Palm Springs Is One of the Most Compelling Places to Own Property in America. It's Also One of the Most Complicated.

A complete picture for buyers who are seriously considering the desert.

There is a version of Palm Springs that exists in the imagination of almost everyone who has been there. The version with the afternoon light going golden over the San Jacinto Mountains, the pool shimmering behind a wall of bougainvillea, the mid-century rooflines clean against a cloudless sky. It's a powerful image. It's also real — and that's part of what makes this such a complicated city to think about clearly when you're considering whether to own property there.

Because the version in the brochure and the version you'd actually be living in are the same city, which means both are true at once. Palm Springs is genuinely extraordinary. It's also genuinely extreme. The buyers who navigate it best are the ones who can hold both of those things in their head simultaneously — who fall in love with the place without losing sight of what it actually demands.

That's what this piece is for.

The Pull Is Real and It Has a Long History

Before we get to the complications, the case for Palm Springs deserves to be made properly — because it's substantial, and it goes deeper than the aesthetics.

Palm Springs became what it is over a century of accumulated meaning. The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians inhabited this desert long before the city existed; their tribal lands constitute roughly 18% of what is now the city, and their stewardship of this land is woven into its identity in ways that remain visible today. The modern city began to take shape in the early twentieth century as a health destination — the dry desert air thought to be therapeutic — and by the 1920s and 30s it had become a retreat for wealthy Angelenos looking to disappear from public life.

Hollywood came and changed everything. The studio system at its height exerted suffocating control over performers' public identities, and Palm Springs, just two hours from Los Angeles but entirely outside the reach of the studio fixers, became a kind of safety valve. Stars came here to be themselves. And because being oneself, in that era, often meant being queer in a world that didn't tolerate it, Palm Springs gradually became a refuge for the LGBTQ+ community in a way that shaped its character permanently.

Rock Hudson watered his lawn in tiny short-shorts, waving cheerfully at the celebrity home tour buses as they rolled past. Liberace lived here for 25 years, hosting lavish parties at a compound that reflected every flamboyant dimension of his personality, at a time when that kind of visibility required considerable courage. The architects who gave the city its visual identity — many of them gay men in an era when that fact required careful management — built homes that expressed freedom and openness, glass walls dissolving the line between interior and exterior, indoor spaces flowing into pools and gardens and the vast desert sky.

That legacy didn't dissipate. It deepened. Today it's estimated that roughly half of all Palm Springs residents over the age of 55 identify as LGBTQ+, making it one of the most genuinely queer cities in the United States by population share, not just by reputation. Nearly 40% of the city's total population identifies as LGBTQ+, and the city has formalized what was once informal: Palm Springs has declared itself a sanctuary for drag performers, a political statement aimed squarely at the wave of state-level restrictions spreading across other parts of the country. In February 2025, residents transformed the Arenas District into a scene of fierce resistance and LGBTQ+ activism, with chants of "Love is Love" and "We're not going back" ringing through the crowd. Palm Springs is not a place that tolerates queer life. It was built around it.

For buyers who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, or who simply want to live somewhere that reflects the values of inclusion and visibility, that history isn't just atmosphere. It's infrastructure. It's community organizations, healthcare providers, cultural institutions, and a civic government that has repeatedly chosen to protect and celebrate its LGBTQ+ residents when states elsewhere have moved in the opposite direction.

What the City Has Become

The Palm Springs of today has layered something new and genuinely exciting on top of that historical foundation.

The culinary scene has arrived. James Beard Award-winning chefs Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken opened Alice B, their latest venture, inside Living Out — a luxury retirement community for LGBTQ+ residents that opened in 2023. It is, as one writer put it, not often that you find the hottest new restaurant in town hidden inside a retirement community. But that's the kind of delightful surprise that defines contemporary Palm Springs. The Arenas District, long the heart of the city's LGBTQ+ nightlife, has evolved and expanded. The Uptown Design District has become a serious destination for design-forward retail and dining. And the cultural calendar — Modernism Week in February, the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January, Cinema Diverse in September — has given the city a year-round identity that goes far beyond the pool-and-spa reputation it once leaned on.

The remote work era accelerated something that had been building for years: the arrival of younger, high-earning buyers who don't need to live near a corporate headquarters and who are choosing cities based on quality of life rather than proximity to an office. Palm Springs caught that wave early. The demographic influx from San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle — buyers bringing coastal equity and coastal sophistication into a desert market — has changed what the restaurants serve, what the galleries show, and what the new development looks like. The city's own economic development strategic plan identifies the growth of a local technology ecosystem and the leveraging of remote work trends as key opportunities for the next decade of Palm Springs' development.

All of which is to say: the city is not standing still. The version of Palm Springs you buy into today will be a different and likely more developed version of itself in ten years. That's a meaningful consideration for buyers thinking about long-term value, not just present-day livability.

The Part Nobody Puts in the Brochure

Here is where the honest conversation begins.

Palm Springs is a desert. Not in the romantic, abstract sense — in the literal, thermometer-reading sense. In a typical year around 1990, people in Palm Springs experienced about 7 days above 110°F annually. By 2050, that number is projected to reach an average of 32 days per year above 110°F. Let that sink in for a moment. We are talking about a city where, within the lifetimes of people buying property there today, more than a month of every year will be spent at temperatures that are not merely uncomfortable but genuinely dangerous for extended outdoor exposure.

A climate analysis commissioned by the city found that the number of extreme heat days — defined as days above the threshold at which heat becomes a public health risk — is projected to increase to an average of 28 per year by mid-century, and an average of 50 per year by the end of the century. Fifty days. Nearly two months of every calendar year at temperatures that will keep you indoors, keep your pets inside, and require genuine planning around any outdoor activity.

A long-term Palm Springs resident, speaking to this reality online, put it with the kind of unvarnished clarity that only comes from lived experience: "I've lived here for over 20 years and I honestly believe this place is so hot in the summer that it should be uninhabitable. You NEVER 'get used' to summers, you just learn to live with them. It's ridiculous to walk outside at 10 or 11 pm and be sweating within minutes."

This is not a fringe perspective. It is what year-round residents say when they're being honest.

Now, it's worth noting that a significant portion of Palm Springs buyers are not year-round residents. They're second-home buyers who intend to be in Palm Springs during the fall, winter, and spring — the months when the city is legitimately paradise — and somewhere else entirely during July and August. For those buyers, the heat reality is a manageable consideration, not a dealbreaker. But it is still a consideration that shapes property costs, maintenance realities, and the carrying costs of ownership in ways that deserve careful thought.

The intense heat means higher electricity bills due to constant air conditioning use, which is not a minor line item in a desert property budget. Air conditioning systems in Palm Springs work harder and fail faster than they do in more temperate climates. Pools require more chemical treatment in extreme heat. Landscaping choices are constrained by water availability and temperature. The exterior materials on mid-century homes — many of them architecturally significant and thus difficult or impossible to replace without compromising historical character — deteriorate faster in sustained extreme heat.

And then there's the insurance picture, which has changed dramatically in recent years and which buyers cannot afford to ignore.

---

The Insurance Crisis Is a California Story That Reaches the Desert

California's homeowner insurance market is in the middle of a genuine crisis, and while the headlines have focused on wildfire-devastated communities in Los Angeles and Northern California, the effects ripple across the state — including into the Coachella Valley.

Between 2015 and 2023, there was a 19% reduction in the number of home insurance policies in the highest-risk wildfire areas of California. Since 2019, the number of policies in the highest-risk areas has dropped dramatically, with some of this reduction due to insurers issuing non-renewals — simply declining to renew a policy. State Farm, Allstate, and Farmers have all either paused new policies or exited portions of the California market in recent years, citing wildfire risk and regulatory restrictions that prevented adequate rate increases.

For Palm Springs specifically, about 67% of buildings in Palm Springs are at risk of wildfire, and the risk level for these buildings is classified as very high. About 73% of buildings in Palm Springs are at risk of flooding, and the risk level for these buildings is high. These are striking numbers for a city most buyers associate primarily with sun and pool decks, and they have real implications for what insurance coverage looks like and what it costs.

Several major insurers have paused new policies or non-renewed existing ones in higher-risk regions because of wildfire, inflation, and reinsurance costs. New regulations now allow insurers to use forward-looking catastrophe models in rate-setting for the first time — a major shift that lets insurers pass more reinsurance cost into premiums. When reinsurers look at Southern California, they see wildfire, flood, and mudslide exposures stacked on top of very high property values.

What this means practically for a buyer in Palm Springs is this: before you fall in love with a property and certainly before you make an offer, you need to understand what insurance will actually cost on that specific address, what it covers, and whether standard carriers are willing to write it. Some properties in higher-risk zones will require surplus lines coverage — non-admitted carriers not subject to the same rate regulations as standard insurers, meaning they can price risk aggressively. The California FAIR Plan, the state's insurer of last resort, is an option when nothing else is available, but it is not designed to be a long-term solution, and its financial stability has come under scrutiny as enrollment has surged statewide.

A good local agent will help you navigate this before you're under contract, not after. This is one of the areas where the difference between a specialist and a generalist is most consequential.

The City Is Paying Attention

None of this is to suggest Palm Springs is sleepwalking toward an existential crisis. The city's leadership has been unusually proactive about confronting these realities.

The Palm Springs City Council unanimously adopted a comprehensive 2025-2026 legislative platform covering climate resilience, housing, economic development, and infrastructure. Climate and sustainability goals include expanding electric vehicle infrastructure, reducing utility costs, and advancing air quality and waste reduction initiatives. The city's economic development strategic plan explicitly identifies climate change impacts on water and heat as significant threats, while also naming climate innovation as a key opportunity — with a stated goal of developing cooling and green energy solutions as part of resilient infrastructure investment.

The city has long held a commitment to renewable energy and water efficiency that predates most municipalities' awareness of these issues. Palm Springs has set goals to be a high-efficiency, renewable energy city, and positions itself as a leader in water efficiency and reuse. For buyers, this civic orientation matters: a city government that takes climate risk seriously tends to make infrastructure investments that protect long-term property values more effectively than one that doesn't.

The question is not whether Palm Springs is responding. It is whether the pace and scale of that response can keep up with the rate of change. That's a question no one can answer with certainty, and pretending otherwise would be doing you a disservice.

What a Serious Buyer Needs to Know Before Looking

Pull all of this together and a picture emerges — not of a market to avoid, but of a market that requires informed entry.

The lifestyle case is genuine and durable. The culture, the community, the architecture, the quality of life during nine months of the year, the LGBTQ+ foundation, the food and arts scene, the proximity to Joshua Tree and the San Jacinto Mountains — these are real and they compound over time as the city continues to evolve. People who buy in Palm Springs with their eyes open tend to love it.

The climate reality is not a footnote. It is a primary variable in how you use the property, what it costs to maintain, how you insure it, and what the long-term ownership picture looks like. Understanding this before you buy — not as a reason not to buy, but as context for what you're buying — is the difference between a decision made well and one made on the basis of a photograph.

The insurance market requires specific investigation. Not general awareness — specific investigation. Before you make an offer on any property in Palm Springs, you want to know what insurance will cost at that address, who will write it, and what it covers. This is not something to figure out after you're in contract.

The right agent is a non-negotiable. Palm Springs has a large and active real estate community, but the depth of local knowledge varies enormously. You want an agent who understands the STR permit landscape (as we covered in a separate piece), the insurance environment, the neighborhood-level distinctions, and the city's planning direction. These are not things you can approximate from outside the market.

This is exactly the kind of matchmaking I do — not finding you any agent, but finding you the specific person who knows what they need to know to protect your interests in a market this layered.

A Final Thought

There is a particular kind of buyer who does extraordinarily well in Palm Springs. They came, felt the pull, and instead of either dismissing the complications or pretending they don't exist, they got serious about understanding them. They bought with clarity instead of hope. They found an agent who knew the terrain. And then they spent their winters in one of the most singular places in the United States, having made a decision they're still glad about years later.

That's the outcome this piece is meant to help you achieve — if Palm Springs is right for you.

If you want to talk through what you're considering and whether I can connect you with the right local expert before you start looking, reach out. That conversation is what I'm here for.

John Voirol | John’s Agents | Find My Agent

John Voirol is a licensed real estate professional with 10 years of experience and over $100 million in career sales. He specializes in connecting buyers and sellers with the right agent in markets across the country.

---

SOURCES

- National Geographic: "Why Palm Springs is America's Greatest LGBTQ+ City Break," 2025

- ClimateCheck: Palm Springs Climate Change Risks and Hazards

- The Palm Springs Post: "Report Details What Climate Change May Mean for Palm Springs," November 2023

- City of Palm Springs: Economic Development Strategic Plan Framework

- The Palm Springs Post: "Palm Springs Adopts Comprehensive Legislative Advocacy Platform for 2025-2026," July 2025

- Visit Palm Springs: Sustainability & Stewardship

- Deep Sky Climate: "Insurers Retreat as 2025 Wildfire Risk Reaches Dangerous Levels"

- Inszone Insurance: "2026 Home Insurance Rates: Will SoCal's Record-Wet Months Push Them Higher?"

- Quora: "Has the Heat Now Become Unbearable in Palm Springs for Year-Round Living?"]

The Spring Market Is Here — And It Looks Different Than You Think

Spring is traditionally the most active season in residential real estate, and 2026 is shaping up to be no exception — with some important caveats.

Buyer demand is real. Listing views are running 32% higher year-over-year. Mortgage rates are ticking down after a volatile March. Inventory is the highest it's been in years, with 1.23 million homes for sale nationally. By almost every measure, this is the most opportunity-rich buying environment since 2019.

And yet: 40% of buyers and sellers say they're concerned about a potential housing market crash, according to recent survey data.

That anxiety is understandable. But the data doesn't support it. What economists are consistently describing is a rebalancing — not a collapse. Prices are up just 0.4% year-over-year nationally, not spiking or crashing. The market that was wildly tilted toward sellers for three years is finding equilibrium.

What spring 2026 rewards

Preparedness. In a balanced market, the buyers who move efficiently and with confidence — because they have the right agent, the right pre-approval, and clear criteria — are the ones who get the homes they want. The buyers who are unprepared, or who are working with a generalist agent in an unfamiliar market, tend to get the outcomes that match that level of preparation.

Spring is also when the most desirable properties hit the market. If you're planning a move in the next six months, now is not the time to still be figuring out who your agent is going to be.

I help buyers get ahead of that question — matching them with vetted, market-specific agents before the search starts, not after it stalls.

If you're thinking about a spring or summer move, I'm worth a conversation now.

John Voirol | John’s Agents | Find My Agent

---

SOURCES

- Churchill Mortgage, April 2026 Real Estate Market Update

- NAR, 2026 Real Estate Outlook

A Record 34% of Home Sellers Just Cut Their Prices. Here's Why That's Good News for Buyers.

Redfin reported last week that a record 34% of home sellers cut their list price in February 2026. That's not a crash. That's a correction — and for buyers who are prepared, it's an opening.

The pandemic-era seller's market, where homes went for well over asking in days with no contingencies, has given way to something considerably more balanced. Buyers have more inventory to choose from, more time to make decisions, and more leverage to negotiate than they've had in years. Nationally, active listings are up 4.2% year-over-year, and it's the 28th consecutive month of annual inventory growth.

What this actually signals

Price reductions at scale don't mean values are collapsing. They mean sellers who overpriced — either based on outdated comps or wishful thinking — are adjusting to reality. For buyers, this creates a real opportunity, particularly in markets where 2022 and 2023 list prices were aspirational rather than grounded.

The nuance is in the details. Not every market is softening equally, and not every price point is behaving the same way. Luxury and upper-mid tier homes, above roughly $1 million, continue to see stronger demand and less price reduction activity than the broader market. Cash buyers in that segment are still moving decisively on the right properties.

The agent question this creates

In a market where negotiation is back, the skill and local knowledge of your agent matters enormously. An agent who has operated primarily in a seller's market may not be the sharpest negotiator in a buyer's environment. An agent who knows the specific comps, the days-on-market patterns, and the seller's real position in your target neighborhood is worth considerably more than one who doesn't.

This is exactly the kind of thing I look for when I'm vetting agents for clients. If you're planning a purchase in the next few months and want the right person in your corner, let's talk.

John Voirol | John’s Agents | Find My Agent

---

SOURCES

- Redfin, "A Record 34% of February Home Sellers Cut Their List Price," April 2026

- Churchill Mortgage, April 2026 Real Estate Market Update

Mortgage Rates Just Dipped Again — What That Actually Means If You're Planning a Move

Freddie Mac reported the 30-year fixed mortgage rate at 6.30% as of April 16 — down from 6.37% the week prior and meaningfully lower than the 6.83% recorded a year ago. Small movements on paper. Real impact in your monthly payment.

Here's a quick way to put that in context: on a $1.2 million home with a 20% down payment, the difference between a 6.83% rate and a 6.30% rate is roughly $375 per month. Over a year, that's $4,500. Over the life of the loan, the math gets considerably more interesting.

Why rates are moving

The driver right now is primarily geopolitical. The Iran conflict and subsequent Strait of Hormuz closure sent oil prices — and by extension, inflation — higher earlier this spring, which pushed rates up sharply through March. With a ceasefire now in place, bond markets have relaxed and rates have followed. The 30-year rate had climbed toward 6.5% at its peak; it's been falling for two consecutive weeks.

Fannie Mae's April forecast puts the 30-year rate at 6.3% through the second quarter, then easing to 6.1% for the remainder of the year and into 2027. That's not the sharp decline some buyers were hoping for, but it's a directional trend that matters.

What this means if you're planning a move

If you've been sitting on the sidelines waiting for rates to fall before starting your search, the relevant question isn't whether rates are low — it's whether the trajectory is working in your favor and whether the market you're targeting gives you leverage right now.

In most markets, inventory is up. Sellers are negotiating. Buyers who are ready to move with a strong, locally-knowledgeable agent are in a better position than they've been in years.

Timing a market is hard. Being prepared when conditions align is something you can actually control.

If you're thinking about a move and ready to connect with an agent in the right city, with the right skills, and who knows the right lender - I can help with that.

John Voirol | John’s Agents | Find My Agent

- Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, April 16, 2026

- Fannie Mae April 2026 Housing Forecast — TheStreet, April 18, 2026

- Mortgage News Daily, April 14, 2026

Palm Springs Is Having a Moment — Here's What Second-Home Buyers Need to Know

There's a specific kind of person who buys a second home in Palm Springs. They've usually been going there for years. They love the mid-century architecture, the desert light, the food scene, the ability to leave on a Friday afternoon from LAX or SFO and be poolside before sunset. At some point, they stop renting someone else's house and start thinking seriously about owning one.

If that's where you are right now, the market is giving you something it hasn't offered in a while: time to think.

After a frenzied few years of pandemic-era demand and double-digit appreciation, the Greater Palm Springs market has shifted into a more measured pace. The median sale price in the city came in around $650K in early 2026, with homes averaging about 94 days on market — considerably longer than the sprint-or-miss conditions buyers faced in 2022. Inventory is running close to pre-pandemic levels, and the sold-to-list ratio has come down to around 94%, meaning negotiation is back on the table in a real way.

For the right buyer, this is a meaningful window.

What the luxury tier looks like

The overall market statistics don't tell the whole story for second-home buyers shopping at or above $1 million, which is broadly where Palm Springs agents define the luxury segment. The luxury tier operates on its own logic. Cash buyers are dominant, and they're increasingly demanding turnkey condition — renovated, design-forward homes that don't require a project. Properties that meet that standard are still moving at or near asking. Properties that don't are sitting, sometimes considerably, giving buyers room to negotiate.

The Coachella Valley's premier pockets — downtown Palm Springs, the Movie Colony, Deepwell, Twin Palms — command premiums, and architecturally significant homes continue to attract buyers who understand what they're looking at. If you don't have that fluency, and most buyers outside the market don't, the right agent makes an enormous difference.

The short-term rental picture — and why it's more complicated than it looks

If rental income is any part of how you're thinking about this purchase, the STR landscape in Palm Springs deserves careful attention before you run any numbers.

In November 2022, the city passed Ordinance 2075, which established a 20% density cap on short-term rental permits per neighborhood — meaning once 20% of homes in a given neighborhood hold permits, no new standard permits are issued. Several neighborhoods hit that cap immediately. New permits issued since then are also limited to 26 rental contracts per year. (A "contract" is one guest stay, regardless of its length — a two-night booking and a three-week stay each count as one contract.)

Here's what catches buyers off guard: STR permits in Palm Springs are non-transferable. They do not convey when a property sells. If you purchase a home that currently operates as a short-term rental — even one with an older, more favorable permit — you don't inherit that permit. You start the application process fresh as a new permittee, subject to the current 26-contract annual limit and the neighborhood density cap. In neighborhoods already at 20%, that means joining a waitlist with no guaranteed timeline.

The practical implication: rental income projections a seller presents may be based on permit terms you will never actually hold. Before making any assumptions about income potential, verify the permit status for that specific property, confirm whether the neighborhood still has capacity for new permits, and build your financial model on what you — as a new applicant — would actually be allowed to do.

This isn't a reason not to buy in Palm Springs. It's a reason to buy with complete information — guided by an agent who knows this regulatory landscape specifically and can walk you through the permit picture before you're under contract.

Who's buying in Palm Springs right now

Migration data from Redfin tells an interesting story: the buyers most actively searching to move into Palm Springs are coming from San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle — not the Los Angeles drive market that has historically dominated second-home demand in the valley. That's a shift worth noting. It suggests that Palm Springs is increasingly on the radar of high-net-worth buyers from outside California who see it as a lifestyle investment, not just a weekend escape.

For sellers, this broadens the potential buyer pool considerably. For buyers from outside the region, it underscores the value of working with a local specialist who knows both the market and the neighborhoods these buyers tend to target.

What I do for second-home buyers

Whether you're buying in Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells, or anywhere else in the Coachella Valley, my role is the same: I find you the agent who knows your target area, your price point, and your situation — and I make a warm, personal introduction before you ever have a cold conversation with a stranger. The agent question is one you should never have to answer with a guess.

If Palm Springs is on your radar, let's talk before you start touring.John Voirol | John’s Agents | Find My Agent

---

SOURCES

- Redfin, Palm Springs Housing Market Data, February 2026

The Smartest Thing You Can Do Before You Buy a Home in a New City

Nobody warns you about the agent problem.

You get the job offer, accept the transfer, or finally make the call to leave the city you've outgrown. You start researching neighborhoods, looking at school districts, watching listing videos at midnight. And somewhere in that process, you pick a real estate agent the same way you'd pick a restaurant — you search, you skim some reviews, you make a choice and hope it works out.

For a restaurant, that's fine. For the most significant financial transaction of your year (maybe in your life), in a market you've never navigated, with an agent you've never met, in a city you don't yet know? That approach has a real cost — and most people don't find out what it was until it's too late.

I've spent ten years as a licensed realtor and closed over $100 million in sales working entirely on my own — no team, no hand-offs. Before that, I negotiated complex deals with senior partners at major law firms. Before that, I spent years at Nordstrom learning that exceptional service isn't instinct. It's a system. It's preparation. It's asking the right questions before anything goes wrong.

What I do now is put all of that in service of one thing: making sure you walk into your new market with the right agent already in your corner.

What "the right agent" actually means

It doesn't mean the agent with the most reviews or the highest sales volume on a national platform. It means the agent who knows your specific target neighborhood at the price point you're shopping, has a track record you can verify, communicates the way you need them to, and was specifically selected for your situation — not pulled from a database because they paid for placement.

The difference between a generalist and a specialist in real estate is enormous. An agent who dominates one part of a city may be largely unfamiliar with another. An agent with impressive total volume may rarely work at your price point. An agent with glowing reviews may have earned them in a completely different market dynamic than the one you're about to enter.

None of that shows up in a star rating. None of it is visible to you from the outside. Which is exactly why an informed introduction — from someone who has already done the vetting — changes everything.

What my process looks like

Before I connect you to anyone, I learn what you need. Target neighborhood or area. Price range. Timeline. Whether you have kids and schools matter. The personality type you click with the most. Whether you have a strong preference for an agent's communication style, background, or even lifestyle.

It’s likely I already have someone in my network who can meet your needs at a high level. When I don’t, I research. I look at transaction history, neighborhood expertise, and price point experience. I read reviews with a trained eye — knowing what to look for and what to discount. I have a direct conversation with the agent about your specific situation before you ever speak with them.

What you get on the other end isn't a referral. It's a warm, personal introduction from someone who took responsibility for getting it right.

Why this matters more than ever right now

The spring 2026 housing market is more nuanced than it's been in years. Inventory is rising nationally, but conditions vary dramatically city by city, neighborhood by neighborhood, and price point by price point. Rates are hovering around 6.3% with ongoing volatility. Buyers in most markets have more negotiating room than they did two years ago — but only if their agent knows how to use it.

The people who thrive in this environment are the ones who walk in prepared. That starts with the person you hire to guide you.

If you're planning a move and want to talk through where you're going and what you need, reach out. The conversation costs you nothing. Having the wrong agent costs you a great deal more.

John Voirol | John’s Agents | Find an Agent

---

John Voirol is a licensed real estate professional with 10 years of experience and over $100M in career sales who leverages this insider knowledge to connect buyers and sellers with the right agent in markets across the country.

SOURCES

- Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, April 16, 2026

- Churchill Mortgage, April 2026 Real Estate Market Update

- Fannie Mae April 2026 Housing Forecast — TheStreet, April 18, 2026