2021 is an Outlier, Not a Benchmark

The pandemic years, especially 2021, were a strange aberration where everyone moved, house prices skyrocketed, and nearly every real estate business posted record revenues.

Why it matters: 2022 is constantly being compared to 2021, which was anything but normal, and year-over-year comparisons are painting a deeply negative picture.

Dig deeper: Assuming a fairly conservative 5.15 million existing home sales in 2022, the comparison to last year is a sobering 16 percent drop — but 2021 is an outlier, not a benchmark.

Compared to the historical average of the previous eight years (2012–2019), transaction volumes in 2022 would be down only 0.9 percent.

By contrast, compared to the same historical average, transaction volumes were up 9 percent in 2020 and 18 percent in 2021 — notable outliers.

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