Heading into spring 2026, market optimism was reasonably grounded. Rates had briefly dipped below 6 percent in February, inventory was slowly rebuilding, and the National Association of Realtors’ chief economist was projecting a 14 percent jump in existing home sales for the year.
Then March arrived, and existing home sales hit a nine-month low of 3.98 million, the slowest March pace since 2009.
What happened, and what agents need to do about it, are worth separating. The first is mostly context. The second is the job.
The buyer-seller standoff is still the story
The most persistent dynamic in this market is a valuation gap that neither side is willing to close. Sellers are still anchoring to peak-era pricing. In Zillow’s quarterly agent sentiment survey, respondents described sellers as stubborn about price expectations, with one telling Zillow that sellers still expected to “get triple the asking price.” That’s an outlier in phrasing, but not in sentiment.
On the other side, buyers aren’t panicking. They’re waiting. April’s existing home sales ticked up just 0.2 percent month-over-month, with NAR noting that days on market are lengthening as consumers take more time before making decisions. And home sales were essentially flat in April compared with a year earlier, even as newly listed homes rose at a faster pace than sales.
More inventory, more hesitation. That combination tells you buyers don’t feel urgency. And without urgency, most don’t move.
Affordability improved, then got worse again
Rates bottomed near 5.95 percent early in the year, briefly creating the best affordability conditions in four years. Then came the Iran War. According to ICE’s April Mortgage Monitor, 30-year rates rose roughly 40 basis points from that floor, pulling approximately four percent of buying power back out of the market right as the spring season kicked off.
NAR later revised its 2026 forecast from 14 percent sales growth down to 4 percent, citing that rate increase as the primary driver.
But rates are only part of it. NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun noted in April that despite a record-high stock market, consumer confidence was historically low, and buyers were taking their time before committing. New home sales fell 6.2 percent from March to April and 11.3 percent year-over-year, with NAHB’s chief economist projecting further declines ahead.
When qualified buyers have financial capacity but lack confidence, rate cuts alone won’t get them off the sidelines. The decision calculus has shifted, and agents who treat this as a rate problem are misreading it.
5 ways agents can navigate a housing market that refuses to rebound
1. Reset seller expectations in the first meeting, not the third. Price reductions after extended days on market cost sellers more than an accurate list price would have. Bring current comp data and absorption rate to the listing conversation before the seller’s number gets set in stone. That’s when the conversation is still movable.
2. Use hyperlocal data; the national numbers are noise for your clients. The Midwest and Northeast are outperforming while many Western markets continue to soften. If your clients are reading national headlines, they’re not reading your market. Know your submarket’s actual days-on-market and list-to-sale ratios, and lead with those.
3. Reframe buyer patience as a strategy, not a problem. Buyers who are taking longer aren’t broken. In this environment, a buyer with a clear plan and realistic expectations is a better client than one chasing urgency that isn’t there. Help them think about negotiating position, which is stronger right now than it has been in years.
4. Move the conversation from rate speculation to pricing strategy. Clients who are waiting for a rate drop are waiting for something outside their control. The price they negotiate, the concessions they ask for, the due diligence they do, all of that is still within their control. Shift the frame, and you shift the energy in the room.
5. Increase your communication cadence, and make it worth reading. Pipelines don’t hold themselves together in slow markets. Agents who check in with useful context — a relevant local data point, a comp that just closed, an honest read on what’s moving — stay in the conversation. Agents who go quiet or send generic check-ins don’t.
The market you have
Nancy Vanden Houten, lead economist at Oxford Economics, expects home sales to “move sideways before starting to gradually rise at the end of the year.” That’s a realistic planning horizon, in my view.
The agents I respect most right now aren’t waiting for the market to turn. They’re doing the harder work of managing expectations clearly, staying close to their clients and building the kind of trust that has a long shelf life. That’s what good brokerage looks like in a market like this one.
Eric Bramlett is the founder of Bramlett Partners in Austin, Texas. Get connected on Instagram and Facebook.
