For three years, the housing market did a lot of nothing, with sellers waiting for lower rates and buyers waiting for lower prices. April finally broke the pattern.
Contract signings jumped 4.5% from a year ago, the strongest reading in three years, according to Realtor.com's Spring 2026 Housing Market Progress Report released Thursday. New listings and signings are both sitting at their highest levels since mortgage rates spiked in 2022.
Coastal markets used to drive every housing cycle, but this one looks different.
Kansas City led the pack with contract signings up 20.7% year to date, followed by Louisville at 18.9%. Indianapolis, Columbus, and Cincinnati each posted gains in both new listings and signings, the kind of two-sided activity that signals a real market rather than just a price war.
Affordability is the obvious reason. The typical Midwest home still costs a fraction of what a similar place runs in coastal markets, and Japanese builders are betting on that gap as they buy up U.S. construction firms.
There's something else happening too. Sellers are pricing more like adults from the start, which is making homes move.
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Nationally, the median list price per square foot fell 2.4% from a year ago, which on its own is not new. What is new: the share of listings with price cuts also dropped, by 1.25 percentage points.
That mix is unusual, because normally when prices fall, more sellers cut later to chase the market down. The opposite is happening here, with sellers coming in at realistic numbers from day one.
Austin, Jacksonville, and Phoenix tell the same story. All three saw fewer new listings hit the market but more buyers signing contracts, with Austin's list price per square foot dropping 7.7% year over year.
That kind of price reset is one of the few things that can break through the affordability wall - the same wall that now eats half the paycheck of nearly a fifth of Gen Z renters.
Jake Krimmel, Senior Economist at Realtor.com, put it in the report: "In the metros where sellers have come to market with realistic prices, buyers are showing up."
The recovery isn't uniform. Las Vegas saw contract signings fall 8.4% year to date as homes sat on the market more than a week longer than they did a year ago.
Tampa and Hartford are stuck too, with signings dropping and fewer new listings coming on. That mixed map tells investors where demand is real and where the supply story still rules.
Homes under contract typically close within four to six weeks, which means the spring jump should start showing up in closed sales by June.
Krimmel called May and June "decisive." If mortgage rates settle and consumer confidence holds, the housing market could finally break out of the lower gear it's been stuck in since 2022, especially if a drop in oil prices pushes mortgages lower the way it did briefly after the U.S.-Iran ceasefire.
The buyers were never gone. They were just waiting for the math to work.
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