Homebuyers in April largely shrugged off “triggers” like the Iran war, spiking gasoline prices and surging mortgage rates that could have quelled market activity, according to a new market analysis from Realtor.com.
The report frames housing market resilience as a reversal from one year ago, when Liberation Day tariff announcements spun the stock market and consumer sentiment into parallel tailspins.
“The hope was that sellers would continue coming to market at the strong March pace, and that buyers would keep engaging despite the volatility,” noted Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, in the company’s latest monthly housing report. “By those measures, April delivered.”
Noting 4.6% annual growth in active listings nationwide in April and an 8.7% increase in new listings from March, Realtor.com observed that fewer price cuts in currently active listings signals sellers are listing their homes with “more realistic pricing” after finding buyers overwhelmingly cautious in 2025.
Homes stayed on the market an average of two days longer than a year ago in April, though they spent six fewer days on the market than in March — an illustration of typical seasonal momentum that economists have feared various Iran war anxieties would undermine.
The April housing market improvements were achieved despite the Middle East conflict moving the goalposts for consensus sales outlooks for 2026.
The National Association of Realtors lowered its annual growth forecast for existing-home sales from 14% to 4% as of mid-April. The Mortgage Bankers Association lowered its projected dollar-volume purchase origination total for 2026 by 2.94% in March. Fannie Mae lowered its purchase originations outlook by 3.23% in March, to just under $1.5 trillion.
List prices that were 2.2% lower over the year in March compounded their annual softening in April, coming in 1.4% shy of year-ago levels last month at $425,000.
Median list prices remain nearly 35% higher than April 2019 levels, according to Realtor.com, but only 1.3% above April 2022 levels, a sign of how prices have eased since the June 2022 peak of $449,000. Prices have been flat or declining on a yearly basis for the past nine months, the report indicated, with declines concentrated in the South and West.
The strong monthly increase in new listings was slightly tempered by just 1.1% growth over the year.
Regionally, the Northeast posted a 9.4% year-over-year gain in new listings inventory, followed by the Midwest at 6.6%. The South region eked out a 0.6% gain, while the West fell 3.5%.
Active listings rose 4.6% annually to slightly more than 1 million in April, almost half the pace of growth in March. They remained 11.8% below typical 2017 to 2019 levels, Realtor.com reported, an improvement from the 13.8% deficit in March.
Still, the growth in new listings and slowdown in active listings presents a reversal from 2025 trends, which the report describes as a divergence “that implies fresher inventory cycling through the market.”
Even as sellers price their properties more realistically, elevated downpayment requirements continue impacting younger and first-time homebuyers’ access to the market, the home listings company observed. But stabilizing borrowing costs have helped keep homebuyers “engaged,” as average mortgage rates for 30-year fixed-rate home loans declined from late-March highs around 6.5% to between 6.3% and 6.4% for much of April.
Experts tell Scotsman Guide that economic fallout from the Iran war has set a higher floor for mortgage rates until war-fueled inflation concerns durably ebb or the Strait of Hormuz fully opens, which could make it difficult for the market to sustain resilient housing activity.
“It’s too early to declare the spring housing market has weathered the storm, but there’s renewed reason for cautious optimism,” Realtor.com Senior Economist Jake Krimmel stated in the report. “The leading indicators that would signal trouble — seller pullback, spiking cancellations, surging price cuts — are, if anything, moving in the right direction.”
