November 7, 2025 Economic and Housing Market Update

November 7, 2025

Overview

Reports and articles referenced

Housing data for download

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

• I’m Danielle Hale, Chief Economist at Realtor.com®. Without key government data during this record-breaking shutdown, the signals we do have on the economy are mixed and housing is caught in the middle.
• First, the federal government shutdown is now the longest one on the record, surpassing the 2018-19 shutdown that stretched for 35 days. While lenders have workarounds to keep many home sales on track, I expect to see a slower pace of October sales when we get that data in a few weeks. 
• One other impact of the shutdown – we didn’t get the labor market data we would typically see. We have several alternate indicators, and the picture they painted was mixed: job growth rebounded and earnings rose while layoffs picked up and it’s expected that the unemployment rate edged up. This not only makes the Fed’s job more challenging, the lack of data also likely weighs on business and household decisions. 
• Meanwhile, mortgage rates moved higher, climbing 5 basis points as markets adjusted to last week’s Fed meeting. Although there was a Fed rate cut in October, Chair Powell’s statement that a December rate cut was not guaranteed reset market expectations for what’s ahead. 
• Looking at weekly trends in housing data, this week marked 2 solid years–104 weeks of growing inventory, but the growth rate has moderated. We also saw a reversal in new listing activity, which declined after growing for the past few weeks, putting a question mark on what’s ahead for the number of for-sale homes nationwide.
• The Realtor.com October Hottest Markets report continues to highlight that the ‘national’ housing market is made up of thousands of local housing markets and that trends locally can be very different. In fact, the Northeast and Midwest continue to rank as relatively hot, even as demand is cooler nationwide. 
• Two other reports this week highlight the importance of local data in real estate. 
• Our Investor report shows that a little more than 1 in 10 buyers in the second quarter were investors, but in several metros investor activity is more than twice the national average. Further, while investors nationwide tend to target lower priced homes, this isn’t true everywhere, and in some markets the typical investor-bought home was nearly 20% more expensive than the recently sold median home in the market.
• Our International Demand report, similarly, shows that property seekers from abroad have a tendency to concentrate in key markets with Miami, New York, and Los Angeles capturing the largest shares of international shoppers in the third quarter.  And more international shoppers come from Canada than any other country, but the share declined in the last year as exchange rate and policy volatility may have dampened demand from our neighbors to the North.
• You can find all the details, including full reports and our housing data for download, at realtor.com/research.  You can also follow us on X (formerly twitter) for real time updates. And instagram for graphics.

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