Intel Index’s findings suggest that the number of upcoming home sales could increase as the buyer pool expands and a more optimistic group of agents grows.
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The initial increase in home sales that began to be recorded slowly in the fall may be about to pick up steam.
Real estate agents across the country reported a significant upward trend in their buyer and seller pipelines as they closed out the year, marking an acceleration of the upward trend from the previous month.
The latest industry survey results push Intel’s December Client Pipeline Tracker score into clear positive territory for the first time in 10 months. This signals a significant improvement in the customer outlook of late, and an increasingly hopeful revenue outlook for the year ahead.
December Client Pipeline Tracker Score: +7
Last score: November -1 Recent lowest score: May -9
daniel houston charts
This increase in leads bodes well for pending sales in the first few weeks of the year, as well as hard commission income in late January and February.
And this is one of the most bullish signs Intel has gathered so far that a sustained recovery in housing transactions may finally be beginning.
Read the full breakdown of the latest Client Pipeline Tracker results.
What about buyer returns?
Our Client Pipeline Tracker summarizes how agents feel about their buyer and seller pipeline over the past year and in the near future.
Intel explained the methodology in this post, but here’s a quick refresher on how to interpret the scores.
A score of 0 represents a neutral period in which the client pipeline is neither improving nor deteriorating. A positive score reflects a market where client pipelines are improving or are widely expected to improve within the next 12 months. The higher the rating, the more confident the agent is that things are progressing in the right direction. A negative score indicates that the client’s pipeline situation is deteriorating or is widely expected to deteriorate further next year.
A very positive total score would sit around the +20 mark. This type of score indicates that a large portion of the industry agrees with the fact that the pipeline has improved and will continue to improve.
On the other hand, an extremely negative total score is closer to -20. This is slightly lower than where the industry was in September 2024, when Intel first surveyed distributors about the pipeline.
Results as high as +50 or as low as -50 can be observed for each of the four separate components included in the score.
Below are the component scores for the latest survey and how each sentiment category has changed since the last survey.
Tracker component score
November→December
Current buyer pipeline: -30 → -19 Future buyer pipeline: +6 → +16 Current seller pipeline: -15 → -7 Future seller pipeline: +13 → +18
Agents are reporting improved business conditions across the board, especially on the buyer side.
Only 17% of agents said their buyer pipeline decreased “significantly” in December compared to a year earlier, down from 26% the previous month. Meanwhile, 57 percent of agents report that their buyer pipeline has remained stable or improved in the past year, up from 47 percent the previous month. This is the first time since March that a majority of agents say their buyer pipeline is stable or increasing.
New buyers have returned in recent weeks, and agents are also feeling optimistic about the year ahead.
49% of agency respondents told Intel in late December that they expected their buyer pipeline to improve over the next 12 months, a significant increase from 38% the previous month. did.
The last time so many agents had a positive outlook for the year was in January 2024. At that time, an unseasonably strong customer contributed to an unseasonably strong sales spike the following month.
In the coming weeks, new data from government agencies and the National Association of Realtors will confirm whether this increased pool of buyers translates into actual sales, as it has in the past.
Rates and list diagram
While the buyer pipeline made the most progress towards the end of the year, the outlook for listed customers improved as well.
This progress, in some ways, bucks the short-term trend in mortgage rates, which have risen by about 1 percentage point since September.
Throughout most of that time, the listing pipeline has remained relatively stable. Only in late December did the agency report a significant year-over-year increase in the number of potential listings.
From July to November, the percentage of agent respondents who said their listing pipeline was stable or improving over the past 12 months hovered between 55% and 59%. However, by late December, 69% of agents reported that their listing pipeline had stabilized or grown year-over-year.
December showed that the actual listing pipeline improved significantly year-over-year for the first time in that period.
But in some ways, it was the culmination of improvements in expectations for Pipeline listings that have been building since August, with a broad consensus among financial analysts predicting an imminent shift to Fed rate cuts. After that, they continued to announce several rate cuts. A few weeks later.
As of July, only 31% of agent respondents said they expected their company’s listing pipeline to improve over the next year. By late December, 49% said they expected the listing pipeline to improve over the next 12 months.
Ultimately, the shape and pace of recovery remains an open question. And with mortgage rates remaining volatile, the market could easily suffer a setback along the way.
But as a soon-to-be-published report reveals sales numbers that occurred during the holiday season and upcoming winter weeks, they will be put in the context of a larger set of customers and an increasingly optimistic set of agents. It will be. — that’s not yet reflected in official numbers.
Methodology note: This month’s Inman Intel Index study was conducted from December 18, 2024 to January 2024. As of Friday morning, March 3, 2025, we received 482 responses. These results are preliminary and subject to revision. The entire Inman reader community was invited to participate, and a rotating selection of randomly selected community members were encouraged to participate via email. Users answered a series of questions about their self-proclaimed niche in the real estate industry, including real estate agents, brokerage leaders, financiers, and proptech entrepreneurs. Results reflect the views of our passionate Inman community, but do not necessarily align with the views of the broader real estate industry. This survey is conducted monthly.
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