Client pools saw little change in March. But the once-optimistic outlook for 2026 fizzled as the war in Iran drove borrowing costs higher.
A bombshell settlement that rewrote the rules of the real estate industry in 2024. A mounting list of new taxes on imports that led to economic uncertainty in 2025. And now, a war with Iran that has closed a major trade choke point and pushed oil prices — and mortgage rates — to unexpected highs.
During each of the past three years, a major, unforeseen development in March has upended the macroeconomic picture and forced agents to tap the brakes on their hopes for revenue in the year ahead.
And while real estate agents in late March reported only small declines in their present-day client pools as a result of rising rates, they are once again lowering their expectations for where their buyer and seller pipelines will be a year from now, according to Intel’s Client Pipeline Tracker.
This metric uses responses to the Intel Index survey that closed on Thursday to create a composite score tracking agent business sentiment over time.
And as the page turned to spring, agent sentiment fell from moderately optimistic to a more cautious outlook.
Client Pipeline Tracker score in March: +4
- Previous high point: +13 in January
- 12 months ago: -1 in March 2025
Chart by Daniel Houston
Read about the four components that went into the score in the full report.
Expectation, not observation
Intel’s Client Pipeline Tracker is a compilation of how agents feel about their buyer and seller pipelines — both over the past year and in the near future.
Intel described the methodology in this post, but here’s a quick refresher on how to interpret the scores.
- A score of 0 represents a neutral period in which client pipelines are neither improving nor worsening.
- A positive score reflects a market in which client pipelines have been improving, or are widely expected to improve in the next 12 months. The higher the rating, the more confident agents are that conditions are moving in a positive direction.
- A negative score suggests client pipeline conditions are worsening, or are widely expected to get worse in the year to come.
A significantly positive combined score falls around the +20 mark. This type of score would signify that much of the industry is in agreement that pipelines are improving and will continue to improve.
A significantly negative combined score, on the other hand, falls closer to -20. That’s a bit lower than where the industry stood in September 2023, the first time Intel surveyed agents about their pipelines.
For each of the four individual components that go into the score, results as high as +50 or as low as -50 are sometimes observed.
Here are the component scores from the most recent survey, and how each sentiment category changed from the previous one.
Tracker component scores
February → March
- Present buyer pipelines: -15 → -18
- Future buyer pipelines: +20 → +9
- Present seller pipelines: -3 → -6
- Future seller pipelines: +20 → +14
What stands out about these results is how little of the shift was driven by actual clients backing out of talks with their agents.
While present-day buyer pipelines did tick downward, higher rates and economic uncertainty haven’t really had a huge effect yet on client decisions.
But as the war drags on and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, markets are weighing a broad range of risks to the global economy that could drive oil prices and mortgage rates even higher for longer. And agents appear to be sensitive to these risks as well.
- The share of agent respondents who expected their buyer pipelines to grow in the year to come tumbled from 49 percent in February to 36 percent in March.
- This coincided with an increase in the share of agents who expected their buyer pipelines to hold steady or slightly decline from 48 percent in February to 61 percent in March.
- Notably, the share of agents who expected a “significant” thinning of their buyer pools held firm at 3 percent of agent responses.
So as long as actual clients aren’t heading for the door, agents don’t see this as a disaster scenario for the 2026 market. But many are reassessing their prospects for business revenue in the months to come.
On the listing side, the shift looked similar. But agents don’t appear to think recent developments will affect their seller clients as much.
- The share of agents who told Intel they expected their listing pipelines to improve in the coming year ticked down from 50 percent in February to 41 percent in March.
- These once-optimistic agents mostly embraced uncertainty rather than pessimism, with the share of agents expecting no change to their listing pipelines over the next 12 months rising from 38 percent in February to 46 percent in March.
- Pessimistic outlooks on the listing side only rose from 12 percent in February to 13 percent in recent weeks.
But whether these attitudes hold depends on a number of complex factors in the unfolding conflict, including how long it will last.
Some of the impacts of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz are immediate — such as the price of filling up a tank of gas or taking out a mortgage loan.
Others may not be felt for months, such as the shortage of fertilizer that travels through the strait and its effect on crop harvests and food prices in the fall and beyond.
Other risks to energy supply chains compound over time, the longer this crucial trade route remains closed.
Intel will continue to closely monitor agent sentiment in the weeks and months ahead.
Methodology notes: This month’s Inman Intel Index survey ran from March 24 through April 2, and received 474 responses. The entire Inman reader community was invited to participate, and a rotating, randomized selection of community members was prompted to participate by email. Users responded to a series of questions related to their self-identified corner of the real estate industry — including real estate agents, brokerage leaders, lenders and proptech entrepreneurs. Results reflect the opinions of the engaged Inman community, which may not always match those of the broader real estate industry. This survey is conducted monthly.
