say that the GDP now thing is just one estimate. But I'm just telling you that the change from where we were in January to where the data was in February is pretty significant. There was a lot of economic optimism in December and January. That has shifted in February and it might shift back. But right now it does feel like economic pessimism is gaining steam. And for me, there are a couple things to take away from this. The first thing that has been coming to my mind recently is if we enter in a recession, and again, that is a big F. But something I've been thinking about is could this shape up to be what is sort of a classic economic cycle where real estate is the quote, first in, first out? If you haven't heard of this, there's this pattern that has existed in a lot of recessions in the past where things are going off great, we're in an expansion, businesses are booming, the stock market's going up, everything is great. People are taking out debt. At a certain point, the economy starts to overheat and that leads to inflation. At that point, the Federal Reserve raises interest rates. Right? Sound familiar? This is what's been going on. And when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, it impacts real estate first. And I'm not saying this just because this is a real estate podcast, but real estate is just basically the most leveraged asset class. And Actually, as we've seen over the last several decades, it's become really sort of on its own in how leveraged it is, which basically means it uses the most debt. And sure, people take out debt to finance buildings and manufacturing and expansions for businesses, but real estate is really highly leveraged. And so you see real estate bear the brunt of a recession, actually before everything else. And if you're in this industry, you've been probably saying this and screaming that we're in a real estate recession for the last two or three years, right. Transaction volume has been down, prices have been largely flat. Right. We've sort of been in a real estate recession for a while. But what's been amazing is that other parts of the American economy has remained resilient despite these higher interest rates. And for one reason, another maybe that resilience is cracking right now and it's reverting back to what we would have expected, that the rest of the economy is starting to feel some of the pain of higher interest rates. So that's sort of the classic start of a recession, right? Real estate comes first and then the rest of the economy comes second. But then what happens when the rest of the economy starts to slow down? Well, the Federal Reserve wants to stimulate the economy. They're no longer as afraid of inflation, so they lower interest rates. And that gives a stimulus first to real estate. Right, because it is a leveraged asset class. So as those rates start to come down, it kickstarts economic activity, particularly in the real estate section. And that can actually help lead the entire economy out of a recession. And real estate is big enough, it is a big enough part of our economy to both help bring a. The economy into a recession. And out of it, it's about. It's estimated to be about 16% of GDP. That is huge for any one industry. Now, if you're thinking that's not what happened in 2008, that is definitely true. It's sort of the exception to this pattern. And, you know, we don't know what's going to happen. But the belief along most economists is it didn't happen in 2008 because unlike this current time, in 2008, housing was the problem. That's what created the recession in the first place. Whereas right now, housing is not the problem. Housing, a lot of the fundamentals are fundamentally sound. What's going on with housing is really a reaction to interest rates. And so what I see emerging is potentially this first in, first out situation. That is probably what I think is the most likely scenario as we're looking at it today. I think there are two other things that are possible that I'll just mention, but I think they're less likely. So the second thing that can happen is maybe this is just a blip in economic data and there's actually going to be strong growth and people regain their confidence, in which case we'll probably see mortgage rates go back up a little bit. I don't know if they're going to go back up to 7.25, but they'll probably go back up again. In which case I think the housing market will continue on its current softening trajectory. Again, I don't think that means a crash. It. It probably means corrections in certain markets where other markets are going to keep growing, but I think we'll continue on the trend that we've been on for the last couple of months. So that is a second possibility. It's not that unlikely. It just doesn't seem like the most likely scenario. And then the third one, I don't think this is so likely right now. But actually when you look at some of the data, there is a little bit of risk right now of what is known as stagflation. And again, I don't think this is what's happening just yet, but I just want to call it out because it is possible. Stagflation is when the economy slows down but inflation is going up. This is basically the worst case scenario for the economy. But we have seen inflation go up a little bit, then it's sort of flat. So it's not super concerning just yet. But there is a world where inflation goes back up due to tariffs and the GDP now tool is correct and GDP declines, in which case we would have a really difficult economic situation where the economy is contracting but inflation is going up. That's basically the worst case scenario because people's spending power is going down. But you know, wages aren't going up, the stock market is going down. And so although that is possible, I wouldn't worry about that just yet. It's just something that I wanted to mention that we'll keep an eye on in the next couple of months. So as we do these updates every single month, I will update you and let you know if that's a concern. There is some data trends that suggest it's possible, but I think we're still a far way off from concluding that that is happening. So let's just go back to what I think is the most likely scenario, which is kind of this first in first out situation with real estate, does that mean that it's potentially a good time to buy real estate? Right. Because don't get me wrong, when markets are softening like they are, that comes with risk. There is further risk that prices are going to decline. And I've said it before, but there is a lot of garbage out there. There's a lot of bad deals, overpriced stuff out there, and things could get worse before they get better. But there is also a case that in at least some and maybe many regional markets that a buying window may emerge. Right. Think about the conditions that we might have over the next couple months. More inventory coming on the market leads to price softness, which gives you negotiating leverage. Right? Because if you know that prices are soft and they might be declining more, that is something that you should be using in your bid strategy. And when you're offering on properties, try and buy below asking price or what you think think the market might bottom out at. So that gives you negotiating leverage. Remember, I said softening. It sounds scary, but that actually means we're in a buyer's market. Buyers have the power. So that's one good thing. You might not want to buy even in a buyer's market if you think that that buyer's market is going to continue for a long time and we're going to have this sort of protracted period of prices going down. But remember that prices have been largely flat or growing modestly over just the last couple of years. And so we've seen this for a while. And if the current economic mood is correct and that we are going to see a contracting economy, that means that rates might stay as low as they are now and they could go down a little bit more. And if that scenario happens, that could bring demand back into the housing market. Right. People often think that if the economy is doing poorly and there's a recession, that that causes lower housing demand. But that is not always the case. Housing demand is almost always tied to affordability. And so, yes, if you don't have a job, you're not going to be going out there and buying a home. But for people who feel secure in their jobs, this might actually lead to better housing affordability. If the market softens and rates go down, that means more people are going to be able to afford more homes. Right. That drives up demand and could actually reignite price appreciation in the housing market. That's not what happened in 2008. Remember, that is an outlier. But this is what often happens. So it's something I'll be keeping a close eye out for, and I recommend you do too. Personally, I have been looking for deals. I'm always looking for deals. I haven't found anything so far yet this year. I've offered on some, haven't been able to make it work, but I am maybe strangely optimistic about the potential for deal flow over the next couple of months and in the second half of this year. I think that right now, you know, we've been talking a lot this year about this potential for upside. And while there is risk, don't get me wrong, there is risk in these kinds of markets. That upside is there and might even actually be growing throughout 2025 because if rates do come down and you have the opportunity to negotiate better prices on houses, that could set the stage for really good upside and future growth. So that's how I'm seeing it. I would love if you're watching this on YouTube to let us know how you are interpreting this housing market and what decisions you are making about your own portfolio. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets podcast. I hope this housing market update was useful to you. We'll see you next time. Thank you all for listening to the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday and Friday on the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, Copywriting is by Calico, content and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. the content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk, so use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose and remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. 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