Tag: real estate services

Muddling Through an Elongated Trough in Existing Home Sales

April 16, 2026 by Ryan McKeveny

Earlier this week, the National Association of Realtors reported its data on March existing home closings, which were down 4% sequentially and 1% year over year on a seasonally-adjusted basis – with the annualized rate of 3.98 million directly matching 2025’s low watermark from June. Considering that mortgage rates were down 80 basis points YoY in February and 50 basis points in March, the results were disappointing, reflecting continued sluggishness in sales activity despite slight improvements in affordability.

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existing home sales real estate services

Number of Real Estate Agents Drifting Lower, Following Expected Path

May 25, 2023 by Ryan McKeveny

While economy-wide employment trends have remained resilient, headcount for one of the largest professions in real estate – real estate agents – has been drifting lower, as approximated by the membership count of the National Association of Realtors. We estimate that agent count has now decreased on...

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macro housing real estate services

Slowing Demand Driving For-Sale Inventory Higher Despite Decline in New Listings

October 12, 2022 by Kevin Kaczmarek

CoreLogic recently released detailed home price appreciation data for the month of August that showed prices declined on a sequential basis for the second straight month. The 1.2% decline over the two-month period is the first nationwide home price reversal since the Great Financial Crisis. As a reminder...

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affordability home pricing real estate services

High-End Housing in Focus as Loan Limits Rise

December 06, 2021 by Kevin Kaczmarek & Ryan McKeveny

While housing’s strength since the pandemic began has been fairly broad-based, it is informative to delineate sales trends by price point. Although overall existing home sales have started to inflect lower on a year-over-year basis in recent months, the high-end segment of the market has continued to post growth, remaining…

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existing home sales home pricing homeownership real estate services

Labor Shortages Abound, Not So For Realtors Chasing Robust Pricing

October 27, 2021 by Ryan McKeveny

With severe labor shortages throughout the economy, including in the construction sector, one area seeing fairly unfettered expansion is the real estate agent community, encouraged by the housing market’s strength over the last 18 months and low barriers to entry. The National Association of Realtors’ membership, a rough proxy for industry-wide agent count, has reached its highest level ever...

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demographics homeownership household formation housing macro housing real estate services supply

High-End Housing is Back, and For Now, It’s Outperforming

December 17, 2020 by Ryan McKeveny & Dennis McGill

Alongside the broad-based 2H20 surge in homes sales, home prices and housing demand more generally, a notable undertone has been relative outperformance within the high-end segment of the market. What had easily been the most subdued piece of the housing puzzle in 2018 and 2019 has shifted to an outsized contributor of growth...

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affordability existing home sales home pricing homeownership mortgage rates real estate services

Where are the iBuyers Heading Next?

April 19, 2019 by Zelman & Associates

In recent years, iBuyers have gained notable attention and become a widespread topic of debate. Effectively the new-age version of “We Buy Ugly Houses”, which has been around since 1989, iBuyers charge sellers 7-10% of their home value in exchange ...

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existing home sales institutional investors real estate services

In Face of New Tech, Biggest Broker Brands in Real Estate Continue to Take Share

October 06, 2017 by Zelman & Associates

To many stock investors, the residential brokerage industry is viewed through the eyes of publicly-traded Realogy given its quarterly financial disclosures. With its brokerage business consistently ceding market share in recent years and the ...

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real estate services