If you let the national headlines tell it, the real estate market is flat — barely eking out sales and home price gains.
However, Zillow Chief Economist Mischa Fisher said regional trends reveal a more nuanced story, where homebuyers are uncertain rather than stuck. And homesellers with well-priced listings are moving through the market with ease, unlike their counterparts who are unwilling to stop chasing a market that no longer exists.
Mischa Fisher
“Big data and statistics by themselves aren’t necessarily the whole story,” he told the Inman Connect San Diego crowd on Wednesday. “Sometimes they can fail to tell the interesting story, which is where the local picture and the national picture don’t match up.”
“Buyers aren’t just stuck; they’re uncertain. People are still forming families. They are still getting jobs. They’re still wanting to achieve that dream of homeownership,” he added. “Sellers are human; they have their heart set on the price their neighbor got at the peak. But there’s a motivated seller who’s hidden right there in plain view. They just haven’t been re-engaged.”
On the homebuyer front, Fisher said inflation, Great Recession-level hiring rates, and a sharp rise in the median mortgage payment are the primary sources of uncertainty.
The Zillow economist dialed in on the hiring rate, which was unchanged at 3.3 percent in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2026 Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary. Fisher said jobs are the top reason homebuyers move, and when jobs are threatened, sales tend to dive.
A weak hiring rate alongside continued inflation concerns and a typical U.S. mortgage payment that has doubled from $894 to $1,829 further threaten the sales market. However, Fisher said real estate agents are in the perfect position to help buyers properly address their fears and create a plan that aligns with their short- and long-term goals.
“Only 42 percent of renters said they’d buy even if rates dropped,” he said. “That’s telling us they’re uncertain because they aren’t waiting for a house; they’re waiting for certainty, and that’s different.”
“And it’s a thing that an agent can actually address and change,” he added. “I want you to view this number not as a fixed reality, but as a target to shift and to change. So the right rate for a buyer is not trying to time the bottom; it’s the one that makes the math work for them today.”
As for homesellers, Fisher said the fight still lies in getting their expectations to match the current market, rather than the bidding frenzy of the early 2020s. The economist said homesellers are “more financially resilient” than ever, but they’re still “anchored to what was happening in 2021 and 2022” despite the fact that home values have fallen in nearly half of U.S. markets.
However, Fisher said homesellers and listing agents who appropriately price listings are finding success, with the gap between the median list-to-contract and median days on market sitting at 33 days. That gap is significantly more than the gap at the height of the pandemic (nine days), but is far from slow.
“Homes that are priced right are selling fast. They’re still selling quickly. It’s not a frozen market,” he said. “But the homes that are anchored to what was happening in 2021 and 2022, they’re the ones that are sitting.”
“That’s less so a market problem and more a pricing and positioning problem, because in a market where demand does the work, strategy is about amplifying, right?” he added. “That’s the market we used to have. In this market, pricing and positioning are the outcome — that’s when an agent’s expertise is most visible.”
The correct positioning depends on the region, with the Sun Belt in the midst of a recovery, with inventory levels 53 percent higher than pre-pandemic norms. The Midwest offers the best affordability, but buyers must be ready to move fast, with the typical listing in Detroit — one of the region’s top markets — selling in 12 days.
Despite improving inventory, the West is “structurally constrained,” with the typical household in Los Angeles able to afford only 1 in 20 listings. The East isn’t much better, with buyers priced out of New York City, Boston and other hot spots flocking to secondary markets and driving up the competition, with the median days on market a whopping 70 percent below historical norms.
Looking toward the end of 2026, Fisher said he expects:
- Sales volume to grow 1 percent year over year
- Total transaction value to rise between 4-5 percent year over year
- Home values in the Northeast/Midwest are expected to rise between ~1–3 percent
- Home values in the Sun Belt are expected to fall, with Austin home values projected to drop 6 percent
- Mortgage rates are expected to move toward the low 6 percent range by the end of 2026
“The agents who win this housing market reset aren’t the ones who are waiting for the market to normalize,” he said. “Agents who know what’s happening in their local ZIP code, they’re the ones who can walk into any client conversation with the numbers to back it up.”
