The real estate business consistently provides obstacles and opportunities for agents.
I recently sat down with Chris Kelly, president and CEO at HomeServices of America, and David Childers, President at Keeping Current Matters, to discuss what they view as the best data agents can utilize to grow their businesses right now.
If you’ve been searching for information that helps you present a professional opinion of the market, based on facts, this is the article for you.
What’s the role of real estate agents in today’s market?
I began the conversation by asking Chris Kelly for his opinion on the role of agents in this challenging market environment. He began by saying the opportunities for agents continue to be driven by providing consistent, professional service to prospective buyers and sellers.
Kelly pointed to the annual NAR Generational Trends Report as one of his go-to sources for understanding consumer sentiment. Comparing the 2025 report with the last pre-COVID edition in 2019, he sees plenty of reasons for agents to stay optimistic.
“Consumers continue to value agents in the buying and selling process,” he noted. “In 2025, 89 percent of both buyers and sellers used an agent. This is a figure that has held steady and even ticked up slightly since 2019.”
When it comes to why sellers choose a particular agent, the top factor hasn’t changed: Reputation still leads at 31 percent. Trust and honesty followed, inching up from 26 percent to 27 percent over the same period. “This reinforces that who you are matters just as much as what you do,” Kelly said.
Referrals remain the leading source of agent selection, though they’ve dipped from 39 percent in 2019 to 36 percent in 2025. At the same time, more sellers are hiring the first agent they meet, which is up to 77 percent this year. Buyers are doing slightly more comparison shopping, with single-agent interviews slipping from 75 percent to 73 percent. “It’s critical to stay top of mind so you’re the first call when clients are ready,” he stressed.
Kelly summed it up simply: “Despite the rise of digital tools and platforms, consumers overwhelmingly continue to turn to real estate professionals. Agents who consistently add value are seeing their businesses continue to grow.”
The conversation then shifted to the current market outlook. David Childers shared that active monthly listings have now topped 1 million for the second month in a row, with June’s inventory up 28.9 percent year-over-year. He pointed to data showing supply still below but trending toward 2017–2019 levels, the last years untouched by the COVID frenzy.
He shared that the home sales forecasts for 2025 (as seen in the chart below) are predicted to remain low but up slightly from the year before.
He then stated that the increased inventory and continuing low transaction numbers are leading to more price reductions across the country (as seen in the chart below). He highlighted the fact that in June, 20.7 percent of homes listed across the country had price reductions.
He said the increased inventory, lower transaction numbers and number of price reductions are leading to a slowdown in home value appreciation, including a reduction in home prices in 22 of the 50 largest metros in the country.
Despite these factors, he shared that according to NAR, 8 in 10 potential homesellers think they will get their asking price or more. “Seth Godin had a quote where he said that ‘people will always believe what they tell themselves.’ Many sellers have an opinion of the market that isn’t reality, especially when it comes to their home. My message to agents and prospective sellers is that if the price is not compelling, it isn’t selling,” Childers shared.
Despite the current market environment, Childers said it would be very difficult to argue that there is a meltdown in the market. He stated headlines can be accurate but not necessarily as scary as they sound. “If a headline says we have record mortgage debt in this country, that is correct, but it doesn’t tell the whole story,” he said. “We also have record home values and record highs of home equity.”
He stated we have $48 trillion in residential home value with $13 trillion in residential mortgage debt. This means the equity in residential homes now has a value of $35 trillion. “We probably live in, under the surface, the strongest real estate market of our lifetime,” Childers said. The following chart visually shows the home value, equity and debt numbers over the past 20 years.
The conversation then shifted to mortgage rates and a discussion on what to expect in the future. Childers started by saying, “Mortgage rates have been experiencing less volatility in the more recent months, channeling between 6.5 percent and 7 percent.” The following is a chart he provided showing the 30-year fixed mortgage rate fluctuations since 2022.
Childers then shared that most forecasts through the end of 2026 have rates being somewhere between 6 percent and 6.5 percent. The following chart, which Childers provided, shares the projections for mortgage rates from the Mortgage Bankers Association, Fannie Mae and Wells Fargo.
Childers closed with a challenge to every agent: “In this market, there are agents who are winning and agents who are losing. You have to ask yourself, are you committed or just interested?”
He explained that the agents having their best year ever are fully committed to the activities that spark more real estate conversations. Those who are struggling often admit they need to be more active — in other words, less interested and more committed to the strategies that drive success.
The agents who will thrive this year aren’t waiting for the market to change; they’re making the market work for them. That starts with a decision: stop dabbling, start committing. Every call you make, every conversation you start and every ounce of value you deliver moves you closer to winning.
The question isn’t whether there are opportunities in this market; there are. The question is whether you’ll show up consistently enough to claim them.
David Childers can be found on Instagram.
Chris Kelly can be found on LinkedIn.
