Zillow’s Take on the 2025 Housing Market

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Jan 29, 2025

Dr. Orphe Divounguy, a senior economist at Zillow and founder of the Quantitative Research Group, dives into key insights about the housing market in 2025. He discusses how homeowner wealth has influenced economic resilience and minimized recession risks. Orphe also highlights labor market challenges and the ongoing effects of a K-shaped recovery. The conversation covers wage growth, housing affordability, and trends in multifamily housing construction, shedding light on the relationship between economic indicators and residential mobility.

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INSIGHT

Labor Market Concerns

The labor market is showing signs of freezing, with low hiring rates and job openings.
Corporate bankruptcies are at a 14-year high, potentially impacting future employment.

INSIGHT

Great Stay Impact

The "great stay" phenomenon is impacting both the labor and housing markets.
People are less likely to quit jobs or move, mirroring the trend of homeowners staying put due to low mortgage rates.

ADVICE

Affordability Focus

Focus on a strong, non-inflationary economy with productivity growth for housing affordability.
Sustained productivity improvements are key to making housing more accessible.

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In this episode of the Top of Mind podcast, Mike Simonsen sits down with Dr. Orphe Divounguy, senior economist with Zillow's Economic Research team, to talk about what’s on the horizon for the housing market this year. Orphe shares the latest findings from Zillow’s 2025 forecasts, offers some surprising insights from Zillow’s rental data, gives us a framework for understanding mortgage rates and affordability in the U.S., and much more.

About Dr. Orphe Divounguy

Orphe Divounguy is a senior economist with Zillow's Economic Research team where he analyzes economic data to try and identify emerging trends in the housing market. In the past, Orphe’s work focused on quanÏtitative methods for evaluating the impact of economic policy. Orphe earned a doctorate in economics from England’s University of Southampton.

Orphe is also the founder of the Quantitative Research Group and the co-host of the Everyday Economics podcast.

The team’s research can be found at zillow.com/research and includes analyses about for-sale and rental market dynamics, fair housing, and other topics. Zillow also provides dozens of housing market datasets freely available for download at zillow.com/data.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Details from Zillow’s 2025 housing market forecasts: mortgage rates, home sales and home prices
How American homeowner wealth helped stave off recession and what it means for the housing market in 2025
The most important macro economic trends to watch now and what they mean for real estate this year
Surprising insights from Zillow’s rental data on trends in apartments and single family rentals, and what to expect in the near future.
Which local markets to watch in 2025 and why
Smart thinking on the affordability crisis, how it’s changing and how we might find our way out

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Featuring Mike Simonsen, President of Altos Research

A true data geek, Mike founded Altos Research in 2006 to bring data and insight on the U.S. housing market to those who need it most. The company now serves the largest Wall Street investment firms, banks, and tens of thousands of real estate professionals around the country. Mike's insights on the market have been featured in Forbes, New York Times, Bloomberg, Dallas Morning News, Seattle PI, and many other national media outlets.

About Altos Research

The Top of Mind Podcast is produced by Altos Research.

Each week, Altos tracks every home for sale in the country - all the pricing, and all the changes in pricing - and synthesizes those analytics to make them available before becoming visible through traditional channels.

Schedule a demo to see Altos in action. You can also get a copy of our free eBook: How To Use Market Data to Build Your Real Estate Business.

The Top of Mind podcast features top real estate industry insiders and experts to unpack the most important housing, real estate, mortgage data and trends that are shaping the housing market. Hosted by Altos founder Mike Simonsen and produced by the HousingWire Content Studio.