A glimmer of hope for the housing market
Marketplace
American Public Media
4.6 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The housing market is showing modest improvement, with pending home sales rising over 3% in November and prices growing just 1.2% year over year. Rising inventory and falling mortgage rates mean affordability is improving, though rates likely need to dip below 6% for demand to really pick up. Also in this episode: The 2026 outlook for oil prices and production, a look at which states are getting a minimum wage increase, and what's going on with AI travel influencers.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On this last Monday of 2025, we'll begin the annual tradition of looking back and looking ahead. |
| 0:08.5 | What's in store for the economy in 26? |
| 0:11.8 | From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. |
| 0:19.7 | In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kyrisdal. |
| 0:25.3 | It's Monday, December 29th. Good to have you with us. |
| 0:29.5 | Stagnant, slow, subdued. |
| 0:32.4 | These are words you might use to describe the housing market in 2025. |
| 0:36.6 | But we got some news today that might have the |
| 0:39.3 | industry ending the year on a high note. The market is, well, I wouldn't call it heating up, |
| 0:45.5 | but maybe picking up. Pending home sales were up by more than 3% in November after rising |
| 0:52.0 | nearly 2.5% the month before, according to the National Association of Realtors. |
| 0:57.6 | Existing home sales have also been trending higher. All in all, things are looking brighter in the |
| 1:03.0 | housing market, with a bit more inventory for sale and mortgage rates that have trended lower over the year. |
| 1:09.7 | Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman reports on whether |
| 1:11.7 | the good news is likely to continue. For a change, the housing news is not all gloom and doom, |
| 1:18.0 | says Guy Sakala at Inside Mortgage Finance. A slight surge in pending home sales. It is a promising sign. |
| 1:25.3 | The best increase on a seasonal basis since 2023. |
| 1:31.1 | Especially because the market since then... |
| 1:33.4 | It looked like a housing market stuck in the mud. |
| 1:36.3 | Homes and mortgages haven't seemed affordable for most would-be homebuyers for a while, |
| 1:41.6 | says Edward Pinto at the American Enterprise Institute. He points out since |
| 1:46.2 | 2019, house prices went up something like 30 or 40 percent, and wage growth was something like |
... |
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