“The full variety of US households, which represents the demand for houses, is continually rising. So, an annual tempo of 4 million existing-home gross sales at this time is, comparatively talking, a lot weaker than the identical quantity 15 years in the past, given the rise in demand.”
Fleming identified that the full variety of households within the US has elevated by 18% during the last 15 years, from 112 million in 2010 to 132 million in 2025.
Whereas pending residence gross sales have elevated lately, the February report from the Nationwide Affiliation of Realtors (NAR) confirmed numbers nonetheless close to historic lows. As dangerous as that sounds, Fleming means that when the tempo of residence gross sales is in comparison with previous many years and the rise in whole households, the numbers look even worse.
“In February, whole mixed residence gross sales have been 5 million seasonally adjusted annualized gross sales, or 3.7% of whole households, which is 1.1 proportion factors under the historic pre-pandemic common of 4.8%,” Fleming stated. “If whole residence gross sales have been monitoring on the long-run common proportion of whole households, the tempo can be 6 million. Aside from the transient dip in 2010, because of the expiration of the first-time residence purchaser tax credit score, this stage of gross sales exercise as a share of whole households is much like the early Eighties.”
Whereas Fleming isn’t predicting that the housing market development will proceed on the identical path as that decade, there are similarities between that period and the current.
