Real estate agents are becoming more hopeful about attracting sellers while losing confidence in their buyer business, exposing a divide in a housing market burdened by mortgage rates back near 7.5 percent. Higher borrowing costs are weighing on affordability and transactions, but agents’ responses to a September survey suggest that conversations with homeowners are providing some support for their listing prospects. That improvement has moderated the deterioration in their overall assessment without signalling a broad recovery in client activity.

The Client Pipeline Tracker registered -3 in September, against a January high of +13 and a reading of +3 in September 2025. Its components moved in opposing directions: the score for current buyer business slipped from -29 in August to -31, while expectations for future buyer business fell from +3 to -3. Current seller business improved from -10 to -4, and the forward-looking seller score rose from +4 to +11. The split between buyer and seller prospects was among the widest observed in three years of surveys.

The tracker brings together agents’ assessments of their buyer and seller client pipelines, covering both changes over the past year and expectations for the next 12 months. A reading of 0 indicates broadly unchanged conditions; positive readings suggest improvement or expectations of improvement, while negative readings indicate deterioration or anticipated weakness. Combined scores around +20 or -20 would indicate a more pronounced direction. September’s overall result therefore remained negative, but the aggregate concealed a much weaker assessment of buyers than of sellers.

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The buyer figures show pressure on both current business and expectations for the year ahead. In September, 56 percent of responding agents reported fewer buyers in their pipelines than a year earlier, compared with 49 percent in August. That worsening came as affordability conditions deteriorated substantially and buyers became harder to find. The current buyer component was also more negative than any of the other tracker components, indicating that agents assessed the past year’s change in their buyer pipelines more negatively than their prospects for the year ahead.

Even so, expectations for future buyers crossed an important threshold. For the first time in more than two years, the balance of agents’ views on whether their buyer pools would improve over the following year turned negative. Some 25 percent expected smaller buyer pools in 12 months, including 7 percent anticipating a significant contraction. By comparison, 24 percent expected larger pools, with 2 percent foreseeing a significant improvement. Those responses offer little evidence of confidence that the current pressure on buyer business will soon ease.

The prevailing buyer outlook was nevertheless one of limited change rather than widespread expectations of further decline. More than half of respondents anticipated no meaningful movement in their buyer pipelines over the coming year, continuing a pattern evident since spring. That distinction matters when interpreting the negative forward-looking score: pessimists outweighed optimists, but neither group represented the majority. Taken alongside the weaker reports of current buyer activity, the responses suggest that many agents expect subdued conditions to persist rather than anticipate either a strong rebound or substantial additional deterioration.

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On the listing side, the clearest improvement was a reduction in severe weakness. The share of agents reporting a significant year-over-year decline in listing pipelines fell from 13 percent in August to 7 percent in September. That was the lowest such share since surveying began in September 2023. It did not produce a record overall sentiment reading, because reports of listing growth remained modest. Still, September marked a second consecutive month of improvement in year-over-year listing pipeline volume among the surveyed agents.

Expectations for future listing business strengthened as well. In September, 37 percent of respondents anticipated healthier listing pipelines a year later, up from 33 percent the previous month. The share expecting those pipelines to worsen fell to 15 percent from 20 percent. These responses provide a counterweight to the buyer figures: agents were increasingly confident about acquiring seller clients even while becoming less optimistic about buyers. The present seller score remained below neutral, however, so the improvement should not be confused with uniformly positive conditions across listing businesses.

The survey ran from Sept. 16 to Oct. 2, 2026, and received 460 responses. Participation was open to all members of the community being surveyed, with a rotating, randomly selected group of community members also prompted to participate by email. The results describe respondents’ client pipelines and expectations, rather than completed transactions. Their value lies in showing how agents’ assessments are changing, including the emerging contrast between homeowners considering a sale and the buyers available to support those transactions.

Whether that divergence can last will be important in the months ahead. Most serious sellers are also prospective buyers, leaving their plans exposed to the same mortgage-rate and affordability pressures affecting demand. September’s stronger listing outlook has helped steady the overall tracker, but the weaker buyer readings leave an unresolved question: whether renewed seller interest can develop into transactions while borrowing costs continue to constrain the other side of the market.