Agents expect more sales, (much) lower rates in 2025 

Will agents celebrate the New Year with champagne — or close out 2024 on a more somber note? 

A pair of recent surveys offer insight into how agents are feeling toward the end of this turbulent year in real estate and reveal their outlooks for market conditions in 2025 — which don't necessarily align with the forecasts.

Agents expect more sales in 2025

In the latest agent sentiment report from Real Brokerage, the majority of the 900 agents surveyed signaled more optimism for next year, with 89% expecting to see more transactions compared to 2024. Roughly 60% believe transactions will improve by 5%, while another 23% are even more optimistic and expect to see a 10% bump in sales. 

Real Brokerage CEO Tamir Poleg said he believes agents "are signaling that we may be past the most difficult period of this cycle and headed toward a new upcycle."

A separate survey of roughly 1,100 real estate professionals by John Burns Research and Consulting also found that agents have an increasingly positive outlook about the near-term market. The firm's Resale Home Sales Index — a gauge of market conditions for existing home sales — has steadily improved since June. Now at 67 out of 100, the index is sitting right between "Fair" and "Good" and is at its highest level since February. 

"My pipeline for 2025 is much higher than normal with both sellers and buyers," one respondent in the Atlanta market said.

What the forecasts say: Housing economists agree that existing home sales will improve next year, but their predictions cover a wide range, from a 1.5% bump at the low end (Realtor.com) to 9% at the high end (NAR) — and several in between.

Home prices will continue to rise

When looking back at home prices over the last month, 50% of respondents in the John Burns survey said prices in their market were mostly flat. The rest of the agents were almost equally split on whether they saw prices going up or down. And nationally, 50% of agents signal that buyers are outnumbering sellers, which has come down from 65% a year ago, suggesting a more balanced market.

So what about next year? Roughly 75% of the Real agents surveyed said they expect home prices to rise in 2025. Of those agents, 44% foresee a bump of 2-5% in home price growth while 31% expect minimal growth of 2% or less. Among those who were bearish on growth, 15% said they think prices will be relatively flat next year, 7% believe prices could fall slightly, and 3% expect price declines of more than 2%. 

What the forecasts say: There's near universal agreement that price growth will continue in 2025, but at a slower pace. Several economists predict growth in the 3-4% range — with a lot of regional variance — while NAR only expects prices to rise 2%.  

5% rates? 

A whopping 90% of agents in Real's survey anticipate mortgage rates will fall from current levels by the end of 2025, with 37% saying rates could land between 5.5% and 6%, and 21% believing they could fall as low as 5% to 5.5%. 

Some agents surveyed by John Burns said consumers are also hoping for lower mortgage rates in 2025. "Buyers are holding out waiting for lower interest rates causing month's supply to increase and longer days on market," an agent in Dover, Delaware said, while an agent in Canton, Ohio said that some buyers "are being standoffish due to their expectation for interest rates to decrease once there is a change in administration."

What the forecasts say: Rates have climbed late in the year, and many economists believe they will indeed decline in 2025 — but not as much as agents and buyers might be hoping for. Forecasters are nearly unanimous in predicting that mortgage rates won't fall below 6% next year.