HSI Housing Sentiment Index

Tracking the Mood in U.S. Housing News

Updated weekly from thousands of headlines using AI. A clear view of market tone at a glance.

-Latest Reading-
HSI (7D): –0.34
Strongly negative housing news tone
HSI Momentum: -0.12 (vs last week) · Headlines analyzed (past 7 days): 584
Housing Sentiment Index – latest weekly chart
Last updated: Apr 3, 2026
Frequency: Weekly (Mondays)

Housing sentiment has remained predominantly negative over the past year, with occasional rebounds that have yet to shift the overall tone into sustained positive territory. The index captures the average sentiment across headlines, based on AI classification of how positively or negatively the market is being described.

What’s Driving the Reading
Top narrative categories driving housing sentiment
Headlines Driving the Narrative

“Map Shows Home Values Dropping in Half the Country as Housing Market Shifts” Newsweek

“Experts Warn of a Potential Slowdown in the U.S. Housing Market” MSN

“Pending home sales fall as economic uncertainty remains” HousingWire

“Existing Home Sales Declined to 3.93 million, down 2.7% from last month” Realtor.com

Disagreement / Narrative Dispersion
How concentrated or fragmented housing narratives are across headlines.
Narrative dispersion in housing news coverage

Disagreement has remained moderate over the past year, with occasional spikes reflecting periods of more mixed or uncertain housing narratives. The index is based on how much sentiment varies across headlines, with higher values indicating less consensus.

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About this dataset
The Housing Sentiment Index (HSI) tracks the tone of U.S. housing news coverage using AI-classified headlines.
HSI reflects shifts in housing news narrative and should be interpreted as a measure of media sentiment, not housing market fundamentals.

Data Usage

This dataset is provided for research, journalism, and non-commercial use.

You are welcome to use, share, and analyze the data with proper attribution.

Please cite:
Soo, C. (2026). Housing Sentiment Index (HSI)
https://housingsentimentindex.com

For commercial use, licensing, or expanded datasets, please contact us.

Methodology
Data source
Housing-related news headlines are collected from Google News RSS feeds, capturing a broad mix of national and local coverage.
Coverage
The index focuses on U.S. housing market headlines, including topics such as prices, mortgage rates, supply, and demand.
Sentiment classification
Each headline is analyzed using AI and classified as positive, negative, or neutral based on how the housing market is described.
Sentiment index
The Housing Sentiment Index reflects the average sentiment across headlines over time, using a 7-day rolling average to smooth short-term fluctuations. Website charts may apply light exponential smoothing to improve readability of short-term movements. Downloaded datasets contain the underlying index values.
Disagreement index
The Disagreement Index measures how much sentiment varies across headlines on a given day, using the standard deviation of sentiment scores. A 7-day rolling average is applied to smooth short-term fluctuations and highlight broader shifts in narrative alignment.
Research grounding
The Housing Sentiment Index (HSI) builds on prior research on housing news sentiment developed in earlier academic work by economist Cindy Soo.
Read the original research Wall Street Journal coverage