Jeremy Applebaum, a real-estate broker in Overland Park, Kan., was out of town when his buyer broke the news by text: They were pulling out of the home-buying process, spooked by the sudden downturn in the stock market. “‘It’s frightening when you see thousands of dollars vanish,’” he said they told him.
In Miami, real-estate agent Ida Schwartz saw a similar situation unfold. Her buyer decided it wasn’t worth sinking over $1 million into a home given the current economic uncertainty, especially since they were not in a hurry to buy, she recalled.
Redfin agent Sabina Girsh in San Francisco shared that one of her buyers found their budget shrinking due to stock-market turmoil. They had planned to use money from their investment account for a down payment, but after the downturn, they hit pause.
Economic Uncertainty Weighs on Homebuyers
Across the U.S. — and across income levels — many prospective buyers are hitting the brakes, real-estate agents and survey data suggest. The pause complicates an already elusive recovery for the residential real-estate industry, which has remained frozen for the past three years.
High home prices and high mortgage rates have left the market expensive, and even high-income buyers are pulling back as their stock-market portfolios take a hit. The Trump administration’s policies have fueled anxiety among consumers, agents said, causing them to delay purchases. Trump’s new tariffs on imported goods, in particular, have upset financial markets, decreasing the wealth buyers can allocate to housing. Attempts to drastically reduce the size of the federal government have caused financial hardship for workers laid off from their jobs.
Buyers face multiple financial uncertainties: job loss, recovery of retirement and investment accounts, future mortgage rates and home prices, and how tariffs will impact their cost of living.
Survey Data Reveals Growing Buyer Reluctance
In a Redfin survey conducted between April 10 and 14, about a quarter of respondents — including 25% of homeowners and 19% of renters — canceled plans for a major purchase due to tariffs. Nearly four in 10 respondents, including 41% of homeowners and 31% of renters, said Trump’s tariff policy made them much less likely to make a big purchase like a home or car this year.
Chen Zhao, the economics research lead at Redfin, said in a blog post that the increased likelihood of recession was “understandably making people wary of putting a big chunk of their money toward a house or a car.” Zhao added, “Consumers are tightening their belts because they are rightly nervous about their job security and the prospect of paying more for everyday expenses.”
Stock-Market Swings Shake Buyer Confidence
Volatile markets have affected the purchasing power of higher-income buyers, especially those planning to pay cash. In San Francisco, many tech workers tap into their stock-market wealth for down payments, Girsh noted. Two of her clients paused their home-buying process when the stock market sold off in early April. “They fully relied on their [investments] to use toward the down payment,” she said.
With interest rates still high, a 20% down payment was standard, Girsh explained. In 2024, the average down payment in California was 18.6%, or nearly $94,000, according to Realtor.com. Meanwhile, the median price of a single-family home in California was $884,350 as of March, according to the California Association of Realtors. Girsh’s buyers were looking at homes priced over $1.5 million, typical for the Bay Area.
Homes priced over $1 million had kept U.S. home sales afloat for the past few months. In February, sales of homes priced over $1 million rose 11.5% year-over-year, the biggest increase among all price ranges.
However, all that changed after Trump’s sweeping global tariff announcement on April 2, which he described as “liberation day.” Although he later issued a 90-day pause on higher tariffs for dozens of countries, market uncertainty persisted.
Schwartz said one of her Miami buyers decided to wait it out: “The buyer decided that [they were] going to wait,” she said. “‘I’m not in any rush; I have a beautiful home right now … so let me just decide how this plays out.’”
Job Insecurity Adds Another Layer of Concern
An unstable job market has made buyers even more cautious. In Kansas, another one of Applebaum’s buyers pulled out over fears about job security. The couple worked for the federal government and worried about potential layoffs as the Department of Government Efficiency made sweeping cuts.
Both this couple and Applebaum’s other buyer were “move-up buyers” — people aiming to sell their current home to purchase a larger or more desirable one. Pausing their search means staying put longer.
Some Buyers Still See Opportunity
Not all buyers are deterred. Rebecca Heller, a real-estate attorney in New York City, said two home sales she worked on fell through as markets crashed. But “fortune favors the bold,” she said in an email to MarketWatch: Two days later, one of the properties — a $1 million single-family home in the Bronx — found a buyer willing to pay 50% in cash and finance the rest.
Home Prices Begin to Slow
With buyers pulling out, home prices are already starting to slow. In March, the typical home’s value grew at the slowest pace for this time of year since 2018, Zillow reported. Home values rose by 0.2% in March from February. In some cities like San Antonio, Texas, and Tampa, Fla., values declined month-over-month.
About 24% of homeowners selling their homes in March cut their asking prices, according to Zillow.
Sellers Offer Perks to Attract Buyers
Sellers are offering more concessions to sweeten deals. Redfin reported that in the first quarter of the year, sellers dangled perks such as money toward repairs, closing costs, or even mortgage-rate buydowns. In Seattle, 71% of sellers offered concessions last month — the highest among 24 major U.S. metros analyzed. Portland, Ore., had the second-highest share.
“A lot of sellers are offering money for mortgage-rate buydowns, and I recently had one seller cover seven months of [homeowners-association] fees for the buyer,” said Chaley McVay, a Redfin real-estate agent based in Portland.
