A recovery, but a slower one than forecast
Speaking at the 2026 REALTORS® Legislative Meetings in Washington, D.C., National Association of REALTORS® Chief Economist Dr. Lawrence Yun forecast a recovery in home sales through the second half of 2026 (NAR, 2026) — with an important condition attached. The recovery depends on inventory continuing to build. Without more supply reaching the market, the sales growth does not materialise.
The headline numbers from NAR’s 2026 forecast:
- Existing-home sales up about 4%
- Median home price up about 4%
- Mortgage rates averaging around 6.5% (Scotsman Guide, 2026)
The number worth pausing on is the first one. Yun’s earlier projection for 2026 was 14%. (Inman, 2026) The revision down to 4% is not a rounding adjustment — it is an acknowledgement that affordability constraints and borrowing costs have proven more durable than the optimistic case allowed for. A forecast that gets revised by ten percentage points is telling you how much uncertainty sits underneath it.
The economic backdrop
Yun expressed confidence that the U.S. economy avoids recession in 2026, pointing to business investment in artificial intelligence and data centre infrastructure as the main engine. His supporting figures: unemployment holding below 5%, and roughly 400,000 net job gains anticipated. (NAR, 2026)
The Mortgage Bankers Association reported mortgage applications up roughly 31% year over year. (MPA Magazine, 2026) That is the most interesting datapoint in the set, because applications are a leading indicator in a way that closed sales are not. People do not apply for a mortgage casually. A 31% increase suggests demand that has been sitting on the sidelines is beginning to convert into actual market participation.
The million-dollar median, and the cost of waiting
Yun ran a long-horizon model asking when the national median home price — currently near $430,000 — would reach $1 million. The answers converged around 25 years. (NAR, 2026)
He anchored it with a comparison: the national median was $90,000 in 1990, when San Francisco was already at $250,000. The point he drew from it was that hesitating on the sidelines carries a steep opportunity cost, and that homeownership has historically been a dependable wealth-generation vehicle.
That framing deserves a caveat that the forecast itself does not supply. A 25-year projection is an extrapolation, not a prediction, and national medians say nothing about what any individual property does. Florida in particular has diverged sharply from national trends more than once in living memory. Treat the long-horizon number as an illustration of compounding, not as a promise.
The gap between owners and renters
Yun estimates the typical homeowner realises roughly $16,000 in increased housing wealth over the year. (NAR, 2026) His summary of the dynamic was blunt: homeowners continue to build wealth while renters are, in his phrase, spinning their wheels.
Jessica Lautz, NAR’s Deputy Chief Economist, described the same split from the transaction side. She characterised the current climate as a “wonky market,” and the inconsistency she pointed to is the part most worth understanding:
You’ll list a home on the market, and sometimes it’ll sit for months. And sometimes it’s going to have multiple offers, and they can be next door to each other.
(Lautz, 2026)
Two comparable homes, same street, opposite outcomes. That is not a market with a single clear direction; it is a market where pricing, condition, and presentation have re-acquired the power they lost when everything sold regardless.
Lautz also observed that a significant share of current buying activity is concentrated among people who have bought before or who already hold substantial wealth — and that the gap between those who own and those who rent is widening. Her warning about timing was direct: waiting for rate decreases can backfire, because prices tend to rise as competition heats up.
How I read this for Florida
What follows is my own view, not the position of NAR, Dr. Yun, or Ms. Lautz.
After roughly two years of downward adjustment driven mostly by the rise in mortgage rates, that corrective phase looks to me largely exhausted. Rising mortgage applications, rates that have stopped moving violently, and job growth that has held up are not the signature of a market still falling. They look more like the flat stretch between one trend and the next.
I want to be careful about how strongly I put that. I am not claiming this is the bottom — nobody identifies a bottom except in hindsight, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What I am saying is narrower: the conditions a buyer benefits from right now are conditions that tend not to last. More inventory to choose from, real negotiating leverage, sellers willing to contribute to closing costs or concessions. Those exist because competition is thin. If borrowing costs ease, competition returns, and those advantages are the first things to disappear.
The trap in trying to time it is that the thing you are waiting for — cheaper money — arrives at the same moment as everyone else who was waiting for it. You save on the rate and pay it back in the price, plus the multiple-offer scenarios that come with it.
None of which means now is the right time for you. That is a question about your finances, how long you plan to stay, and what you are actually buying — not a question a national forecast can answer. It is worth working through with a lender and an agent who will look at your specific numbers.
What a Florida buyer or seller should actually do with this
If you are buying: get pre-approved before you shop, so you know your real number rather than an estimated one. Ask specifically what seller concessions look like in the neighbourhoods you are considering — in this market that varies street by street, exactly as Lautz described. And factor Florida’s insurance costs into affordability from the beginning rather than discovering them at underwriting.
If you are selling: the “wonky market” observation is the one to internalise. The homes drawing multiple offers are not doing it by accident. Pricing to the current comparables rather than to 2022, and presenting the home properly, is the difference between the two outcomes on the same street.
Either way: a national median has very little to say about a specific Florida property. Use the forecast to understand the weather, not to pick the day.