Though typical 30-year mortgage rates are forecast to end 2026 around 6%, says Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors (NAR), he expects home sales to jump by 14%.

“Next year is really the year that we will see a measurable increase in sales,” Yun said at an annual Realtor conference in Houston last week, presenting his housing outlook for 2025. “Home prices nationwide are in no danger of declining.”

At 4.06 million units in September, the annual pace of homes sales in 2025 is in line with the full-year total of 4.06 million sales in 2024 — despite affordability marginally improving in 2025.

Mortgage rates have declined by about 0.75% from January and active listings nationwide have risen to within about 13% of pre-pandemic levels, according to NAR, cooling home price gains and leading to price reductions across swaths of the U.S. housing market.

If this year’s sales pace is sustained, 2024 and 2025 would represent the lowest back-to-back years of home sales in the past three decades.

The singular challenge to achieving higher mortgage production and home sales volumes is one the housing industry is somewhat helpless to solve: affordability.

Affordability barriers have caused first-time homebuyer purchase share to shrink to 24% and 21% in 2024 and 2025, respectively, while investor purchase share has steadied around 30%, above pandemic-era levels.

Yun’s forecast — which calls for home sales increasing by 14% in 2026, with mortgage rates remaining near or above 6% through much of next year and home prices nationwide “in no danger” of declining —  appears to fly in the face of other housing economists’ 2026 outlooks.

NAR did not immediately respond to Scotsman Guide’s request for comment.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), for example, expects mortgage originations to rise by as much as 7.6%, but the commensurate increase in home sales will not come from lower mortgage rates, according to the MBA’s chief economist, Mike Fratantoni.

At that association’s annual conference in mid-October, Fratantoni forecast mortgage rates will spend 2026 in their current range between 6.25% and 6.5%.

“The increase in inventories will put downward pressure on home prices across the country,” Fratantoni said. “Home-price declines nationally are expected to decline for several quarters over the next few years.”

Joel Kan, the MBA’s deputy chief economist, said that the purchase affordability matrix will likely remain as difficult for homebuyers to navigate in 2026 as it was in 2025.

Yun’s home sales forecast pales in comparison to Fannie Mae’s expectation for 2026 home sales. The government-sponsored mortgage investor expects 2026 sales to increase to 5.16 million units, which would be a 23% increase from September’s annual pace of 4.06 million units.

However, Fannie Mae economists predict mortgage rates will end next year around 5.9%, with national home price appreciation slowing to 1.3% annually.