Here and There, but not Everywhere:
2025 Market Outlook for Real Estate Investors

By Wolf Rendall, Director of Data Science

Introduction

2024 was a banner year for many real estate markets. The national Case-Shiller index reached a new high in June and plateaued since then. This was amid a backdrop of steadily increasing inventory. Nationwide, we reached a 5 year high of 954,000 active listings in October 2024, up from a historic low of 346,000 in February 2022, but still below the pre-pandemic average of 1 million active monthly listings. Many economists and housing experts believed 2024 was the first year of truly normalizing market, shaking off the exuberance of the pandemic and its zero-interest-rate-period (ZIRP). Yet, home sales remained very low, just like in 2023.

While sellers and buyers are currently not able to agree on price for many deals, we predict that several markets will see sellers capitulate on price, and buyers should see affordability improve. Certain Lending's parent company Vontive uses predictive models that help us understand which markets’ prices will fall and why we believe that.

Read on for an in-depth analysis of hot markets and risky markets, further broken down by investor strategy.

Secure Home Owners, Frustrated Buyers

The national statistics are not representative of every market. Nationally, we still see lower listings and sales than we expect, but some metros have exceeded their pre-pandemic inventories. And yet prices remain stubbornly high, even in places like Orlando or Dallas, where inventories have grown rapidly. A stock trader might describe this as a wide bid-ask spread. 

Research from Realtor.com shows that 75% of existing mortgages have rates below 5%. Balances on these mortgages are also much lower than a typical mortgage originated today because of home price appreciation since that period, so many sellers have a very affordable pool of equity to draw on if they need it. This is often called the real estate lockup effect.

While homes are for sale, the sellers are looking for a particular price and are happy to wait for it. Sellers are able to wait in part due to low interest rate loans secured in the ZIRP, and also due to a strong national job market. Buyers are also facing unprecedented challenges in affording these prices due to the rise in mortgage rates, following the Federal Reserve’s rate hiking program designed to counter high inflation. However, pressure on sellers is building as high rates erode buyers’ purchasing power and unemployment rises nationally.

Investors are debating the direction rates will take, including mortgage rates. With inflation falling, we expect the Federal Reserve will continue the rate cuts begun in September, but slowly. They will monitor unemployment closely and if wages and jobs heat up, they may choose not to cut. Existing Fed Funds rate cuts have not yet led to lower interest rates for mortgage borrowers. In fact, as bond investors look to the future, they increasingly see risks that could send rates higher. We expect this question to resolve one direction or the other once the new administration’s economic policy agenda becomes clearer.

Markets in Transition

In the charts for Orlando and Dallas below, we can see a sharp increase in new listings and existing inventory that started in 2023 continued throughout 2024. One of the big questions in 2025 is whether that will continue. And while the rapid appreciation of the ZIRP is not going away, price increases have stalled. We believe we are at an inflection point in these markets and sellers may become more motivated, particularly if rates fall further or the labor market worsens.

Orlando and Dallas, and the broader Texas and Florida markets as the primary boom markets of this cycle, might be set for declines, but this is not true everywhere. Seattle, WA and Chicago, IL have not experienced a surge in inventory and prices, displayed in blue in the charts below, have risen above their 2022 highs. Similarly, the green and yellow lines show that inventory has stayed low, along with home sales in red. This tells us that supply is constrained in these markets and there is no slack brought on by patient sellers. Demand is robust, but supply is low and the bid-ask spread is narrower here.

Market-by-Market Predictions

Our parent company Vontive uses a proprietary machine learning algorithm to predict median prices in ZIP codes nationwide. We feel confident in ~8500 ZIP codes’ predictions. The model, known as a Temporal Convolutional Graph Wave Net (TCGWN), uses a moving 36-month window of price and inventory metrics across all ZIP codes to predict price and inventory in a subject zip code. This unique formulation allows the model to learn how changes in each ZIP code precipitate changes in others. For example, during the pandemic, we saw large migrations from the west coast to the Sunbelt; our model would have detected rising inventory in Los Angeles as a signal for increasing demand and higher prices in Austin. For more details on our model, please visit our blog again soon!

Using our TCGWN, we can produce detailed maps of the coming year’s price trends. In the map below, a Stable market is defined as anything with +/- 2% predicted change; declining markets have a greater than 5% predicted decline, while booming markets have a greater than 5% predicted gain. Appreciating and slightly declining markets fall between the extremes.

We see serious challenges in Florida. It is important to remind readers that these predictions are based on price and inventory changes seen across the nation’s 30,000+ ZIP codes, which correlate to changes in each subject zip code. While we know Florida faces serious insurance and climate challenges, these are not inputs to the model. However, this information still enters our model through the actions market participants are taking today in their zip codes – producing a trend in inventory or price – which we apply forward.

In contrast, we look to the Northeastern states, such as Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, as beacons of price appreciation and stability. These markets and similar ones in their region, largely the former Rust Belt and New England, make excellent places for investors looking to Buy-to-Rent, since prices and rents will continue to rise and cash flow will improve over time.

We even see stability and limited appreciation in beaten-down western markets such as the San Francisco Bay Area, and continued strength in Washington. A stable or even slightly declining market can be a great place to take on Fix-and-Flip or construction projects, since most of the equity gain is in creating a new unit in an already-high-priced area.

Top 10 Markets

We will be releasing more analyses of these maps and predictions as the conditions on the ground change, but we close our article here with some expectations of broader market trends in the cities we expect to appreciate and depreciate the most. Even in the top markets, it’s possible to lose as an investor; similarly it is possible to find a great project in the bottom markets. However, we expect these trends to provide a baseline tide that will help or hinder the average investor there.

City Appreciation Rank
South Bend, IN 2.63% 1
Lima, OH 2.43% 2
Glens Falls, NY 2.19% 3
Rochester, NY 1.98% 4
Pittsfield, MA 1.75% 5
Altoona, PA 1.56% 6
Norwich, CT 1.35% 7
Peoria, IL 1.29% 8
Buffalo, NY 1.26% 9
Syracuse, NY 1.25% 10

Bottom 10 Markets

City Depreciation Rank
West Palm Beach, FL -4.25% 1
Fort Lauderdale, FL -4.11% 2
Phoenix, AZ -3.60% 3
Miami, FL -3.58% 4
Tampa, FL -3.35% 5
Fort Worth, TX -3.32% 6
Orlando, FL -3.26% 7
Dallas, TX -3.25% 8
Las Vegas, NV -3.12% 9
Nashville, TN -3.04% 10

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