National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun, speaking alongside NAR Deputy Chief Economist Jessica Lautz, discussed projections for the real estate market in 2025 at an NAR event at Boston.

“We’ve seen after presidential elections—and it doesn’t matter who wins—that there’s usually a slight boost in home sales,” Yun said. “It removes some uncertainty. Now you know it’s the policy [of President Trump], and you can make predictions about what will happen and make a decision based on that.”

Yun projects that sales of existing homes should see a year-over-year increase of 9% over the course of 2025, with sales of new homes seeing an 11% increase.

Yun also forecast a slowdown in the rise of the median cost of homeownership, as more inventory is brought into the market. “The strong price increases cannot be sustainable for another five years, or America will be divided … with only a few getting to experience the tremendous housing wealth,” Yun said. “If we bring more supply to the housing market, home price increases will not be as outrageous … and will be more in line with wages.”

Lautz presented the NAR’s findings on buyers, revealing that the median age of a first-time homebuyer is 38, the highest recorded, and that 17% of households are “multigenerational” as adult children and aging parents pool their resources to meet the cost of homeownership.

Interestingly, Lautz reported that 26% of home sales were all-cash, as previous homeowners used the equity gained from skyrocketed housing prices to bypass the mortgage process altogether and buy new homes outright.

A looming question for 2025 is the question of Donald Trump’s mass deportation programs, the forms they might take, and the impact it could have on the construction industry. Nan Wu, of the American Immigration Council, says that the AIC estimates that around 14 percent of construction workers in the US are undocumented.

Speaking with NBC News, Wu said, “The removal of so many workers within a short period would push up construction costs and lead to delays in building new homes, making housing even less affordable in many parts of the country.”

Chad Prinkey, CEO of Well Built Construction Consulting, told NBC News, “One of the natural problems with undocumented workers, we don’t know how many are here because they are undocumented. It isn’t straightforward. I would wager that half or more of on-site labor is undocumented in specific geographic regions,” saying that while a region like Boston would be able to cope, the impact in Texas could be crippling.

“There will be incredible delays; the average 18-month project could take five years to complete because there are so few bodies,” Prinkey said.

Prinkey then added that he didn’t believe that Trump will really enact mass deportation on the multi-million scale, citing the “crippling economic impact” of such a move.

Here in Huntsville, the Huntsville Area Association of Realtors (HAAR) released its report, dated for the first week of November.

The HAAR weekly report shows a slightly uneven local market. Inventory continued to rise, with single-family units seeing a 27.7% increase, while townhouse units saw a 107.3% increase in inventory.

Pending sales of single-family units were up by 23.7%, while pending sales of townhouse/condo units decreased by 41.7%. New listings of single-family units were down by 9.5%, while new listings of townhouse/condo units saw a flat 200% increase.

The Huntsville Business Journal will continue to report on developments in the real estate market, both nationally and here at home.