Zillow reported a March rebound even as 30‑year rates climbed past 6%
The spring housing market appeared to wake up in March, with new contracts and web traffic pointing to buyers re‑engaging even as mortgage costs moved higher.
Newly pending listings on Zillow rose 4.6% year-over-year and nearly 30% from February, reaching 281,546. That's the second‑strongest monthly tally since the post‑pandemic comedown in 2022.
Zillow said both the annual and monthly gains were the largest for any March in five years, while average daily page views per listing ran 32% above a year earlier.
Mortgage rates undercut that momentum. Freddie Mac’s 30‑year fixed rate climbed from just under 6% in late February to about 6.38% by late March, eroding some of the affordability improvement that buoyed sentiment earlier in the year.
Zillow estimated the typical monthly payment on a median‑priced US home at $1,789 with 20% down. That's still about 4.4% lower than a year earlier, but up 1.5% from February.
“Buyers and sellers have been navigating uncertainty and market volatility in some form since the onset of the pandemic, and this month's concern over energy prices is no different,” Mischa Fisher, chief economist at Zillow, said.
“However, we have persistent signals that the market has turned a corner. Pent‑up demand from three years of low sales volume and winter storms in January and February, along with the tailwind from lower mortgage rates earlier in the year, seem to have buoyed the market as home shopping season kicked off. In particular, the rapid acceleration of daily page views per listing we saw in March was a noteworthy improvement over the dormant market of recent years.”
Demand outpaced still‑thin supply
Inventory continued to loosen but remained constrained by historical standards.
Zillow reported 1.23 million homes for sale nationwide in March, 4.2% more than a year earlier and almost 10% more than in February. New listings were essentially flat year-over-year, up just 0.1%.
Homes took a median 19 days to go under contract – two days longer than last year but more than a week faster than in February – and about 22.6% of listings registered a price cut.
Other indicators pointed to a similar, if fragile, thaw. The National Association of Realtors’ Pending Home Sales Index showed contract signings in February up 1.8% from January, even as they remained slightly below a year earlier.
The Mortgage Bankers Association reported purchase applications running ahead of 2025 levels in early March, with overall mortgage application volume up 3.2% week-over-week and purchase activity roughly 10% higher than a year before.
Optimism met a harsher rate backdrop
For mortgage professionals, the Zillow data landed in a month when the broader backdrop turned notably more hostile. Mortgage rates rose for four straight weeks in March, with the average 30‑year fixed climbing into the mid‑6% range amid war‑driven oil shocks, renewed inflation worries and shifting expectations for Federal Reserve policy.
In a recent Mortgage Professional America interview, New York‑based agent Alana Lindsay said she expected “an uptick in activity” this spring but “not… a spring 2022‑style market,” pointing to stubborn inflation and low supply as ongoing drags.
Those cross‑currents left a mixed signal for lenders and originators. On one hand, Zillow’s report suggested that pent‑up demand and slightly better affordability earlier in the year drew more buyers back into the market, particularly in metros like Milwaukee, Hartford and Kansas City where home values posted some of the strongest monthly gains.
On the other, the rate shock that followed has already begun to cool some of that enthusiasm, with geopolitical turmoil and tariff uncertainty possibly turning 2026’s spring into another stop‑start season.
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