If the last few years have taught real estate practitioners anything, it’s that the housing market is anything but predictable.
The COVID-19 pandemic threw what can only be described as a massive wrench into many of the “typical” trends of the market. So many ways in which housing worked, behaved or cycled shifted, or went away completely.
Specifically, traditional seasonality seemed to disappear in the early post-pandemic market, driven both by market conditions and evolutions in remote work.
However, despite the new state of housing nowadays, it is “still one of the most seasonal parts of the economy,” according to Nadia Evangelou—principal economist and director of real estate research for the National Association of Realtors®.
Seasonality definitely remains a trend in housing according to economists, but the trend is one of many that has been reshaped and affected by the pandemic.
Here’s how some housing economists break down the shifts in seasonality since the pandemic, where it’s settled out to currently and where it may be going in 2027 and beyond:
The pandemic shift
Housing economists across the board agreed that the typical, historical trend of seasonality was a slow start to the year followed by a yearly peak in home sales from March/April to June (aka from the start of spring through to the start of summer), with a then gradual slow for the remainder of the year—except for the smaller peak sometimes seen in the fall months of September/October.
Evangelou says that this trend has been “true for decades now simply because that’s how people plan their lives.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck hard in March of 2020, however, the typical peak buying season was shifted back. Selma Hepp—chief economist at Cotality—notes that due to the unfortunate timing of nationwide lockdowns, the typical spring peak was pushed back to the end of the summer around August. This cycle repeated in 2021, as the initial rounds of vaccines debuted in the spring pushed the peak buying season back to the summer once again.
A few other shifts occurred due to the pandemic, as Realtor.com® Senior Economist Hannah Jones notes.
One such shift is that new listings “start earlier and taper later.” Specifically, new listings on the portal observed a 10% month-over-month increase in February and 18.1% in March in the 2023-2026 period, as opposed to 8.2% and 16.3% pre-pandemic (2017-2019). The drop off in September and October has also been smaller post-pandemic, averaging 3% as opposed to 7.6% and 4.9% seen pre-pandemic.
Jones also notes that price cuts have been pushed back, peaking two months later than they used to pre-pandemic. Previously, she explains that price cuts used to peak in August, but from 2023-2026, that peak was shifted back to October.
Overall, the consensus among economists is that the typical March/April through June trend returned post-2021, but has been significantly downtrodden due to market challenges.
To break it down, Evangelou explains that pre-pandemic (2015-2019), existing-home sales were typically around 300,000 in January, and increased to about 570,000 in June. Fast forwarding post-pandemic to 2026, these numbers have shrunk to about 230,000 in January and 420,000 in June.
“The pattern is the same, the difference is that today’s June market is still about 150,000 sales (or about 26%) below a typical pre-pandemic June,” she continues. “We know why we have that trend, because affordability remains a challenge. Elevated mortgage rates and home prices are keeping buyers on the sidelines.”
Where seasonality stands now
While the typical trend of seasonality has returned, the pace of activity has been significantly slowed from pre-pandemic numbers due to affordability and inventory challenges.
However, 2026 has been a year in transition. While the state of housing is not on a massive upswing, things are historically better than the past few years directly following the pandemic.
While mortgage rates are elevated and fluctuating, they are lower than previous years. Home-price growth has been significantly slowing, and affordability is recording some marked improvements. Overall, spring 2026 was deemed “resilient” by many economists.
As Evangelou says, it’s “promising” and “encouraging.”
“What we see is that this year, the first half of the year is better when we compare it year-over-year with 2025,” she continues. “We hope the activity will continue this momentum in the second half. This will help with the market to get away from the same level that we had in 2024 and 2025, and of course to move closer to a more normal market.”
Due to the pretty consistent fluctuations in mortgage rates, Hepp also notes that the market has been seeing what she refers to as “boomlets” outside of typical seasonality. These “boomlets” occur when there are drops in mortgage rates, bringing to the table some of the buyers who have been closely watching from the sidelines.
Looking at some of the data, Jones explains that some market movements (measured via days on the market) in June 2026 actually “matched the pre-pandemic norm exactly.”
Jones also notes that the share of listings with price cuts has fallen year-over-year consistently through the first half of 2026, a reversal of the upward trend of cuts seen throughout 2024 and 2025.
Coupled with declines in list prices, she says that this suggests “sellers are increasingly pricing homes to sell from the start rather than testing the market high and cutting later,” another bettering sign.
And although mortgage rates were also widely expected to improve throughout 2026 like other market indicators have done, the conflict with Iran threw a bit of a wrench into the mix. Rates have risen and pretty consistently fluctuated as the conflict has persisted.
“Nowadays there’s a lot of sensitivity to rates because they’ve gone up so much from where we were in pre-2022,” she explains. “There’s a lot of folks sitting on the sidelines. There’s a lot of pent-up demand, and less restriction around typical school year calendars or seasonality, but more around if mortgage rates drop. We do see more mortgage applications come in every time that you see a drop in mortgage rates.”
Locality is also playing a big part this year, as Bright MLS Chief Economist Lisa Sturtevant points out. She explains that the national numbers can be “a little bit misleading” when you take into account the many variances between regions observed throughout the year so far.
“We see sales are up in some markets, but they’re still pretty slow in others,” Sturtevant continues. “I think while maybe there are places where we’re seeing more transactions than we did last year, in a lot of places it’s a modest increase, and it’s still far below long-term averages in terms of sales.”
Where we’re (potentially) headed
With 2026 shaping up to be the year of transition to stability, potentially even some normalization, what does that mean for 2027, and beyond?
Sturtevant says it is hard to make solid predictions, as there are still some wildcards at play—mainly in the form of the continuance of the Iranian conflict and its headwinds on inflation and mortgage rates.
However, she says that there is a “significant amount of pent-up demand in the market, and at some point it needs to be unleashed.”
“People who have been sitting on homes that they want to sell, but they haven’t because they’re waiting for interest rates to stabilize and for things to be more economically secure,” Sturtevant continues. “If interest rates come down, if we have a resolution in the Middle East, if we have more political and economic security, the first part of 2027 could be a banner year. It could be really busy.”
Really, eyes just have to stay fixed on “what drives home-buying and -selling,” as Sturtevant says, referring to “household growth and employment growth” rather than a seasonal timing.
“As long as employment growth remains robust and wages continue to rise, people are going to form households,” she explains. “They’re going to buy houses and it’s going to result in gradual increases in transactions.”
