These are the stories you couldn’t get enough of in 2025

This year has been a doozy for the real estate industry: from crimes and misdemeanors to mergers and acquisitions, clients weren’t the only ones making big moves this year.

Every week in my column, Downloading itI’ll pick one of the biggest stories of the week, based on Inman’s readership, and provide additional context and some related stories on the topic.

As we approach the end of the year, I’m looking back at the most read download columns of 2025 and giving you an update on how they continued to evolve – and what we might see on these topics in 2026.

At the Keller Williams family reunion in February, Gary Keller predicted significant market headwinds in 2025. While affordability remained a challenge, prices stabilized and inventories improved, making the latter part of the year a bit brighter than Keller initially estimated.

Looking ahead to next year, Windermere Real Estate economist Jeff Tucker was cautiously optimistic in his 2026 forecast: “To sum it all up, I expect a mostly stable year, with gradual, modest improvement in the housing market’s key metrics: inventory, sales and mortgage rates.”

In an exclusive series for Inman, Marian McPherson outlined five Trump policy proposals that emerged before the start of his second term and how they could impact the already stagnant housing market. She looked at Trump’s promise to deport millions of immigrants, broad economic policy proposals, the proposed elimination of climate change and partisan initiatives, the push to privatize Fannie and Freddie, and the antitrust push on the real estate industry.

For all the talk and reaction, most of these proposals were more about political signals than direct, meaningful impact on the housing sector. Most proposals for immigration enforcement, tariffs, and fair housing rollbacks have resulted in additional uncertainty for builders, lenders, local governments, real estate professionals, and consumers. At the same time, high mortgage rates, low inventories and affordability remain only minimally changed.

In April, we saw a pattern of MLSs and portals pushing back on National Association of Realtors policies and ignoring the trade group’s rules in favor of implementing their own. These include the return of mixed listings on Zillow after a four-year hiatus and growing frustration and debate around the private listing policy.

We continued to see opposition in the fall, and the MLS tried as well providing access to non-brokers and referral fee transparency implemented at the state level after failing to gain a foothold at the national level.

By Dateline-worthy true crime Due to all sorts of financial shenanigans, cop safety and cop crime were both in the spotlight in 2025. Unfortunately, that’s a trend that has continued through the end of the year.

From the ex-MLS CEO charged with grand larcenyleaving the East Polk Association of Realtors “all but broke.” text scam aimed at real estate professionals and the daily drama During the murder trial of Brian Walshe, crime and punishment were unfortunately all too often part of the real estate landscape.

After years of back-and-forth over NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy, the trade group announced it would maintain the policy, which would see properties listed on an MLS within one day of marketing, while adding a new category for “deferred marketing exempt listings.” This caused a policy change by Zillow just days later, saying it would ban listings that don’t meet CCP guidelines.

Although, actual implementation of Zillow’s proposed policy change has been complicated legal dispute almost from the start, things might finally be moving forward, at least in Chicago, where MRED warned against it Zillow had contacted subscribers They told them to expect “disruptions” in the new year.

Email Christy Murdock