Survey: Most Agents Are Optimistic About the 2025 Housing Market

Throughout the year, Zillow asks real estate agents how they feel about the housing market. With uncertainty surrounding new economic policies, interest rates, and inventory, there are legitimate reasons for some professionals to temper their expectations for 2025. However, based on our research, many agents have a positive outlook for the rest of the year. 

In the second half of December 2024, we surveyed more than 300 agents across the U.S. about their expectations for 2025. Here are three future-looking findings.

Home prices will keep going up

At the end of 2024, 67% of agents said they expected home prices to increase for the next 12 months, including 20% who predicted a large increase. This represents a big change from the middle of last year, when only 44% of agents expected prices to keep increasing.

Zillow Home Value Index data backs up what agents are feeling. In January 2025, the median home sale price increased 6.65% year over year.

Even with higher prices, transactions will keep climbing too

Regardless of economic uncertainty, 72% of agents expect the number of housing transactions to increase over the next 12 months. That includes 22% who anticipate a large increase in transactions. Only 10% believe transactions will decrease.

Unlike home prices, which kept rising, home sales fell to 4.06 million for 2024, the lowest annual mark since 1995, according to NAR. There’s an interesting tension here given that a majority of agents believe more people will move and that prices will keep going up — which hurts affordability.

Check out Zillow’s Housing Market Snapshot dashboard to see more local data you can share with clients.

We’re shifting to a neutral market

Agents are mostly split on whether the current market favors buyers or sellers. At the end of the year, 45% of agents thought we were in a buyers market, while 41% viewed it as a sellers market.

Compared to the sellers market we saw in the first half of 2024, the national market is now neutral, according to Zillow economists, which aligns with what agents told us in the survey. 

Of course, what kind of market you see also depends on specific metros. Buyers markets have emerged in parts of the Southeast. Sellers markets dot major cities on both coasts. And the neutral markets have appeared largely in the Midwest and parts of the Southwest.

To see where your market stands today, check out Zillow’s Market Heat Index.