After years of turbulence, the Triad housing market is showing signs of stabilizing. Allen Tate Realtors Regional Vice President Tony Jarrett has worked in the industry for more than 35 years. He spoke with WFDD’s David Ford.
Interview Highlights
On how the Triad real estate market is doing in 2025:
"Well, it's almost like the tale of two halves. I mean, the first quarter, we had a lot of uncertainty, especially in the western part of the state, where we came out of the hurricane. You had that recovery. You had a presidential election, which always seems to slow things down during the election, and typically it picks right back up, but it didn't this time because of the tariffs. And you also had a stock market that was upside down. The second quarter has been much better, especially since around Mother's Day, we saw things start to shift in a positive direction."
On the fluctuating mortgage rates and their impact:
"Mortgage rates seem to have stabilized. So, we have been floating now for a number of months around 6.75%. You know, the number had been around seven towards the end of 2024. ... There was a whole decade where we were jumping between five and six percent, and then it got for a few years down to four. And normalized, to me, was more in that five percent to six percent range. And then the pandemic really shifted that to a lot of behaviors around three percent. You saw mortgage rates starting to go back up, and it went up in '23 from three percent to eight percent, which was the fastest and biggest jump we've ever seen. And it floated at eight for a while, and then it came down to seven, and seven felt like our new normal, but now it's starting to stay in the sixes. This week, it's kind of shifted down to six and a half. The jobs report was not good this last week, and it kind of had an impact on mortgage rates. ... When the economy gets weaker is when mortgage rates typically go down."
On looking ahead to the future:
"I'm getting asked the question a lot: 'Are house prices going to crash?' Or buyers are sitting on the sideline going, 'I'm going to wait until prices start dropping.' And so if you go back to the United States' history, and you look at the last 83 years, we've only had seven out of the last 83 years that we had house depreciation. Six of those seven were in the years 2007 to 2011, and that's when we had the housing crash. The other one was back in 1990 during the first Gulf War. But today, we're seeing somewhere between two to four percent price appreciation, and it's been very consistent for the last three or four years."