There was little change in the customer pool in March. But the once optimistic outlook for 2026 has shattered as borrowing costs have risen due to the Iran war.
A bomb settlement that rewrote the rules of the real estate industry in 2024. A growing list of new taxes on imported goods created economic uncertainty in 2025. And now, with the war with Iran closing a major trade chokepoint, oil prices and mortgage rates have risen to unexpected highs.
In each of the past three years, a major unexpected event occurred in March that changed the macroeconomic landscape and forced agencies to put the brakes on next year’s revenue expectations.
And while real estate agents reported only a slight decline in the number of current clients in late March as a result of rising interest rates, they are once again lowering their expectations for what their buyer and seller pipelines will look like in a year’s time, according to Intel’s Client Pipeline Tracker.
The metric uses responses to the Intel Index survey, which ended Thursday, to create a composite score that tracks agents’ business sentiment over time.
And as Page heads into spring, agency sentiment has declined from a slightly optimistic outlook to a more cautious outlook.
March Client Pipeline Tracker Score: +4
Previous high: +13 in January 12 months ago: -1 in March 2025
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Read about the four factors included in your score in the full report.
Expectation instead of observation
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 significantly positive total score falls around the +20 mark. This type of score means that much of the industry agrees that the pipeline is improving and will continue to improve.
On the other hand, a significantly negative total score is closer to -20. This is slightly lower than where the industry was in September 2023, when Intel first surveyed distributors about its 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
February→March
Current buyer pipeline: -15 → -18 Future buyer pipeline: +20 → +9 Current seller pipeline: -3 → -6 Future seller pipeline: +20 → +14
What is striking about these results is how little change was caused by actual clients ceasing to negotiate with their agents.
While the current buyer pipeline is certainly on the decline, rising interest rates and economic uncertainty have not yet had a significant impact on customer decisions.
But as the war drags on and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, markets are weighing broader risks to the global economy, with oil prices and mortgage rates potentially rising for a longer period of time. And agents appear to be sensitive to these risks, too.
The percentage of agent respondents who expected their buyer pipeline to expand over the next year fell from 49% in February to 36% in March. This coincided with an increase in the percentage of agents who expected the buyer pipeline to be flat or slightly decreasing, from 48% in February to 61% in March. Notably, the percentage of agents expecting their buyer base to decline “significantly” remained robust at 3% of agent responses.
So unless real customers head in the door, agents won’t see this as a disaster scenario for the 2026 market. However, many companies are reassessing their business revenue outlook for the coming months.
Similar changes were seen on the listed side. But agents don’t seem to think the recent developments will have much of an impact on sellers’ customers.
The percentage of agents who told Intel they expected the listing pipeline to improve next year fell from 50% in February to 41% in March. Many of these once-optimistic agents are embracing uncertainty rather than pessimism, with the percentage of agents expecting no changes to their listing pipeline over the next 12 months rose from 38% in February to 46% in March. Pessimistic outlook among listed companies has only increased from 12% in February to 13% in recent weeks.
However, whether these attitudes are sustained depends on many complex factors in the unfolding conflict, including how long the conflict lasts.
Some of the effects of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz are immediate, such as the cost of filling up your tank of gas or taking out a mortgage.
Other impacts may not be felt for months, such as a lack of fertilizer passing through the Straits and the impact on crop harvests and food prices from the fall onwards.
The longer this critical trade route remains closed, the more other risks to the energy supply chain will grow over time.
Intel will continue to closely monitor distributor sentiment in the coming weeks and months.
Methodology note: This month’s Inman Intel Index survey was conducted from March 24th to April 2nd and received 474 responses. 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, brokers, 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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