Ed-itorial 2025: Playing the Long Game

Welcome back to, Ed-itorial: Real Estate, Real Consumer Insights.

Here to give you a monthly update on what has changed and what has stayed the same in consumer behavior around buying homes.

We pulled data at the end of 2024 to forecast how many people were planning to move in 2025. Our forecast was 20 million, which felt low at the time. Well, we’re seeing even more concern now because rates haven’t come down and it doesn’t seem like they will.

We pulled our numbers again and it looks like 20.3 million folks plan to move this year even with all the chatter and worry about interest rates. Ok, so 300,000 more people than a month ago. Maybe we are seeing a bit of optimism, or more likely impatience, with movers in 2025.

Ed-itorial Opinion

Data is a clue about consumer belief that other short-term home stats don’t have. This clue is that consumers are being more careful about their moving plans than month-to-month sales data portends or predicts, yet 300,000 more people are now forecasted to move than a month ago.

The 2024 speculation was after the election homebuyers will get off the couch and buy, but the data is showing, maybe 2026 or even 2027 they jump off the couch, and those years are the active housing markets we have all been predicting.

Add the time prior to finding their dream home, and you can surmise that people on Feb 7th 2025 seriously looking for a home would not actually close until November 2025 or even February of 2026. Is your marketing planned for that?

What does this mean for sales and marketing at homebuilders?

This means a long sales cycle, of 263+ days. It is more important than ever to have programs in place to nurture home buyers through their entire process (which could be upwards of two years in some cases!).

Real estate is a long game for consumers, but a short game for homebuyer marketing and sales teams. Think longer term consumers absolutely want to buy, but it may not be for the next two years. Still, you want to be the one right in front of them when the time comes. \

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Ed Carey

CEO, Audience Town

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The Audience Town team is going to be at the International Builder's Summit in Las Vegas, you don't want to miss it. Register below 👇

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In case you missed the live session, make sure you watch my feature on CommVersion's latest Webinar. I connected with Nick Chitty to discuss the year ahead for the homebuilding industry.

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