The February PAPI declined over the month and is nearly 10% lower than a year ago, reflecting both reduced payments and steady income growth, Edward Seiler said. While affordability conditions remain challenging in many markets, these incremental gains felt across more than half of states are an encouraging sign for prospective buyers, particularly those seeking lower-payment options.
Ginsburg stated that treating builder business as a core pillar rather than a side channel reflects a broader industry shift. He believes a healthy balance of builders should be around 15% to 20% of the overall retail book of business.
"When deciding whether to sell quickly or rent out the home, many homeowners underestimate the logistics involved with moving only part of their belongings or staging while relocating. Storage may seem like a simple add-on, but it actually introduces multiple steps, additional labor, and can significantly increase costs, sometimes even doubling them."
Existing home sales fell 8.4% from December to January, the National Association of Realtors reported Thursday. Economists had expected a 4.6% monthly drop, according to WSJ data. Sales were down 4.4% from a year earlier, hitting a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.91 million. Zoom in: The decline was most acute for single-family homes, where sales fell 9%. Regionally, the West was down 10.3%, the South 9% and the Midwest 7.1%, while the Northeast rose 5.9%.
Based on our analysis of the Zillow Home Value Index, U.S. home prices are up just 0.1% year over year from December 2024 to December 2025. That marks a deceleration from the +2.6% growth rate a year earlier-though national price growth has recently stabilized, ticking slightly higher from a low of -0.01% in August 2025. In the first half of 2025, the number of major metro-area housing markets seeing year-over-year declines climbed. That count has since pretty much stopped ticking up.
Realtor Todd Luong of REMAX DFW Associates in Frisco said his recent experience reflects meaningful improvement for buyers, even if affordability remains strained. Here in the Dallas real estate market that I serve, affordability remains a challenge, he says. However, there is a significant amount of data showing that buyer conditions have improved over the past year and that buyers are gaining affordability ground. This should eventually increase housing demand to some degree as we head into the busy spring buying season.
The relatively flat trajectory for rates reflects the market's belief that the federal funds rate won't change anytime soon. Federal Reserve policymakers didn't offer any surprises last week when they ended their rate-cutting cycle by holding the policy rate at a range of 3.5% to 3.75%. And the CME Group's Fed Watch tool showed that the next rate cut isn't likely to materialize until June or July.