Considerable challenges remain for the U.S. housing market. Illustrating that, for the four weeks that ended March 2, pending home sales just saw their biggest decline since November 2023, finds a report issued today by real estate brokerage Redfin.
Nationally, pending home sales in the U.S. fell by 6.3%, while at the same time, the median monthly mortgage payment was $2,772 at a mortgage rate of 6.76% — just $26 below an all-time high for that figure. That median monthly mortgage payment was up 5.3% year-over-year, according to the company's analysis.
Still, that lower mortgage rate is part of the good — or, at least, more positive — news, as the weekly average for the prime 30-year fixed-rate mortgage continued a weeks-long, moderating drift downward, and that’s beginning to entice some potential homebuyers toward making a purchase.
“That [i.e., lower mortgage rates] seems to have brought some people off the sidelines: mortgage-purchase applications rose 9% week over week,” Redfin’s report noted.
Yet, home sales remain “sluggish,” according to the company, because the median home sale price is up 3.2% year-over-year to $379,350. And, “some prospective buyers are wary about making a big purchase amid economic uncertainty, including concerns about tariffs, slowing economic growth, and layoffs,” Redfin's report reads.
According to the report, the median asking price nationally for homes stood at $417,250, which is up 6.4% from a year earlier. There were 84,464 new home listings in the four weeks ending March 2, an increase of 2.4% from the same period in 2024.
Total active home listings were just below 919,000, which is up 9.8% from the same four-week period a year ago, but that is also the smallest increase in a year. There’s about 4.4 months’ worth of supply now on the market; Redfin emphasized that 4 to 5 months of supply is considered “balanced,” with a lower number indicating seller’s market conditions.
However, homes for sale are continuing to sit on the market longer. The median number of days on market from the national perspective was 55, which is up 8 days from the comparable 2024 period. That’s the longest median days-on-market span since March 2020.
The share of homes sold above list price nationally was 22.4%, a decrease from 24% for the same period in 2024, according to the report. The average sale-to-list price ratio for the four weeks ending March 2 was 98.2%, a slight decrease from 98.5% for the same 2024 period.
