Better housing market expected in 2025 and 2026 by La Crosse Area REALTORS

Fresh off of a national conference for real estate professionals and associations, Mike Pietek say home sales are expected to increase by 9% in 2025 followed by 13% increase in 2026.

Pietek, the president of the La Crosse Area REALTORS Association, says the economist at the National Association of REALTORS Lawrence Yun predicted how housing market conditions will be under the second Trump administration. We won’t see the 4% mortgage rates from the president’s first term, but a series of interest rate reductions will cause rates to settle at about 6%.

 La Crosse Talk airs weekdays at 6-9 a.m. Listen on the WIZM app, online here, or on 92.3 FM / 1410 AM / 106.7 FM (north of Onalaska). Find all the podcasts here or subscribe to La Crosse Talk PM wherever you get your podcasts.

Here in Wisconsin, Pietek said it is still a seller’s market. The average home price selling in the market is $309,000, up 8%. REALTORS are still seeing multiple offers on homes and some slow-down how quickly upper-end homes costing more than $600,000 are taking to sell. The price of homes increased 8% from last year the number of days on the market is increasing, and the supply of homes is now at 3 months. Six months is considered a balanced market.

Two factors reducing access to housing, according to national REALTOR economist Yun, are the national deficit and low supply of housing. With high debt, there is less money available for mortgage lending as a result. Yun states one area of focus should be on reducing debt resulting in a further reduction in mortgage rates. The second tactic, per the economist, would be to be reducing housing cost by increasing housing supply. Local association president Pietek says their association has been advocating for removing barriers to developing land and the cost to build a home.

It is a challenging market for first-time homebuyers, according to Pietek. This matters because of the significant change homeowners provides to a person’s wealth in the form of equity. Pietek quoted the National Association of REALTORS economist as saying homeowners have an estimated net worth of $415,000 versus renters have $20,000 in 2024.

Pietek says there are a lot of hedge-funds that purchased homes when the cost of housing was low a few years ago. Those homes were converted to rentals or to air-bed-and-breakfasts (AirBnBs).