Smart Money Podcast — 2025 Real Estate Trends: What Home Buyers and Sellers Need to Know

Welcome to NerdWallet’s Smart Money podcast, where we answer your real-world money questions. In this episode:

Learn how to navigate the 2025 housing market with tips for buyers and sellers facing high rates, prices, and tight inventory.

What steps can you take to buy a home in a high-rate market? How can you prepare your home to sell for the best price? Hosts Sean Pyles and Sara Rathner discuss how buyers and sellers can navigate the 2025 housing market despite high rates, tight inventory and rising home prices.

NerdWallet mortgage reporter Holden Lewis joins the episode to share tips for buyers, including how to get pre-approved for a mortgage, the importance of budgeting for rising homeowners insurance premiums, and why timing the market is risky. He also shares smart strategies for sellers, including the value of curb appeal, documenting recent repairs, and how professional staging and photography can make a home stand out. Plus: Learn about broader housing trends, like the impact of “rate lock-in” on inventory, the connection between Federal Reserve policies and mortgage rates, and how changes to real estate agent commission rules are affecting buyers.

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This transcript was generated from podcast audio by an AI tool.

You want to buy a house this year, or maybe sell the one you’re in and trade up, or downsize? We’ve got the episode for you. Welcome to NerdWallet’s Smart Money podcast. I’m Sean Pyles.

With this episode, we continue our January series, Your Money in 2025. Today, Sara, we are checking in on the housing market, specifically the house market. It’s been a rocky couple of years for folks looking to buy their first house, or move out of one and into another.

Yeah, buyers have been facing the headwinds of both high mortgage interest rates and high home prices. Lose, lose. The market is tight, because people who bought before rates started to go up don’t want to leave those rates, and just in general, more people want to buy houses than the number of houses that are actually available. It’s all been a little bit stuck.

For a little while last year, it looked like things were maybe going to loosen up as interest rates started to come down, but then that trend reversed itself for a bit. Who knows what’s coming this year? We’re going to try to look into the crystal ball, and at the very least, give you some helpful tips for navigating the process, and getting ready for when you do decide you want to jump into the market.

That’s right. There are a lot of steps you can take now in anticipation of what you might want to do later in the year.

Well, we want to hear what you think. What are you working on in your financial life as we start the new year? Leave us a voicemail or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. That’s 901-730-NERD, or email a voice memo to [email protected]. Sara, let’s get into your conversation with our fellow Nerd, Holden Lewis, and get a sense of what the housing market might look like in 2025.

Holden Lewis, so glad to have you with us again on Smart Money.

All right, Holden, let’s start with an overview of last year, and where we stand with the basics of the housing market as we begin 2025. I’d venture an educated guess that interest rates were the big story last year, because they influence mortgage rates and so many other kinds of loans. It doesn’t really seem like there’s been much relief pricewise in most housing markets. What’s the 10,000-foot view at the moment?

Well, the 10,000-foot view is that home affordability, it really did take a hit in 2024. Home prices were higher than in 2023. Mortgage rates went up until May. Then they went down from June to September, and then they went back up again. When you look at that, it’s like there was a real hurdle in home affordability from April through July, which are the prime homebuying season.

Home prices were higher, and so were rates. That was kind of the main thing that happened, and then home prices fell in the fall. Then rates started rising again. All of that took a big whack at affordability.

Could you talk a little bit about the relationship between interest rates that are determined by the Federal Reserve and mortgage rates? Last year, mortgage rates were slowly coming down for a good part of the year, as you said, and then the Fed started to bring overall interest rates down, and then mortgages ticked back up. Walk us through what happened there, and what potential home buyers should be paying attention to this year.

The Fed sets the rate for an overnight loan among banks. Look, a one-night loan, it doesn’t really have much of a relationship with a 30-year mortgage, which lasts 11,000 nights. Mortgage rates respond to broader, longer-term economic signals, especially concerning inflation. They tend to go up and down, I’m talking about mortgage rates, they tend to go up and down with the 10-year Treasury yield, and those yields have been going up, because markets believe that we might have a resurgence of inflation, especially if tariffs are increased during the Trump administration.

What are some of the primary factors that potential home buyers are looking at and facing if they’re hoping to either buy a house for the first time this year, or sell one house to buy another?

It’s the same as always. Home buyers focus on three things: home prices, mortgage rates and home availability. That last one, that’s what’s holding the market back. Well, all three of them are holding the market back, but really, home availability is really an issue. There’s not enough homes for sale to meet the demand. When most people look for a home nowadays, they basically wish that there were more homes to choose from.

On the other hand, more houses are on the market now than at this time of year in 2023 and 2024. That helps people have more choice, but the reason there’s more homes is that homes are lingering longer on the market, and that is because prices and interest rates are making it hard for people to afford homes. I think buyers are becoming accustomed to a new normal, in which mortgage rates are going to stay above 6%, and home prices are going to keep rising, but not by much. That’s pretty much what people are facing in 2025.

Let’s look at this from the perspective of a group of people who are important when it comes to housing inventory, and that’s people who are willing to sell their houses. Without them, you have no inventory, right? Unless you build new. There was a lot of talk last year about how the market was stuck, because people didn’t want to leave their homes when they had these really low interest rate mortgages. From say, 2020 or 2021, their mortgage rates were 3% or lower. Has that factor changed at all? What are sellers considering as we start this new year?

The factor that you’re talking about is called rate lock-in, and it is still a big deal in the housing market, and here’s why. When you think of homeowners with mortgages, about half of them have loans with a rate of 3.5% or lower, and those homeowners are saying, “I’m not going to sell my home and give up this ultra low mortgage rate to buy a house with twice the interest rate.” That’s a major reason that not enough homes are on the market.

Rate lock-in is an issue faced by a lot of homeowners who would like to move, either because their family is growing, or the nest is empty, they’re divorcing, they want to relocate for a job, but they really, really hesitate, because they just don’t want to buy another house that maybe is about the same size, but has much higher monthly payments because of the higher mortgage rate.

Or if you choose to downsize your home for any reason, you’re paying the same amount or more for less space and fewer amenities.

That’s exactly right. People just look at that and say, “No way. I think I’ll just fly to see my grandchildren.”

Holden, what other factors are grinding the gears right now, and what would it take to get the housing market moving again?

We’ve named the main factors: low inventory, high prices, high mortgage rates. The best way to get out of this situation and kind of unfreeze the market would be for mortgage rates to drop. We can look back at 2024, and we can see the buyers jumped into the market whenever rates fell to like six and a quarter percent or lower. That’s what happened in September, and home sales jumped.

It’s different on what I’ll call the supply side. How low must rates go to entice homeowners to list their homes for sale? Let’s say you have a 3.5% mortgage rate. Where do mortgage rates have to go to get you to sell your house? We just don’t know. My guess is you’re going to start seeing more people sell their houses if mortgage rates fall to 5.5% or lower. Unfortunately, I just don’t think rates are going to fall that far this year, and probably not next year either. It’s going to be a while for mortgage rates to get down below 6%.

And then there’s one other factor, which is there’s not enough dwellings. We need more houses and apartments. We need those things to be constructed, but local governments, they put these land use restrictions into place that hinder home construction, and that’s one of the main reasons we have a housing shortage.

We will be back in a moment with more of our conversation, so stay with us. What do we know about any plans the new administration might have for coming up with some sort of relief for wannabe home buyers?

One of the things that people talk about, especially Trump’s political allies, is they say that undocumented immigrants worsen the housing shortage, because they’re occupying dwellings that otherwise would be available to native-born people or immigrants who have documentation. The evidence of that is mixed, and I really mean truly mixed. It’s not something to just dismiss as hysteria, but there just might not be enough immigrants to really affect home prices.

On the other front, Trump talked about opening up federal lands for housing development. If that happens, we won’t see new housing in 2025. It takes longer than that to build a bunch of houses. But maybe in later years, there actually would be an effect that we can measure.

Let’s review some basics for those who think they might have some involvement with the housing market this year: buying, selling, I don’t know, shopping around. Let’s start with folks who might be looking to buy. What are the main steps home buyers should be taking right now if they have any sort of inkling that they’re going to get into the market in 2025? Maybe some steps for first-timers and then some steps for people who are veteran home buyers and sellers.

I have this term that maybe I’m the only one that uses it, I call it Zillow stalking. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at houses in Western North Carolina in the mountains, but I’m not ready yet to actually look at houses. Let’s say you have been Zillow stalking, and now you really are ready to start touring houses, getting ready to make offers, and that kind of thing.

Your first step should be to go to a mortgage lender and get a pre-approval, and that means the lender will collect information about your income, expenses, assets and your credit score. They’ll let you know how much you can realistically qualify to borrow at today’s rates. Then when you know how much you can borrow and you know how much you’ve saved up for a down payment, you know what price range to look at. Having a pre-approval in your pocket really does let sellers know that you’re serious, and they will take your offer more seriously than from someone who doesn’t have a pre-approval.

On top of that, I got to say, have a relationship with a homeowners insurance agent. Have their phone number in your favorites. Homeowners insurance premiums, they’ve been rising really fast in a lot of the country, talking about the Gulf Coast, the East Coast, the Great Plains from Nebraska to North Texas where there’s a lot of hail and tornadoes, places that are vulnerable to wildfire on the West Coast, Colorado, Arizona. These places, sometimes it’s hard to get insurance at all. If you do get a policy, it costs more than you would ever expect.

Some people have actually had their offers accepted, they’re going through underwriting, and then they discover that they can’t afford the monthly payments on that house because of homeowners insurance. That’s something you really want to find out early. Then the bottom line really is if you find a suitable place that you can afford at today’s rates, just go ahead and make an offer. You might be tempted to wait for rates to drop, but rates are unpredictable, and at NerdWallet, we urge people to not try to time the mortgage market.

It’s funny you use the phrase Zillow stalking. I definitely use that phrase, too, but not to look for houses for me, but really just to look up friends’ houses to see how much they paid. Or if I’m walking through my neighborhood and I see a house I really like, I’ll look it up on Zillow because I just want to see pictures of the inside of the house.

That is so fun to do. Yeah.

On the other side, let’s look at sellers. What are some things sellers should be preparing for if they are looking to get out of their home and maybe rent, or if they are looking to sell their existing home and buy a different one?

The main thing is to have the right outlook. If you’re selling a home, you might be tempted to sell it as-is, because you live in a seller’s market, and you just figure buyers will just have to take it or leave it. That’s really probably not the way to go. Today’s buyers are patient. They don’t like the low inventory, but they’re not eager to buy something that’s outdated or poorly maintained. If you want to sell that house, give your landscape in the front of your house curb appeal. Also, document recent repairs and improvements.

Yeah, I will say, somebody on my blog sold their house a couple years ago, and they tried to sell it as-is, and they did not take good care of this house. I remember them having their first open house and they’re like, “We’re just going to sell it the way it is, and we’re going to get what we’re asking because the market is great.” Then they didn’t get what they wanted. People were not putting in offers. Then the next thing I know, they’d hired painters, and they were hiring other repair professionals to come through the house.

So they had to give up that dream of selling this house in its current condition, and they had to put a couple grand of extra work into it first, and they still sold it for under asking, and then the new buyers had to put in a ton of work on the house anyway.

Here’s the deal. The things that really give you the best bang for the buck are those cosmetic things. The landscaping: if you have to pay like $3,000 to put down new turf, you’re probably going to get more than $3,000 back, and it’s really rare to invest money in a house and actually get more than the money that you put into it. The lawn, the landscaping, the front door, like freshly painting the front door, those are big bang for the buck items.

Well, that’s good to know, because those are all some fun weekend projects if you’re handy enough, you can do yourself, but if not, you can always hire out and hopefully get some of that money back when you sell your house. Paint your front doors, everyone.

We talked with you about this a couple of times last year, but I’m hoping you can give us some historical context for the current mortgage rate environment. Many people got used to these really low rates, and now they’re hesitating to jump in because rates are higher, but they’re still not historically high, right? You hear these horror stories from the eighties. Walk us through this a bit.

Oh, boy. Mortgage rates back in like ’81 or ’82, they topped out at something like 18% for the 30-year fixed rate mortgage. I bought my first house in 1997 and I paid eight and a quarter percent, and I thought, “Hey, that’s a pretty good deal.” When you look at people who are buying, especially buying their first home nowadays, their history that they’re looking back is much more recent.

We had an 11 year period, 11 years — February, 2011 to April, 2022 — when the 30-year fixed mortgage stayed below 5%, for 550 something consecutive weeks. A lot of people who are buying houses nowadays grew up during that period, and rates below 5% were normal to them. Now, we’ve entered this new normal in which rates are probably going to stay above 6%. That’s the consensus that’s emerging among forecasters. I think that we’re seeing signs that today’s buyers are just, they’re accepting it. They’re like, “Okay, here’s what it is. Now, how much can I afford to pay for the house?”

Let’s talk about some significant changes that happened not a couple decades ago, but just last year in the real estate industry and how that’s shaken out for home buyers and sellers. Remind us about what changed, and then give us a sense of how that’s affecting the homebuying and selling process.

The big change that we’re talking about is a rule that went into effect last August, and it says that home buyers are responsible for setting their own agent’s commissions. Now, that might make total sense. That is commonsensical, right, that you would figure out how much to pay your agent? The rule previously was that sellers decided how much the buyer’s real estate agent would be paid. This change was made, and it seems to have paid off.

Preliminary study by RIS Media indicates that total commissions have gone down from about 5.6% to 5% nationwide. People are paying less in commissions, which is good. Real estate agents tell me that they think the policy puts first-time buyers at a disadvantage because first-timers tend to have less savings and wealth. When you’re a buyer, you can ask the seller to pay some or all of your agent’s commission.

Sellers usually do, but sometimes the buyers end up being told they have to pay out of pocket. If they can’t afford it, they can’t buy the house. I don’t think that that’s a terribly common thing. I think sellers want to sell, and so most sellers are going to be willing to pay that agent.

All right, so Holden, As we sit here in January, is it at all possible to say whether 2025 will be a buyer’s market or a seller’s market?

Okay. Well, sellers, they’re going to continue to have the negotiating advantage, because they own homes during a shortage of homes. If sellers want to succeed, they really do need to price their homes reasonably, fix them up so they look good and they’re in move-in condition, and make sure that their agent hires a professional photographer to market the home effectively online. One agent said to me, “I don’t want to see pictures of your messy closet. I don’t want to see the toilet seat up.”

Sometimes you see those nonprofessional photos where if forget staging the house with rental furniture, you can absolutely stage a home with your own furniture, but you could just tell that the sellers do not give one iota of a hoot, because there’s like, unmade beds in these pictures, and messy bookshelves and laundry. It’s just like, just clean up and make your bed before you take these pictures.

Make your bed, vacuum the floor, and do not use an iPhone. Look, one of my favorite movies in recent years, Tangerine, was filmed on iPhones, but iPhones really are just not really good instruments for real estate photography. Come on, hire a professional who has a really good camera set up.

I will say, last time I rented, we left our lease to buy our house. My landlord was like, “If you list the apartment and find a new tenant, I’ll let you out of your lease with no penalty.” I’m like, “Great.” I took great photos of the inside of the apartment, and when I showed it, I lit scented candles, and opened all the curtains, and fluffed the pillows on the couches, and all that stuff, and it only took two viewings to get rid of that apartment. I was really happy to do it, because then we got to vacate the apartment and move into our house without having to pay an extra fee. I had a pretty chill landlord at the time.

That’s the power of staging.

Light some candles, create some ambiance, bake some cookies, you know? Do it up.

Holden Lewis, thank you so much for helping us out today, and even though we are already a couple weeks into it, Happy New Year.

Ah, you’re welcome. Thank you.

Sara, I know it’s been a rough few years for home buyers, but as someone looking to sell their home this year, I’m selfishly a little relieved that it continues to be a seller’s market, and I’ll be curious to see how the whole new commission structure plays out, too.

I am too, but the thing about needing to move is that you’re going to do it no matter what else is going on.

Right. Just remember that no matter what the noise is in the economy, the best thing you can do for your housing or any other financial plans is focus on what’s best for you, and design your budget, and your spending, and your savings plans around that. If you spend all of your time and energy, say, waiting for interest rates to come down, you might never reach the goal of homeownership, if that is a goal.

Yeah, it really is true that you need to plan around what you know, not what you think might or might not happen. Sean, we have one more episode of this Your Money in 2025 series coming up. What’s next?

Next time, we’re going to talk about what you can do if you’ve decided that maybe this is the year you want to make a career change.

Whether you’re in a job search now, whether you’re going to be in a job search soon, you bring a lot of value to the market. Don’t forget that, because confidence breeds confidence. You have a lot to offer. When you show up, remember that.

For now, that’s all we have for this episode. Do you have a money question of your own? Turn to the Nerds and call or text us your questions at 901-730-6373. That’s 901-730-NERD. You can also email us at [email protected]. And remember, you can follow the show on your favorite podcast app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and iHeartRadio to automatically download new episodes.

This episode was produced by Tess Vigeland. I helped with editing, Amanda Derengowski helped with fact-checking. Megan Maurer mixed our audio. And a big thank you to NerdWallet’s editors for all their help.

Here’s our brief disclaimer. We are not financial or investment advisors. This nerdy info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes and may not apply to your specific circumstances.