Spring is generally the hottest time of year for buying and selling homes. But this year, the market is sluggish. 

Pending home sales are down year-over-year in most of the country, with the exception of the Midwest, according to new data from the National Association of Realtors. And the latest Case-Shiller data shows home price growth is cooling. 

In some ways, this spring’s housing market is déjà vu all over again.

“We're still in this stalemate phase that we've been in for a long time,” said Chris Salviati, senior housing economist at Apartment List.

He said affordability — or the lack thereof — is still the main issue.

“We're really not through the crazy price increases that we saw a few years ago, right? Where we saw the median monthly mortgage payment double in the course of a few years,” he said.

Today, home prices are still growing, though much more slowly. And mortgage rates have come down a little.

“The challenge is, of course, that housing conditions are easier to navigate, but economic ones aren't,” said Ali Wolf, chief economist at Zonda.

She said uncertainty in the economy is a huge factor in the current housing market. People are wondering:

“Is my job safe? Will the economy go into a recession? What do these tariffs mean for me?” she said. “If you're trying to make the biggest purchase of your life, do you really want to do it if you have no sense of what the next six months look like?”

For a lot of people, Wolf said, the answer right now is no.