The REAL Market Report: December 2025

Well happy New Year everybody! I hope I’m not the only one, despite saying that phrase countless times over the past few weeks, that continues to write 2025 anytime I have a pen in my hand.

It usually takes a few weeks for the new date to sink in when physically writing out the year although it certainly feels like we have turned a proverbial page.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also say that I hope you all enjoyed the holiday season, surely filled with plenty of family time, too much food and drink, not enough sleep and just enough adrenaline to make it to the finish line.

We had a lovely Christmas in our new home which we moved in to at the end of November. It was nice to be settled here for the holidays but somewhat of an odd experience to decorate for Christmas as soon as we unpacked our bags. My wife and I were wondering what the house would feel like after the tree came down, suffice it to say “empty” has crossed our minds a couple of times.

It seemed like everyone we knew (ourselves included) was battling a recurring bug which thankfully didn’t last very long. And this being our first Christmas season with a toddler at home, I was finally able to relate to this famous lyric:

“…and mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again…”

Now that we have another on the way, this Christmas will feel like a breeze when the calendar comes around again next year.

Alright, thank you for the catch up, but shall we turn our attention to why you are really here?

This past Monday felt like the real first day of the year and while the real estate market might still be sleeping, it won’t be for long.

The first step to being prepared for the spring market (quickly on it’s way) is to wrap our head around how the year ended. Please allow me to recap 2025 along the way.

Where should we begin, because there is no obvious category staring me in the face. Everything was a bit of a surprise last month!

The average price saw an interesting bump in December on a month over month basis rising 2.5% to $598,980. That number is down about 1% from the previous year. Here’s an interesting fact: in the last 13 years, the average price has risen from November to December 7 out of 13 times.

Seeing how the previous couple of months had played out, I was certainly not expecting a price increase. Maybe we should dub “unpredictable” as the word of the year.

On the whole, the average sale price for all of 2025 was $630,646, down only .1% from 2024 and .7% from 2023.

I would argue that those figures don’t really jive with the general feeling in the market that the market is slower or tougher than those time periods and that prices are actually declining in reality.

If we look at the MLS benchmark price (calculated monthly) we see a steady decline from the beginning of 2025.

Over the past two years, we have seen a hump as the benchmark price peaks in the spring to return to its starting point at the end of the year. While the average and median prices followed that trend a bit more, the benchmark price went down by about 8% over a 12 month span.

This is something that I will be closely tracking in Q1. So many sellers are waiting to see how our spring market shapes up this year before deciding what they want to do and I can see it going 1 of 2 ways.

Either this price trend ends, and we see stability or an increase in prices. This would lead to a lot of sellers getting their homes on the market in the spring and trying to capitalize on some market momentum.

Or this trend continues. That would lead to a further stagnation of the market as sellers don’t meet the market with their list prices and a ton of active inventory builds, creating an even slower market.

Moving on!

365 new listings in December, doesn’t seem like a lot, but it was considerably higher than the 10 year average (285.1). It is also the highest total for the month of December that I can see.

Neither of those two points should be shocking to anyone. Throughout the year it seemed like we saw record high numbers of new listings each month and that the year end total was going to blow us away.

Surprisingly, the overall total for all of 2025 wasn’t that far out of line with the previous 10 year figures.

I feel confident in saying that I think we will continue to see elevated numbers of new listings in 2026 and that the yearly total will surpass that of 2025.

Following the trail of bread crumbs, we come to active listings, which usually take a dive in December as a ton of listings that didn’t sell are either cancelled or expire at the end of the year.

I said it a few times during the fall months: declining inventory is what gives the spring market momentum and life. Fewer homes on the market to end the year gives space for new listings to hit the market and interest buyers. If there is a lot of inventory remaining, it continues to clog up the market with overpriced or stale listings.

So how low did we go?

We ended the year with 1358 active listings which is 26% more than in 2024 and, you guessed it, the most active listings to end the year as far back as I can see.

Furthermore, I expect a lot of the homes that didn’t sell in 2025 to come back to the market by the time the spring market hits. I think we are in for even more active inventory in 2026 than we saw in 2025.

Finally, how did sales perform in the final month of the year? Pretty well actually! 271 sales exceeded my expectations and was a strong performance relative to the 10 year average as well.

89% of the 10yr average was the best comparison for any month of the year and definitely builds upon the momentum we saw in the second half of the year (except for September).

2025 was the slowest year for sales that I have data for, something that we knew was coming since the end of the spring market. It would have taken a massive performance over the final 6-7 months of the year to beat 2024 sales.

However, if we do break the year in half and look at sales numbers from July onward, we see that 2025 outperformed 2022 and 2023 while lagging 2024 by only 4%.

Maybe the word of the year is “mixed signals”.

At the end of 2025, here is the moral of the story: prices and sales are down while new listings and active inventory are up. If you want to sell a home in 2026, those are tough pills to swallow. Either you, as a seller, will decide that you want to move badly enough to meet the market, or you won’t.

There are countless sellers out there testing the market, or putting their house for sale while thinking “if I get my price, I will sell”. I can almost guarantee you that this strategy will not bear fruit and lead to a sale.

If you truly want to move, get your house sold and move on to the part of the market where you actually have an advantage: being a buyer.

In my experience, the happiest people in the real estate market are not those that struggle to sell their home or try to time the market perfectly. They decide they want to move (for whatever reason) and they do it.

Thank you for joining me here at the end of the article, I hope I didn’t put you to sleep with facts, figures and charts. I am excited for what 2026 is going to bring and I am ready to help you and anyone you know that wants to work together this year.