After a difficult four months, expectations for the pipeline of future buyers have begun to improve. Intel revealed the latest developments via its client pipeline tracker, driven by the Intel Index.
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An improving outlook for inflation and mortgage rates in June may have boosted hopes for the buyer pipeline and stemmed a four-month slide in sentiment among real estate agents.
These developments appear to assuage some of the most pessimistic fears of housing doomsayers. But the Intel survey results show real estate professionals are still a long way from genuine optimism.
These insights and more are captured in Intel’s Customer Pipeline Tracker, which reflects still-negative but improving business conditions in the final weeks of June. It’s the first time broker sentiment has picked up since January.
June customer pipeline tracking level: -7
- Previous level: -9 in May
- Recent peaks: +7 in january
Diagram by Daniel Huston
This tracker uses monthly data from the Inman Intel Index Survey to track all of these developments in real time. The new metric aims to provide a clear and easy-to-understand way of interpreting one of the earliest indicators of future revenue – the pool of leads available to each agent.
Still, despite some encouraging changes in recent weeks, brokers are nowhere near as optimistic as they were at the beginning of the year.
Read the full breakdown of scores in the full report.
stable moment
Intel’s Customer Pathway Tracker (which debuted last month) compiles agents’ perceptions of the buyer and seller pipeline over the past year and the near future.
Intel describes the complete approach This introductory articlebut here’s a quick refresher on how to read the results.
- A Rated 0 represent neutral period Where the customer pipeline is neither improving nor deteriorating.
- A Positive score Reflects markets where customer access has been improving or is improving Generally expected to improve over the next 12 months. The higher the rating, the more confident the agent is that things are heading in a positive direction.
- A minus Indicates that customer pipeline conditions are deteriorating, or are deteriorating generally expected The coming year will get worse.
A very positive overall score—most of the industry agrees with the fact that the pipeline is improving and will continue to improve—falls at approx. +20.
On the other hand, extremely negative composite scores are closer to -20. This is slightly lower than the industry level in September, and this is the first time Intel has conducted a channel survey on agents.
For each component that counts toward the score, the results are up to +50 or low -50 Occasionally observed.
Here are the section scores for June and the changes compared to the previous month.
CPT scores for each section
May → June
- Current buyer pipeline: -35 → -35
- Future buyer pathways: -4 → +3
- Current seller pipeline: -20 → -20
- Future seller pipeline: +4 → +4
We can see that 3 out of 4 inputs To-customer pipeline tracker remains stable in June. Current buyer conditions continue to receive the worst ratings from agents, while current seller conditions remain pretty bad.
A component that undergoes meaningful transformation— Future expectations for buyer pipeline – return net positive area for the first time since February.
Behind the numbers
So what’s behind an agent’s emotional stability?
For one thing, agents no longer believe things will get worse month over month — an important step since they have been reporting a steady deterioration in their self-reported buyer and seller pipelines since the start of the year.
But the main factor is that Intel is seeing fewer buyer agent “doomers,” agents who predict that their buyer pipeline will deteriorate not just slightly but “significantly” over the next 12 months.
- The proportion of agents who expect buyer access to deteriorate “significantly” in the next year dropped to 7% In June, compared with 11% for each of the past three months.
- The decline in strong pessimism coincided with a rise in general optimism about the future. Among the agents surveyed by Intel in June, 32% Think the buyer pipeline will improve, from 28% in the previous months.
In fact, even in the months leading up to June, there were more agents optimistic about the future buyer pipeline than pessimists. This is offset by the fact that pessimists are more likely to be pessimists and predict a large decline in buyer numbers rather than a small decline.
Optimists, on the other hand, remain more cautious for now.
- only 3% All agents surveyed in June said they expected the buyer pipeline to improve “significantly” next year; 28% Moderate improvements are expected.
It will take time to confirm whether the drop in pessimism is the start of a broader improving trend or just a blip in a troubled market.
But at least the bottom doesn’t seem to be falling out anymore. Market sentiment has remained largely stable since late March. Intel will continue to track what happens next each month as new results emerge.
Methodological Notes: Inman of the Month Intel index poll The survey was conducted from June 20 to 30, 2024, and had received more than 580 responses as of Friday morning. Figures used in this article are preliminary and subject to revision. The entire Inman reader community is invited to participate, and rotating, randomly selected community members are prompted via email to participate.. Users answered a series of questions related to their self-identified real estate industry—including real estate agents, brokerage leaders, lenders, and proptech entrepreneurs. Results reflect the opinions of the participating Inman community, which may not always align with the opinions of the broader real estate industry. this poll Do this once a month.
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