Spring Stall or Soft Reset? What March 2025 Home Sales Really Say About the Market

March is usually the start of real estate’s spring surge—but this year’s numbers tell a different story. In this data-packed episode of Mortgage, Markets, and More, Peter D’Angelo breaks down the latest national and New Jersey housing stats, asking: is this just a slower start, or the early signs of a broader market shift? 🏡📉

From record-high March prices and stubbornly low inventory to investor pullbacks and regional standouts (hello, Northeast!), we unpack what’s driving the numbers—and what it means for buyers, sellers, and real estate pros in Q2. Whether you're tracking the market nationally or planning your next move in NJ, this one’s essential listening.

#RealEstateMarket #HousingTrends #HomeSales2025 #MortgageRates #NewJerseyRealEstate #SpringHousingMarket #HomePrices #RealEstateUpdate #FirstTimeHomeBuyer

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Peter D'Angelo | NMLS: 885309 | Branch Manager | Guaranteed Rate, Inc., NMLS 2611
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*All information, topics, discussion is my own personal opinion and insight, not reflective of Guaranteed Rate, Inc. May contain market information for informational purposes only, not to be used as financial advice.

Transcript

"March 2025 Home Sales – Spring Slowdown or Market Reset?”

INTRO CONTEXT:

• March is usually a pivot month: historically marks the start of stronger seasonal sales.
• This year’s data shows some recovery—but much softer than expected when adjusted for seasonality.
• High rates, stubborn prices, and inventory challenges define the current landscape.

1. NATIONAL SALES SNAPSHOT

Volume & Seasonality

• March SAAR: 4.02 million homes sold (seasonally adjusted)
   
  • -5.9% vs February (4.27 million)
•  
  • -2.4% vs March 2024 (4.12 million)
•  
• Actual homes sold: ~335,000 (non-adjusted)
• Spring bump was present but muted—didn’t meet typical March expectations.

Median Home Price

• $403,700 in March 2025
   
  • +2.7% YoY (from $392,900 in March 2024)
•  
  • All-time high for March
•  
• Price increases seen in all regions for 21 consecutive months.

Inventory & Supply

• 1.33 million homes on the market
   
  • +8.1% MoM, +19.8% YoY
•  
• 4.0 months of supply
   
  • Up from 3.5 months (Feb) and 3.2 months (March 2024)
•  
• Median DOM: 36 days (vs 33 days a year ago)

Buyer Composition

• First-time buyers: 32% (unchanged YoY)
• Cash buyers: 26% (down from 28%)
• Distressed sales: ~3% (low, stable)

2. REGIONAL BREAKDOWN

Northeast

• Sales: 490,000 SAAR
   
  • -2.0% MoM, 0% YoY
•  
• Median price: $468,000 (+7.7% YoY)
   
  • Strongest YoY price gain nationally
•  

Midwest

• Sales: 950,000 SAAR
   
  • -5.0% MoM, -3.1% YoY
•  
• Median price: $302,100 (+3.5% YoY)

South

• Sales: 1.81 million SAAR
   
  • -5.7% MoM, -4.2% YoY
•  
• Median price: $360,400 (+0.6% YoY)
   
  • Weakest pricing growth nationally
•  

West

• Sales: 770,000 SAAR
   
  • -9.4% MoM, +1.3% YoY
•  
• Median price: $621,200 (+2.6% YoY)
   
  • Only region with YoY sales growth
•  

3. NORTHEAST & NEW JERSEY SPOTLIGHT

Regional Context

• Northeast stands out with flat YoY sales—no decline.
• Indicates constrained supply, not weak demand.
• Highest regional price growth (+7.7%) reinforces this.

New Jersey Market

• Sales: 5,847 homes sold in March
   
  • -2.5% YoY (5,995 in March 2024)
•  
• Inventory: 21,536 units on market
   
  • +0.4% YoY, but down in terms of months' supply (3.0 vs 3.1)
•  
• Median price: $500,000
   
  • +6.4% YoY (from $470,000)
•  
• Homes selling over ask: Avg. 101.4% of list price
• Median DOM: 46 days (vs 42 days in 2024)

4. WHAT’S DRIVING THE NUMBERS

Affordability Constraints

• High mortgage rates continue to suppress move-up buyers.
• Potential sellers locked into sub-4% rates—unwilling to trade up and pay 6.5–7%.

Demand vs Supply

• Inventory is rising but still below pre-pandemic norms.
• Homes are sitting slightly longer but still moving relatively quickly.
• High demand from first-timers and cash buyers helps prop up pricing.

Investor Landscape

• Cash buyers declining slightly—fewer institutional buyers.
• Less investor competition is softening bidding wars slightly in some markets.

5. INSIGHTS FROM NAR – LAWRENCE YUN

• Describes March as “sluggish” due to affordability.
• Mobility at record lows—fewer people moving homes.
• Home equity is rising—each 1% price increase = ~$500B in U.S. household wealth.
• Market is stable, with low mortgage delinquencies.
• Recommends cooling in prices to better align with wage growth.

6. OUTLOOK FOR SPRING AND BEYOND

• Inventory improvement is key to unlocking sales growth.
• Potential tailwinds:
   
  • Mortgage rates stabilize or decline
•  
  • Equity-rich sellers start listing
•  
• Market continues to show localized resilience (e.g., NJ, Northeast)
• Expectation: gradual improvement in transactions, not a snapback.

TRANSCRIPT:

📍  📍  

 Welcome back to Mortgage Markets and more. I'm your host, Peter D'Angelo, branch manager for Rate here in Totowa in New Jersey. I hope you're all having a great  week.  This is one of my favorite times of the month. We get to talk about the National Association of Realtors Existing Home Sales Data. I'm really liking the new cadence for these episodes.

Getting to really laser focus in, uh, it's an interesting report we have here for you. So it's showing us the mix across the country right now as to what the real estate market's looking like and. There's a breakdown, uh, in certain areas, in other pockets, which we're gonna delve into those numbers. This is gonna be a data heavy episode.

We're gonna talk a lot of numbers, a lot of information. I hope this is helpful for you. If you're a would-be home buyer, this is good information to have, to understand the trends of what's going on. And if you're a real estate professional, these are the goods right here. So let's get right into it.

Overall, March is a pivot month. This is where we see a change from the winter market. Into the spring market. So this seasonal change normally indicates more volume, more activity, and this year we're seeing some signs of recovery in the real estate market, but it's still a little bit softer than we were expecting for this spring market.

The reason for that high level right now are the stubbornly high mortgage interest rates that continue to move up and down, and the inventory challenges still persist in the high. Highly desirable markets. Um, what does that look like by region? Let's take a look at the whole nation right now and what the volume of activities look like for the month of March. 

So I'll, I'll let you know when these numbers are seasonally adjusted. Then when I'm giving you the actual, because they are different numbers. Um, so a seasonally, seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales for real estate in the whole country, 4.02 million units sold. That's seasonally adjusted. Of course, that indicates a.

5.9% drop compared to February. And when we look year over year, a 2.4% drop compared to March of 2024, the actual number of homes sold 335,000 units. The  little bump there helped compared to, you know, what things were looking like. In February, but February did have a little bit of a gasp there, um, based on the interest rate market and that little bit of relief that we saw.

So  if you recall, we had about eight weeks of better interest rates that went away when all the tariff talks started. So we did see that translate to a little bit of compression in the home sales numbers, but. Now let's talk about the median prices. What did the homes sell for? When we look at the whole month of March, the median sales price, which is the most commonly occurring number, it's not the average, it's the most commonly occurring number in the data set.

That was $403,700 median for March of 2025. That represents a 2.7% increase year over year on home value for our median home sale price. And that reflects a record for March. So we're at a historical level all time high for March for median home sales prices, the.  Prices have seen increases across the 21 regions across the country.

In the survey provided by the National Association of Realtors. Now let's take a look at the inventory side of things. How much is available based on our snapshot from March 1.3. 3 million homes are currently on the market. Uh, that's up 8.1% month over month. We're trending in the right direction and that's also up 19.8% year over year.

So that shows us there's more opportunity being present right now  that reflects four months of supply. That's up from three point a half months in February, uh, and also up from 3.2 months of supply that was available. When we look at March of 2024.  Median days on market, uh, is coming in at 36 days across the country right now.

It previously was 33 days a year ago. Alright, let's take those two points then. Months of supply increasing. Four months. That's good. That's letting us know there's more opportunity available across the nation Days on market that increasing from 33 to 36 days. When we look year over year, that's also showing us a little bit of softening.

When I say softening just means we may be returning to a little bit more of a balanced market. This should not be taken as a bellwether of there being, uh, a compression in the real estate market or home values are going down. That's obviously not the case. We just set an all time record for March. But what this does show us is that maybe we are getting.

A little bit further away from the absolutely bonkers and crazy super competitive market, uh, that we've known for quite a bit here over the past couple years.  Let's look at the buyer composition. Who was buying in March? Well, our first time home buyers take 32% of those sales. Uh, cash buyers came in at 26%.

Of the sales that's down from 28%. Uh, and then distress sales. So these are properties that are short sales, foreclosures, uh, pre foreclosure that comprise 3% of the market that's stable and that's still remaining low. So no cracks are showing right now by way of distressed sales.  Let's zoom in now on particular regions.

We're going to start off in my home region of the northeast, uh, that the sales volume from an an seasonally adjusted perspective came in at 490,000 units sold. That is a compression of 2%, so 2% down month over month on those sales. And that is flat year over year compared to last year, and the median home sales price in the Northeast region is currently $468,000.

That's up 7.7% year over year, and that is the strongest year over year. Price gain across the nation. So in the Northeast, we remain the outlier. Here in the Midwest sales were at 950,000 units sold seasonally adjusted. That's also down 5% month over a month, and down 3.1% year over year. Median sales price there in the Midwest 301.

300, $2,100 and that is up 3.5% year over year, so even some price gains there with the higher sales volume and activity in the south. Seasonally adjusted sales came in at 1.81 million units sold. That's down 5.7% month over month, also down 4.2% year over year. And the median sales price there was $360,400.

That reflects six point. A 0.6% year over year growth, which is the weakest nationally, if we.  Recall last episode we were talking about South Carolina and Florida a little bit in those markets. That's where I do some business. I'm seeing that there you can place offers, you can negotiate, you can be bidding under Ask Homes are sitting on the market for longer.

Uh, I had a client and a family that I've been helping out over the past month or two. They finally got a contract accepted on their home that they're selling in Florida. But it definitely did not sell as quickly as they would've hoped for, and they did have to reduce their price. So that is something that's commonly happening in that south region in the US Now, if we go out west, we saw 770,000 units sold seasonally adjusted, which reflects a 9.4% month over month reduction. 

And a 1.3% year over year increase. A little bit of a mix there. Uh, overall, that median sales price in the West $621,200, that reflects 2.6% year over year price appreciation. And that's the only region with year over year sales growth. Uh, all as you, as we surveyed everything else, we saw compression across all the other regions.

Now I would like to focus up a little bit and take a look at the Northeast and particularly New Jersey. That's where I'm situated. That's where I think, uh, it would be really beneficial for everyone to hear and also for my radio free Montclair listeners. This is now talking a little bit more about your backyard and your neighborhood as we talked just now, the year over year. 

Increase in value is incredible in the northeast region that sustains here in New Jersey. We talked about on the last episode what it takes as far as the affordability in New Jersey and what are some. First time home buyer, uh, affordable markets to shop in. But overall, the state one of the highest. Uh, this is an indication again, of the supply and demand imbalance.

I probably sound like a broken record, but it's baked into this environment and that's an important thing to know. The.  New Jersey market in particular, we're gonna talk real numbers now. 5,847 homes were sold in March. That is down 2.5% year over year. There was 5,995 sold in March of 2024.  The inventory is at 21,536 units.

On the market. That was when I checked the sampling yesterday morning based on New Jersey realtors and a number of other sources that I consolidated. The median sales price in the state rounded out is at $500,000. That's up 6.4% year over year from $470,000. Again, supply and demand economics. That's why that is the way it is.

Homes are selling for over ask, and when we look at the whole state, on average, the list price, or rather the sales price compared to the list price, it's around 101.4%. So factoring in the average across the state, around 1.5%. Over list price is about what the homes are going for right now in different markets.

This is where pairing with a local realtor is extremely important. Local markets will have different trends. I can say that there are some markets closer to me here in Towa. I'm talking more about like the Bloomfield, Montclair, uh, areas, those homes. Uh, if you take a look at those averages, may, maybe I'll do a report on that.

I would estimate they're probably in the neighborhood of 10%. Or more over ask. So that's why partnering with someone local is so important, so you can get that real local insight and information.  Average days on market, 46 days, that's also up from 42 days in March of 2024. Again, we're seeing a little bit of that same trend that's happening throughout the rest of the country develop here in the Northeast and in New Jersey.

What's driving the numbers? Let's go back to what we talked about last week and also on our weekly updates. The affordability, the interest rate volatility is not helping anybody. And because of that volatility, it's tough to manage budget. The numbers will be adjusting as you're maybe adjusting your price points.

It's like you're blindfolded on a horse trying to shoot it at a target and it's not happening. So that's why the struggle continues and we continue to see this. Up and down in the market with respect to how these sales continue to develop. When we look at the month over month, um, there's also potential seller lockout.

That's the other affordability component people don't wanna sell 'cause they got a three or 4% mortgage rate. We talked about the numbers on past episodes, but that is a part of the calculus here when people are considering whether or not to list their home. Um, which brings me to another major component, which is supply and demand.

I think you guys get it. There's not a lot available. There's a lot of demand that continues to get filled year after year, of home buyers that haven't been able to find the affordable home that's in their price range, that meets their needs, and that will perpetuate this market until something tangibly changes or we at least have some consistency.

If we remove some volatility, we can have the information at our disposal that we can rely on. And then make proper judgment. But when things are in flux, that's a very difficult thing to do.  The investor landscape, that's the last component that's changing. And  when I'm talking about the investor landscape, I'm referring to some institutional buyers.

We're talking about the private equity firms, the larger corporations and companies that buy real estate, because that has effects on your common consumer purchasing real estate. The cash sales have gone down a little bit.  So that's showing some opportunity for first time home buyers and for other people in the market.

But that could also be indicating to us a little bit of a more conservative approach by these investors.  I wanna make comment on just a couple things because Lawrence Yoon from National Association of Realtors made a couple comments I wanted to highlight as well. When we look at this report,  March was sluggish overall.

Because of the affordability constraints we were talking about.  Mobility right now is at a record low. There's way fewer people moving homes. Moving homes is more of a necessity thing right now than there being a luxury or decision being made  to, oh, you know, we'll move now.  Budget inflation being what it is.

All of these are weighing on the American homeowner and consumer and would be home buyer.  That being said, home equity's rising. Lawrence makes a point to talk about over $500 billion in US wealth right now. And so that's almost a 1% increase across the board due to home equity  overall. He mentions that the market is stable.

Yeah, we see some swings right now, but overall the market is pretty stable from a value standpoint and we, we did see a little bit of compression here and there in some of the sales numbers, but overall. It's due to the seasonality. Things will pop and sometimes you make up for it later on in the season.

When we look at April, if March is weak, April could be stronger. Um,  mortgage delinquencies.  Are showing some cooling. There was a little bit of a red flag that was flown, but Lawrence makes comment that, you know, these delinquencies have stabilized, so hopefully that's not showing us that there's any cracks forming, uh, in, in, you know, for the American consumer and the homeowners.

And then also there are some cooling prices starting to occur. So that's something to be aware of when we're talking about the future of real estate. And you know, the price appreciation we've seen over the past couple years is not something to really be expected long term.  Now our outlook, looking beyond what can we expect here in April?

Well, we're almost done with April. So I want to take a moment at the end of every one of these episodes now to kind of talk about what I'm seeing in Boots on the ground and. What I've been seeing here in New Jersey is that there's a little bit more of a healthier amount of inventory that seems to be hitting the market.

I know I walk my dog every morning for about 45 minutes and uh, I made a comment to my wife. I was like, wow, I saw four for sale signs on lawns, which is kind of crazy, you know? Um, which. Yeah, if we rebound the clocks five years ago, kind of a normal thing to see about three to four. And you know, I walk about three and a half miles humble Bragg, uh, with my dog.

But, uh, looking around and seeing for, for sale signs, I'm like, oh, wow. That means something's picking up here and there's development happening. So I could see it right here in my hometown of Towa. But there's development happening in other places. People are updating their homes. There are homes that are getting ready to be flipped.

That's still a very lucrative business in North Jersey because of the low. Supply. Um, so overall looking forward, I think we're going to see a little bit of improvement. Um, but the only tangible thing that I think is going to possibly throw a monkey wrench in here if we're looking at trends, is that in April, I noticed a psychological shift  with all the headlines.

Everything that was being put out there about tariffs and concerns about the economy and what that's going to do for inflation. Valid points. But the impression of that I'm getting right now is that it's actually weighing on  the home shopper. It's weighing on the, would be home buyer and the would be home seller because they, they,  I get it.

There's uncertainty ahead. We don't know what. Everything is going to look like when it fully develops because we don't know what fully develops going to look like yet. And because of that, I've noticed that that has a tangible impact on the psychology and the commitment because we've talked about it before.

To get into this market, you need to be committed. And I'm noticing that all this kind of sensationalized news,  all of this stuff is really starting to. It  creates some anxiety and, uh, unfortunately it, it's not necessary like it's noise. And I talked about this on my weekly update last week, and I'm just going to reiterate it right now. 

I'm not saying don't pay attention, take in the information, but how much information you take in and understand and how much you take to heart when you're making your decisions are two different things. If you know.  That you can eliminate noise, reduce noise, and just focus on the constant, the things that you know for sure.

And knowing what your needs are is top priority. Knowing what your budget is is top priority, and making your decisions based on exclusively those things is to me,  the proper approach. While there seems to be so much chaos going on around us. So those are my, those are my 2 cents. I hope you found this information helpful and useful.

I'm excited for our next episode later on this week. If you have any questions, please reach out to me. You can reach, reach me via email at Peter dot dangelo@rate.com. Follow me on socials. My socials are all linked in the episode description, and I'm going to ask today, share the episode with somebody who would be.

Benefiting from getting this information about real estate and about mortgages and about the market, and I'm also here to help. So please reach out. Those are my two asks today. Share the show with somebody that could benefit and please reach out to me. I'd love to hear more from you and trying to align this episode, this podcast, everything that I produce to what's going to be highest and best use and value for you.

In the meantime, I hope you all have a great week and take good care.