In full swing:  What baseball and housing have in common

Baseball and the housing market have a couple of things in common. Both reach peak activity in the spring, and both are tracked using a plethora of statistics. 

The granular details of RBIs, home runs, and at-bats are known to every diehard baseball fan. Housing’s copious data—sales both new and existing, starts, permits, and mortgage rates—make it the statistical envy of other sectors.  

And just as a baseball team’s stats can foreshadow its win/loss record, housing stats tend to be a leading indicator of a market’s overall economic performance.  

Here are three U.S. housing data sets that could tell us something about the next nine innings (or months) of 2025. 

Right off the bat: Housing starts 

The spring housing season typically begins with a low level of homes available for sale, and this year is no different.  

Low inventory has been a decade-long obstacle for the market. Old housing stock and less-than-adequate levels of new construction have meant that the U.S. supply of homes is insufficient for the country’s growing number of households.   

Vacancy rates, a measure of housing supply, hit an all-time low in the second quarter of 2023, according to Census Bureau data. They’ve since risen but remain quite low.   

Housing starts measure the initiation of residential construction. In March, the annualized pace of starts on single-family houses was 940,000, Census data shows. That pace was about 10 percent slower than a year earlier, and slower than the long-term average of more than 1 million new units annually. Since 1960, the pace of starts has been relatively steady, even though the number of U.S. households has more than doubled.   

Behind the plate: Rates and affordability 

Housing started 2025 with one of the worst affordability stats on record. In January, the typical homebuyer could expect to spend 47 percent of their income on their monthly mortgage, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. That’s the largest share recorded in the Fed’s two decades of data. 

As a rule of thumb, economists consider a housing unit affordable if monthly mortgage debt as a share of monthly income is less than 30 percent. A combination of high prices and high mortgage rates has driven down affordability over the past four years, forcing homebuyers to put a larger share of their incomes toward monthly mortgage payments.   

Over the last couple of months, this pricing pressure has eased slightly. Mortgage rates are still relatively high, but they’ve come down from the 7 percent and higher levels posted last year, Freddie Mac data shows. 

Home equity:  The fat pitch 

Despite these challenges for homebuyers, housing equity continues to be a home run for homeowners. Home equity grew by $2.8 trillion in 2024, an 8.8 percent increase from 2023, according to Federal Reserve data.  

And there are signs that homeowners aren’t as deterred by higher rates as they were last year. More of them are tapping home equity to fund vacations, college tuition, and other big purchases. 

The total value of home equity lines of credit is up 7.4 percent from a year ago, Fed data shows,  and the share of banks that are tightening their lending standards on these types of loans fell to 1.8 percent in the first quarter of 2025 from 13.7 percent a year earlier.  

And because home prices have been rising, the number of homeowners who owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth fell 15 percent from a year ago to about 1 million, the lowest level on record, CoreLogic data shows. To put that number in context, during the 2007-2009 financial crisis, the number of underwater mortgages swelled to 13 million. 

A deep bench of home equity means that fewer homeowners are at risk of foreclosure from underwater mortgages, and home prices are well supported.  

My take 

There’s a reason so many economists are baseball fans. It’s a sport full of statistics. In a similar way, housing is a data-rich subject to examine as a barometer of the economy.   

Housing markets underpin labor markets, and vice versa. It’s easier for employers to attract and retain workers where housing is affordable and available in communities with parks, transportation, good schools, and other amenities.   

And when local labor markets are strong, incomes can support local housing and healthy home price appreciation.   

Given its cyclical relationship with interest rates and labor markets, housing typically leads the economy into and out of recessions.  

If the housing market can run the bases this spring, despite curveballs like new tariffs, downbeat consumer sentiment, and economic uncertainty, it will be a good sign that the economy could slide into home plate with the win later this year.   

The week ahead 

Tuesday: The International Monetary Fund publishes its twice-a-year world economic outlook during its spring meeting in Washington, D.C., this week. 

Wednesday: In a week full of backward-looking company earnings reports, data on big -ticket items such as housing and durable goods will provide a better indicator of the near-term outlook for the economy.  

With mortgage rates still (barely) below 7 percent and mortgage applications up 14 percent from February, I expect March residential sales data from Census to show strong spring homebuyer demand.  

Thursday: In February, companies surprised economists and market watchers by increasing orders of metals and computers. March durable goods data from Census will tell us whether last month’s buying was a one-time effort to stockpile ahead of tariff increases, or part of a trend of strong demand for expensive goods.    

With the spring homebuying season in full swing, hard data on existing home sales from the National Association of Realtors could partially offset some of the pessimism about consumer sentiment, which is measured by soft survey data. 

Economic uncertainty and asset market volatility have yet to show up in the Department of Labor’s initial jobless claims data, which continues to hover near historic lows. Continuing claims, then, has become the weekly labor indicator to watch, not as a sign of layoffs, but as a barometer of hiring hesitancy.