Pending home sales see the biggest fall in over a year

The one thing I would change

I’ve loved my real estate career, but if I could go back, there’s one thing I’d do differently: I would have taken social media seriously much earlier.

Here’s why.

I recently sold a listing in Bel Air for $38 million. The buyer was based in South Korea and ended up working with two young agents here in California. They didn’t know each other beforehand. The connection came through a friend who had been following those agents on Instagram.

That’s it.  And it led to a $38 million deal.

That’s the power of social media. And for a long time, I didn’t get it.

In today’s Foundation Plans, I share with you my conversation with Julia Wang, where we unpacked how she used social media to completely reshape her career.

It’s a great conversation, and one that might change how you think about building your own business.

- James

Pending home sales fall dramatically

As of April 12, U.S. pending home sales fell 4.1% YOY, the biggest decline in over a year. According to Redfin, sales fell in all but seven of the 50 biggest U.S. metro areas. 

Here’s what else they report about the spring housing market:

• Demand is clearly slowing: Touring activity is up just 11% YTD, a sharp deceleration from the 40% increase seen at this point last year.

• Uncertainty is freezing buyers: Geopolitical risk tied to the Iran war is weighing on sentiment and keeping mortgage rates volatile, even as they’ve eased to ~6.3%.

• Affordability is still a binding constraint: Prices rose 2.3% YoY—the fastest pace in a year—continuing to sideline cost-sensitive buyers.

• Supply isn’t the issue: New listings (-1.4%) and active listings (-2.7%) are both down, with months of supply at 4.2—roughly balanced but not tight enough to pull buyers back in.

• Pricing power is slipping: Homes are taking longer to sell (48 days, +4 YoY), fewer are clearing above list (24.3%), and the sale-to-list ratio has ticked down to 98.6%.reengage.

My take

This is what a stalled market looks like in real time. Buyers have more leverage than they’ve had in years – inventory is stable, bidding wars are cooling, and sellers are losing pricing power – but they’re not acting on it. Instead, uncertainty is taking over. The Iran war, rate swings, and still-high housing costs are making buyers hesitant right when they’d normally be stepping in. So you end up with a market that isn’t crashing, but isn’t really moving either: supply isn’t tight enough to create urgency, demand isn’t strong enough to absorb what’s out there, and pricing is starting to soften around the edges. Until confidence comes back, this gap between buyer advantage and buyer hesitation is going to define the market.

San Francisco home prices are the highest in the country

The median home sale price in the San Francisco metro area jumped 14.4% year over year in March to a record $1.7 million – the largest increase since March 2018 and the biggest gain among the 50 most populous U.S. metros, according to Redfin.

Here are the key takeaways from their latest update:

• Supply remains the limiting factor: Inventory is very constrained, preventing prices from adjusting downward despite broader affordability pressures.

• Demand is rebounding at the high end: Activity is being driven by wealthier buyers, who are less constrained by elevated mortgage rates or high costs.

• The market is tightening again: Even with more listings coming online, demand is absorbing supply quickly enough to push prices higher.

• Affordability remains stretched: Even with renewed demand, $1.7M prices keep the market inaccessible to most buyers, reinforcing its reliance on high-income households.

My take

If there’s one takeaway from this report, it’s this: San Francisco simply doesn’t have enough housing. That’s the core issue—not just here, but across the country. When prices are jumping 14% to a record high, that’s not a mystery; it’s what happens when demand runs into a wall of limited supply. You’ll hear a lot of ideas about how to fix affordability, and many of them sound reasonable. But here’s a simple way to evaluate them: if they don’t meaningfully increase the supply of housing—whether that’s single-family, multifamily, or anything in between—they’re not going to solve the problem. They might shift things around at the margins, but they won’t actually make housing more affordable.

States where affordability has declined the most

Housing costs are the primary cause behind today’s affordability crisis. 

According to Realtor.com, after examining six core household expense categories —shelter and utilities, groceries, health insurance, car insurance, gasoline, and child care —between 2019 and 2025, data from the BLS and Census Bureau send a clear signal.

While gasoline prices rose 16.5%, health insurance increased 22.8%, and groceries climbed 25.1%, shelter and utilities outpaced them all, surging 33.9%.

On average, households are now spending about $4,934 more per year on shelter and utilities than they were in 2019. And unlike other categories, this isn’t something people can easily cut back on—it’s a fixed cost that puts pressure on everything else in the budget.

Here are the top ten states where affordability deteriorated the most:

1. Rhode Island

2. Massachusetts

3. California

4. New York

5. District of Columbia

6. Oklahoma

7. Hawaii

8. Michigan

9. Tennessee

10. Wisconsin

My take

Realtor.com has done us a real service here. The country is facing an affordability crisis, and this report makes clear what’s driving it: housing costs. And those costs are high for a simple reason: we haven’t built enough. This isn’t a red-state or blue-state issue; it’s a national one. For years, housing supply has lagged demand, and now we’re seeing the consequences play out across the country. As agents, we can’t fix this directly, but we should be clear about what would help: policies that allow more housing to be built. Without that, there isn’t a path out of the affordability crunch we’re in.

Schematics

The news that just missed the cut

• Things to never say on your sales calls and what to say instead

• These 29 cities will pay you to move there; they’ll even throw in $35,000 if you build a house.

• When you send listing emails, use this to boost your click-through rates

• The best real estate prospecting letter templates ranked by The Close

• This new housing market clock helps buyers and sellers determine whether their market is winding down—or up—and what to do.

Foundation Plans

Advice from James to win the day

Our latest episode of Rise Above the Ranks is live. 

I sat down with Julia Wang to unpack how she used social media to completely reshape her trajectory: from being underestimated early in her career to building a 250-agent brokerage from the ground up.

This isn’t a surface-level conversation about posting more content. It’s a clear look at how attention, consistency, hard work, and positioning translate into real business – clients, deals, and scale.

As Julia makes clear, you don’t need to appeal to everyone. In fact, trying to do so is a losing strategy. The agents who win know exactly who they’re speaking to, and aren’t afraid to turn the wrong people off.

Social media isn’t the only path to building a successful real estate career. But it is one of the most powerful levers available today – and one I underestimated for too long. As I said up top, if I could go back, I would have taken it seriously much earlier in my career.

If you’re trying to figure out how to stand out in a crowded market, this conversation will inspire you and give you a practical blueprint.

Watch it, and let me know what you think.

Breezy

Feature of the Week — Efficiency

Breezy runs alongside real estate agents throughout the day and acts as an AI personal assistant in real time.

At a high level, Breezy does these things:

• Captures and organizes conversations so no follow-up or detail gets lost

• Generates branded comps and reports on the fly, ready for clients

• Keeps your pipeline current automatically, without manual updating

• Reveals how you can reposition and develop your property through proprietary software we call Underbuilt

Instead of agents juggling spreadsheets, notes apps, CRM updates, and presentation tools, Breezy brings those workflows together.

Founding Member, Kerri Brooks, says:

“I love that comps aren’t buried in 60-page reports. Having comps, AI notes, and an assistant all in one app instead of juggling a CRM, ChatGPT, and separate tools is a game-changer.” — Kerri Brooks, The Keyes Company – Stuart

Join here!

Just in Case

Keep the latest industry data in your back pocket with today’s mortgage rates:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” — Steve Jobs

Each day is a gift – a chance to live the life you want. Ruthlessly focus on your goals. Don’t let your past or the fear of being judged distract or paralyze you. Choose to live with an integrity that you can be proud of.

Have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you back here next Friday!

- James