Talks about reopening the Strait of Hormuz have soothed some in the financial industry, but real estate brokers are yet to embrace that sentiment.
As the war in Iran stretches into four months, there are signs that the Strait of Hormuz may eventually reopen.
Investors celebrated. Oil prices have fallen. However, June results suggest that most real estate agents surveyed by Intel have yet to see an improvement in their business outlook.
Agents have become somewhat more optimistic in recent weeks that they will find new homebuyer clients next year, but for now they remain stuck in buyer-seller purgatory, according to the latest research from Inman Intel Index.
And despite financial markets reacting positively to recent developments in negotiations to reopen key trade crossings in the Middle East, the overall outlook has not improved much.
June Client Pipeline Tracker Score: +0.5
Previous high: +13.0 in January 12 months ago: -2.0 in June 2025
daniel houston charts
Business sentiment among agencies has fluctuated widely since last fall, and those surveyed by Intel are still recalibrating their expectations for next year.
Read a complete breakdown of the four components of the score in this week’s report.
In the holding pattern
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
May→June
Current buyer pipeline: -19 → -20 Future buyer pipeline: +3 → +8 Current seller pipeline: -5 → -6 Future seller pipeline: +8 → +7
The most notable change over the past month, and the one that slightly boosted Client Pipeline Tracker’s overall rating, was in buyers’ future expectations for their pipeline.
In June, 32% of agents said they expected their buyer pipeline to grow even larger in a year’s time, up from 27% the previous month. Still, this percentage was well below the 51% of agency respondents who expected year-over-year growth in the pipeline in January.
The month-over-month improvement in forward-looking buyer sentiment was partially offset by the fact that agents do not feel the same way about their pipeline of prospective sellers.
It’s also clear that while some agents remain hopeful that this year will be a better one, it’s not because the pipeline of buyers and sellers is dramatically improving as we head into the summer closing rush.
The percentage of agent respondents who told Intel the buyer pipeline was lighter than it was this time last year remained virtually unchanged from May to June. However, agents reporting “significant” delays in their buyer pipelines, rather than moderate reductions, increased from 14 percent to 18 percent of all respondents over this period.
A similar dynamic was seen on the seller side, with a slight decrease in agents reporting significant year-over-year growth in client lists and a slight increase in agents reporting significant losses.
As a result, agent sentiment towards pipeline listings declined slightly for the fifth straight month.
Oil gets cheaper, but mortgages don’t. What gives?
This movement is occurring against a backdrop of continued fluctuations in financial markets and, by extension, mortgage interest rates.
Oil futures fell on hopes that the key shipping barrier in the Strait of Hormuz could soon reopen as negotiators try to advance a deal to end the war between the United States and Iran.
At the end of Intel’s May survey, oil futures were trading 33% above pre-war levels. At the time of the Inman Community’s latest research, oil futures prices had fallen to just 11 percent above pre-war prices.
But while lower gas prices have provided some relief to consumers, the same is not necessarily true for mortgage rates.
Fed officials are closely monitoring the latest inflation data and have indicated they may be reluctant to continue cutting rates until current inflation subsides.
This same uncertainty has also caused the bond market and its closely related mortgage interest rates to suffer for the most part.
Fixed interest rates on 30-year mortgages remained about the same level as the previous month, or just above 6.5%, in June, despite the wild ups and downs experienced by homebuyers on a daily basis.
For these reasons, even as other areas of the financial market begin to react with relief to developments in the Middle East, the real estate industry appears to be stuck in much the same situation as the past few months.
Intel will continue to track these factors and their reported impact on our client pipeline in the coming months.
Methodology note: This month’s Inman Intel Index survey was conducted June 16-25 and had received 457 responses as of Wednesday. 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, 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.
Email Daniel Huston
