Podcast: Has Housing’s Spring Selling Season Started Yet?

People in housing are mostly glass-half-full types. You have to be optimistic in a business as cyclical as housing is, and one that might be swerved by external shocks at any time. But since mortgage rates started to rise in early 2022, most housing people have been carefully realistic. There are headwinds. There are hurdles. We know that. We are adapting and selling homes, but it's never easy.

Historically, spring is a time of housing optimism. It is the good part of that inherent cyclicality. They even named it - the "Spring Selling Season." But has the season lived up to the hype so far in 2026? To answer that question, Cara Lavender and Dillan Krieg of John Burns Research and Consulting joined me on the latest episode of the New Home Insights podcast. As always, those two spend every day plumbing fundamentals and nuances to tease out the latest shape of the housing market.

Yes, spring still matters

Let's start with an existential question for the spring selling season: is it still a thing? So much activity has moved online—does it really matter that the weather warms in the spring to pull people out of their winter shells and into new home sales offices?

The short answer is yes, but with a technological twist. There is still a logic to spring in terms of the calendar. Think school schedules, tax refunds, the end of the winter holidays. Cara said, "Most families aren't going to want to move, purchase a home, uproot their kids in the middle of the year. So listing your house, putting an offer in the spring season gets you into that home before school starts, which is a big driving factor."

But, Cara added, "The online landscape that's been shaped now for buyers, whether you're looking on the new home or the resale side—a lot's changed." So, regardless of the time of year, you have savvier buyers walking into those new home sales offices. "You have a very educated buyer who's done the comparisons. They know what's out there. They know what they want."

Okay, but how has spring gone so far?

We have a short answer for that, too, but you might not want to hear it. "Generally, spring 2026 has been falling pretty flat," Cara said. "We started to hear optimism going into January and even the beginning of February…. We started seeing some pricing stability emerge, some momentum on sales rates…. But then you add on this now very volatile geopolitical landscape, and it's just added another headwind to all of the preexisting headwinds we had going into this year."

One key tactic has prevented further erosion in sales volumes: incentives. "We've seen sales rates continue to slow on a year-over-year basis. And really, the reason they haven't completely fallen off a cliff is because of what builders have been able to do on the pricing landscape with their incentives, with all of the pricing levers they've been able to pull."

Incentives are an obvious sign that pricing power belongs to the consumer. Dillan framed it this way: "On the pricing side, it's a little bit of a good news, bad news situation. To start with the bad news, pricing is still weak. Builders' incentives are still very high. There's not a lot of pricing power, not a lot of builders who are really increasing their net prices this year."

It's the calendar that makes this so worrisome. Dillan pointed out that spring is normally where builders reclaim margin. Incentivizing "is not really what we want to see in the spring because the spring is really where builders take the lion's share of their price increases or the reduced incentives throughout the year."

But didn't he say something about good news, too? "I did say there was some good news, though. [I thought so.] And really what it is, is that things are a bit more stable this year than they were last year." That is, incentives have stabilized and maybe even eased a bit recently, but, as Dillan explained, "They're averaging 7.5%, which is … still a pretty high incentive level."

What's holding buyers back?

There is a stew of reasons buyers have sidelined themselves. Let's start with the most obvious—mortgage rates and the resulting lock-in effect. The year started out with a nice little downward trend. "Towards the end of February, beginning of March, we actually started to see a 30-year fixed with a 5 in front of it," Cara said. But we know it didn't last. "They quickly went back up in March and hit around that 6.5 range. They've been trending down since then. I think we're sitting at a 6.3, 6.2 today."

We were talking at the end of April, by the way, so we already know that rates have been volatile again in the days that followed. And that is a big part of the problem. With rates, volatility is bad. "Really, that's reinforced that kind of consumer psyche of, 'I just saw a rate with the 5 in front of it. Maybe I need to wait a little bit longer.'"

But haven't builder buy downs pushed down rates for many new home buyers? Cara pointed out that this, by itself, is not enough for many buyers. "There are other components of the equation to get to this affordability issue. We need that wage growth, we need price relief, and we need the rate relief."

Absent these conditions, consumers are jumpy. Dillan noted that consumers "are not feeling very good about it to start. If you look at one of the main surveys about consumer sentiment and just measuring how consumers feel about things, the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment survey, their survey says that the level of consumer confidence and sentiment around buying a home is pretty much at 30-year lows right now. We're talking 1980 levels almost."

The labor market is a bit of a bright spot, at least in the sense of a "low-hire, low-fire environment." But concerns about geopolitics, the impacts of AI, gas prices, and, for many, immigration weigh on potential buyers. Dillan noted that "All of these things at the margins have just really added up to create a consumer that just has to say, 'Man, is it the right time to make the largest purchase of my life right now?'"

What's working and what can we do?

Actually, let's start with one tactic that is not moving the needle—ARMs. Adjustable-rate mortgages were a big part of the sugar high that fueled the frothy market before the Great Recession collapse in 2008. This generational lesson is partly why ARMs have not made much headway this cycle. Gen Z may not be all that bothered by them, Dillan acknowledged, but their parents are, and that's enough to make ARMs seem too risky.

Two other trends, however, are moving in the right direction, though agonizingly slowly. Cara noted that "when you look at national affordability, we've seen it improve to roughly its best level since 2022."

The other is the lock-in effect of low mortgage rates. Though that still constrains resale supply, folks are very gradually being freed up. "I think as of the fourth quarter of 2025, we still had about 80% of borrowers at a rate below 6%," Cara said. That level continues to come down, but without a significant dip in mortgage rates, it will continue to be a slow drip.

In many markets, one bright spot has been the high end. This is part of the "K-shaped economy" commentary you've probably seen. Cara noted that "we continue to see that luxury, more custom segments at those higher price points are a little bit more resilient. And it's that entry level that's still the pain point."

Another plus is adaptability. Builders have shown they can change to fit the times. Dillan said, "The buyer is hesitant right now…. There's no order-taking going on anymore. It's a process right now to help that consumer feel comfortable with their home purchase."

Tactics like customizing incentive packages can separate new homes from the competition. "Whatever combination it is, it's what's allowing these builders to outperform the resale market."

What happens next?

Let's be honest, the vibe is not great right now. "We ask our builders, we survey on traffic ratings, the quality, the volume, and kind of their expectations," Cara said. "And they're at the worst levels we've seen in March, really in survey history for a lot of the metrics."

Is there a case for something better soon? Say mortgage rates improve a bit, the external shocks stop shocking, and the economy doesn't falter? Cara thought maybe. "I definitely think there's an argument for some momentum shift right now…. If all of those things were to happen, I do think that can shift momentum."

Dillan concurred but slyly shifted the time horizon. "Well, I think we can definitely have some opportunity for 2027. But is it going to be a real pop? I don't think that's going to happen. And unfortunately, because all of these things have really compounded on the consumer for so long, it's going to take time for it to filter."

Remember back in the olden days when people said things like "stay alive to '95"? You probably don't. But let me try a few new ones on you:

• "Keep your bread unleavened until '27"
• "Make lemonade from lemons in '27"
• "I have a confession, it won't be much better till '27"
• "You might have to be a felon until '27"
• "The housing market will go to 11 in '27"

So, the key takeaways:

• The spring selling season still matters.
• It has not gone that well so far.
• People are still buying homes. It's just a process, and will probably come with an incentive.
• Things will improve, but it will require some stability first and take time.
• Rhyming things with "seven" is really hard.