What Can We Expect in the Fall 2025 Housing Market

On this episode of the podcast, Listen Up Home Buyers!, meet Mike Crowley the owner of Spokane HomeBuyers an exclusive buyer brokerage in Spokane Washington. Mike is a former president of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents, naeba.org.

We discuss Fall 2025 housing market trends, buyer's market vs seller's market Fall 2025, what is a buyer broker agreement and how to negotiate a buyer broker agreement.

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Full Transcript of the podcast, Listen Up Home Buyers! Fall 2025 Housing Market

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Victoria Ray Henderson: Hi, and thanks for joining us for Listen Up Homebuyers. I'm Victoria Ray Henderson, and with me today is my friend Mike Crowley. He owns Spokane Homebuyers, an exclusive buyer brokerage in Spokane, Washington. He's a former president of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents. Hello, Mike. How are you today?

Mike Crowley: I am good. How are you doing? Good. You know, it's not becoming a buyer's market like they want it to because I'm not seeing prices come down. I'm seeing a little pressure on them coming down. But I think I'm most likely seeing as interest rates sit there at that six and a half to seven margin and sellers don't seem that willing to budge on their prices. Even vacant properties, I'm seeing properties sit for three, four or five weekends without showings and you would expect sellers would say, oh, I need to do something different with my price and the answer is no. I saw one the other day. It was listed for $347,000 for six weeks and they dropped the price $1,000. That's not a price reduction. That's basically saying I want to sell my property, but I don't care if I sell my property. So yeah.

Victoria Ray Henderson: That's crazy. That does say that, yeah. We're seeing things a little different in the Washington DC area. We are seeing some price drops. We are seeing some real advantages, especially with condominiums in Washington DC. They're sitting on the market longer and I have the ability to get a seller subsidy, maybe even a price reduction. So I am seeing a little bit of a shift. However, in the higher end market, there is still plenty of competition. Just last week, I had a multi-offer situation. So it's shifting, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily a buyer's market.

Mike Crowley: Yeah, homes are still selling, buyers are still buying. It's just not as busy it was a few years ago. That's it. I don't have any problems currently with the market. I do wish interest rates were a little bit lower and I wish sellers were a little bit more negotiable. But there are buyers out there and there is inventory out there. Really as an exclusive buyers agent I should be happy with.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Mm-hmm. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Now, what's happening in Washington state with buyer-broker agreements? How are things going?

Mike Crowley: The good fortune here is, and I don't think this is the case all across the country. I've just kind of taken a pulse of it from other brokers, but most, this is a good spot. Most sellers are still willing to help the purchasers with their buying costs, whether it be with their loan costs or more specifically with their realtor fees. The concern a year ago was that buyers were going to have to come up with eight, 10, 12,000 more dollars to purchase a home. And I think the listing agents out there, give them a lot of credit, are explaining to their sellers, the best way to get your home sold is to make it as easy as possible for the buyer. And our cooperating brokerage fees here are still strong, covering what most buyers are agreeing with with their realtors. And nationally, several studies have come out just in the past couple of weeks that, to my surprise, fees for realtors have not gone down, but remained steady and even gone up a little bit.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Mm-hmm.

Mike Crowley: So I think the public out there has adapted to this. They seem to be comfortable paying their realtors for a service.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Yeah. You know, I've had a couple of people be very scared of wanting to sign a buyer broker agreement. And the way that I've made this work is anybody who has an issue with signing an agreement, and you know I get it because you're meeting somebody maybe for the first time or maybe you met them via Zoom and you say, there, sign this agreement that says exactly how much I'm going to be paid in this transaction. And the work around for me has been that I get people to sign it for a length of time that they're comfortable with. And to me, that doesn't matter if it's a day, if it's a weekend, whatever they're comfortable with. And I've advised people, you know, as I do from time to time on my Instagram account, to make sure that you pay attention to whatever else is written on that buyer broker agreement. If there are any additional fees, if you're signing something that says you've got to stay with that particular brokerage, just remember as the buyer, you're in the driver's seat with the buyer broker agreement. And what I mean by that really is that you want to have a good relationship with that agent you're going to work with and you want to trust them. So my experience so far has been very good. How about yours?

Mike Crowley: Yeah, I feel the same way. I do think there's a flaw in this settlement that buyers are expected to make a decision in front of a house about whether or not they want to work with a broker and pay them a substantial amount of money. If they were to go into a law office, their commitment, if they wanted to just initiate some sort of a civil action, is probably around a neighborhood of $2,000 or $3,000 upfront commitment. While our commitment's not upfront, it's still signing something that's going to commit you for what's likely $8,000, $15,000 after meeting someone that you know nothing about in many cases. I think there's a fallacy with that. I get around that. Most of my clients I know personally from a referral, I think they would sign anything. I am doing non-exclusive agreements. And I think all agents out there have that opportunity. If you have a buyer that's hesitant, I like your approach to making it a short term.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Mm.

Mike Crowley: Approach. It could be one hour, one day or two days. The other one is making it non-exclusive and saying, let's make this non-exclusive for the next week or so because technically I've been working non-exclusively my entire real estate career. Any buyer anytime has always had the option to come to me and say, we're just not happy with the way you're taking care of us. We're going to go find another realtor. And I'm never going to argue with that because I've always got somebody else to go work for.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Okay.

Mike Crowley: Yeah, and that's kind of the problem I've always had with the upfront part of the buyer's agency agreement. I don't have a problem with their utilitarian purpose, but the idea that realtors need to spend the first thing they need to do is worrying about how they're going to get paid versus my first concern is this, can I take care of your needs or not? Can we find a house? Can we work together? And if we can get past those ideas, then let's start talking about how I'm going to be compensated for my time.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Yeah.

Mike Crowley: You know, since I'm not an economist, I just read a lot of economist views and they were all wrong, which tended to make me wrong that we would not be down closer to 6% this year. I think, I don't mind admitting I was wrong, but I would certainly take the advice of a lot of experts. They are pretty confident that we will be down closer to 6% coming into the year. They are not promising that we will be in the fives next year though.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Mm-hmm.

Mike Crowley: These interest rates are probably close to the norm, which is why I'd really like to see some more downward pressure on home prices to make them more affordable for people. It's not fun going into buying a house for $400,000 and having a $3,200 mortgage payment, which is twice what I ever even imagined I'd be paying.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Mm-mm.

Mike Crowley: It does. Yeah, it takes some pressure off your real estate broker, but your real estate broker should be able to walk through and hopefully takes all those fear out. But sometimes once they sign the contract, you don't hear much from them. Or sometimes they don't realize that once you have an offer on house that they need to know what the next steps are that you don't always know. Need, what do I do with my earnest money? What's the home inspection? How much is it going to cost? What else should I have inspected? So hopefully filter is there to walk you through all of that.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Mm-hmm.

Mike Crowley: Yeah, and to be honest, every realtor should have something like that set up and I do not. I'm pretty good. No, just admit I'm pretty good. As soon as I have an offer signed around, I do send him an email that basically says, this is what I expect from you next. Be known, usually once we get through the home inspection resolved, I'm just kind of like, well, right now it's kind of between you and the lender. That's usually the reality at that point. I'll see you the walkthrough and I'll see you at the closing. But I do like to get to that point and I'm trying really hard on one transaction.

Victoria Ray Henderson: You

Mike Crowley: Hopefully today I'll get to that point and then it starts over again tomorrow because we have another home inspection on another house.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Good luck on those. That's great.

Mike Crowley: Yeah, they're a little stressful. It's 120 year old home and it's a good home, but you always get nervous.

Victoria Ray Henderson: God, yeah. Yeah. And how's the electrical in that house?

Mike Crowley: The good question has got a lot of Romex, a lot of updates, but I always warn my clients is there will be nob and tube wiring in this house. And if you do not want a home with nob and tube wiring, we are not going to be writing offers on this house because sellers are not going to take it out. So they are aware of that. So I've got that part covered.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Yeah. That's wild. By the way, there is a podcast on Listen Up Homebuyers about electrical wiring. I interviewed a great electrician, a master electrician who walked me through what knob and tube and all these different types of... Because I saw it and this was years ago and I said, what is this? Look like something out of the Adams family. I mean, it was really crazy. Yeah, absolutely.

Mike Crowley: Gosh.

Victoria Ray Henderson: You can find it online on ListenUp Homebuyers on our website, naeva.org and on our YouTube channel. Anything else you want to tell everybody what's happening right now in the real estate market?

Mike Crowley: That will go much better. No, take advantage of the inventory. Look at as many houses as you can, not so you determine value. Don't be offended if the sellers are difficult. Just, in a tough spot too. They had expectations of selling the home for more. They are not content that they have to come down on their price. If they come down on price, they're going to be more difficult on the home inspection. If they don't come down on price and maybe beat them up on the home inspection, but it's not a difficult market, but it is a different market. And your realtors are learning as they go too. There's a lot of realtors out there that are not experienced with their sellers enough to tell them what to do when they don't get offers on their home. They had a really good for a few years. All they had to do is put the house on the market and count the offers and make a decision. They didn't have to go sit down with them or avoid them for weeks because our home isn't selling. There's listing agents that will do that. It's not fun to sit down with your seller and say, I know we were.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Right.

Mike Crowley: Talking about $600,000 and I know your neighborhood got $600,000, but we've been at $600,000 and we're not getting showings and there's only one thing to do is lower the price. Yeah.

Victoria Ray Henderson: Lower that price. I mean, that's it. The market tells you what you need to do if you're willing to listen. Yeah. Mike Crowley is the owner of Spokane Home Buyers in Washington state and a former president of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents. Mike, thanks so much for joining me on Listen of Home Buyers.

Mike Crowley: Exactly. Sometimes it's screaming at you.

Victoria Ray Henderson: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

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