Wisconsin home sales slump for third straight month, new report says

Wisconsin home sales were down for their third straight month in May, while the median home price continued to climb, according to a new report.

The Wisconsin Realtors Association released its monthly report on home sales last week. Sales this March, April and May all came in below the same months last year.

The pace of the sales slump slowed in May, with sales down a little more than 2 percent over the last 12 months, the report said. That’s an improvement from the 12-month decline in March of 8.6 percent and April’s 9 percent year-over-year decline.

“We certainly have slipped a bit from the previous year if you look at the last three months,” said David Clark, an economist for the Wisconsin Realtors Association and professor emeritus at Marquette University.

Month-to-month home sales have increased along their seasonal trend line, where sales begin picking up in the spring and rise through summer. But Clark said the better measure is looking at changes from year to year.

While inventory has increased, with total listings up 8.5 percent in May, Clark said the state’s housing market still has more demand than supply, contributing to rising home prices. Compared to last May, the median home price last month rose 4.3 percent to $330,000.

“A balanced market is one that has about six months of supply — we only have about 3.9 months of supply,” Clark said. “It’s a little bit better than it was last year, but still relatively low inventory.”

He also said a lack of inventory and high mortgage rates have contributed to slower sales over the past three months compared to the same period of 2024.

Madison market turning into a tale of ‘haves and the have nots,’ realtor says

According to Wisconsin Realtors Association data, sales in south central Wisconsin in March, April and May were slightly lower than they were in those months last year. The median home price in the region was $399,000 in May, up from $367,500 the previous May.

Stuart Meland, owner of real estate agency Madcity Homes, said he hasn’t seen much of a change from last year in the housing market. He said there’s been strong population growth in Dane County and Madison, and home builds haven’t been able to keep up. 

Meland said there have been efforts to build four- to six-story apartment buildings across Madison, but there’s not a lot of space inside the city limits to build single-family homes.

“Those [rental units] are going to be inhabited by people who may want homes, but we don’t have a corresponding number of homes for all of those people to move into,” he said. “It’s just not possible. Single-family homes take up a lot of space.”

Meland added that there’s been an increase in “cash sales” in recent years as older adults looking to downsize compete with younger adults trying to purchase their first home.

“The idea of owning a home is going to become more of a luxury concept as the population of the city grows,” he said. “It’s a situation of the haves and the have nots.”

Starter home market in northeast Wisconsin remains busy, high-priced market sees slowdown, realtor says

Home sales in northeast Wisconsin were also down in March, April and May compared to the same months last year, according to realtors association data. The median home price in the region was $300,000 last month, up from $285,000 in May 2024.

Mike Kunesh, owner of Place Perfect Realty, which does business in Green Bay, Appleton and Marinette, said home sales have been a mixed bag this year, depending on the price range.

But he also said sales in the starter home market have remained steady in 2025. Those prices range from around $200,000 or less in Marinette to $250,000 to $300,000 in Green Bay and Appleton. Kunesh said the mix of buyers in those price ranges varies from young families to older adults looking to downsize, creating “a lot of pressure on that portion of the market.”

“It comes down to a supply and demand issue, which is really the biggest problem within the market right now, making the affordability sort of out of reach for a lot of consumers,” he said.

Homes listed around $50,000 above that starter price range have had more “sluggish” sales, Kunesh said.

“It goes from a seller’s market to a transitional buyers market, where the sellers have to maybe price reduce or give some concessions to entertain the lower buyer pool in the higher price home categories,” he said.