The latest S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Home Price Index, out Tuesday, will offer a sense of what happened with home prices in February.<\/p>\n
Economists are expecting<\/a> that home prices rose slightly year over year, though the housing market is currently pretty weak. That\u2019s been the trend for a while now: prices trending up, even though demand is sluggish<\/a>. Which is unusual.<\/p>\n In a typical year, the housing market should be taking off right about now.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’d see a lot of listing activity get going in February and into early March, and the buyers would be coming in the second half of March and into April,\u201d said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s in a normal year. \u201cWhich we really haven’t had in a while, to be quite frank with you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Instead, not much is going on right now, though more sellers have been listing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s still not clear that the buyers are out there yet,\u201d Sturtevant said.<\/p>\n Some of that is the affordability issue that\u2019s been around since the pandemic. Mortgage rates and home prices are both still high.<\/p>\n Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, said some of it is also because of political and economic uncertainty. The war in the Middle East, tariffs, and fears around what AI could do to the job market are holding prospective buyers back.<\/a> <\/p>\n \u201cWe have about 600,000 more sellers than buyers nationwide,\u201d she said. \u201cNormally, when you have that gap between the number of sellers and the number of buyers, prices come down to get those homes sold.\u201d<\/p>\n