Pending home sales rose 1.4% month over month in April and were up 3.2% compared with a year ago, according to a report released Monday by the National Association of Realtors.

The year-over-year figure is the more telling one: it marks continued annual gains nationally, a sign that buyers are slowly returning to a market that has been frozen by elevated borrowing costs and thin inventory for much of the past two years.

The Northeast posted a 6.6% monthly increase — the strongest of any region — though it remains the only region running behind year over year, down 0.6% from April 2025, according to NAR. The Midwest gained 3.0% month over month and 2.7% annually. The South slipped 0.7% for the month but gained 4.7% year over year. The West edged up 0.4% monthly and 3.8% annually.

The April activity coincided with a narrow window when borrowing costs eased. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged between 5.98% and 6.00% in early March — near its lowest point of the year — before climbing to 6.38% by March 26, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey. Rates then pulled back into the low 6.20s through much of April before surging again. As of Tuesday, the 30-year fixed had reached 6.75%, its highest level since July, according to Mortgage News Daily — up 46 basis points from its April low.

“Buyers are coming out with cautious optimism despite increasing economic uncertainty and a slight rise in mortgage rates,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in the report.

Yun also pointed to the rate environment as a ceiling on demand. “Demand will easily be even higher once mortgage rates retreat to the levels they were at earlier this year,” he said.

The tension Yun is describing is real. Those earlier-in-the-year levels — sub-6% in early March — appear to be out of reach for now. Mortgage News Daily attributed the recent spike to rising bond yields tied to growing concern over the trajectory of the Iran war.

Supply, not rates, may be the longer-term problem.

Yun warned that without a meaningful increase in housing inventory, home price growth could outpace wage growth and further erode the homeownership rate — an outcome that would fall hardest on first-time buyers. “Unless supply meaningfully increases, home price growth could outpace wage growth and further erode the homeownership rate,” he said.

Pending contracts are considered a leading indicator for closed sales, typically finalizing within one to two months of signing. May existing-home sales figures are scheduled for release June 9, according to NAR.

State-level data that could offer a sharper local picture is expected soon.

The New York State Association of Realtors typically releases its monthly housing report in the weeks following the close of each month. Its most recent report, issued April 22, covered March activity and showed closed sales across the state down 5.7% year over year, with the median sales price up 3.8% to $435,000, according to NYSAR. An April report — which would capture the same period reflected in Monday’s NAR data — had not been released as of publication.

“All efforts need to be focused on boosting housing supply,” Yun said.

The car was built by high school students.

They’re enrolled in the New Visions: Emerging Technologies program at Capital Region BOCES, and they also took first in the competition’s promotional category. Call it a sweep, more or less.

The team, which competed under the name E-Tech, was captained by Schenectady High School junior Arron Scott. The rest of the roster drew from multiple districts: Dillon Harlow from Shenendehowa; Kwasi Leitch, Ezekiel Sahai, and Krishna Wright, all from Schenectady. Their teacher, Brian Conway, said the car ran on 10 HYDROSTIKS of hydrogen gas and two NiMH batteries — hardware the students selected, assembled, and raced themselves.

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The competition was sponsored by Plug Power and the Center for Economic Growth NY.

Those aren’t incidental sponsors. Plug Power, headquartered in Slingerlands, is one of the foundational names in the green hydrogen economy. Founded in Albany County in 1997, the company created the first commercially viable market for hydrogen fuel cell technology and has since grown into a global operation.

NY CREATES — the New York Center for Research, Economic Advancement, Technology, Engineering and Science — is the other co-sponsor, and its footprint is significant. Operating out of the Albany NanoTech Complex, NY CREATES manages what has become a leading center for semiconductor research and development, with more than $25 billion in high-tech investments and approximately 3,000 R&D jobs on site. The organization was directly involved in developing the New Visions: Emerging Technologies curriculum, which means the students who raced that car last month are being trained, in part, by the same institutions building the region’s next-generation tech workforce.

“The students had to consider physics, use engineering practice to make improvements to the model car, collaborate, problem solve, strategize and race the car the most efficient way possible,” Conway said.

That’s a description of a job interview as much as it is a competition.

The New Visions: Emerging Technologies program launched in September and is housed at the new CTE Extension Center on Watervliet-Shaker Road in Albany — the latest addition to a Capital Region BOCES system that has been expanding at a pace that reflects real pressure from employers.

The CTE operation now runs campuses in Albany and Schoharie, with the extension center opening in time for the 2025-26 school year. Capital Region BOCES started the current school year with more than 1,400 students enrolled and a waitlist in excess of 200 students; the Extension Center is designed to accommodate an additional 200-plus. Schoharie’s campus, which celebrated 50 years of operation in 2022, serves students across Albany, Schoharie, and Schenectady counties. The demand isn’t theoretical — it’s a waitlist.

The curriculum in the Emerging Technologies program covers advanced manufacturing, mechanical and electrical systems, hydrogen safety, semiconductor processes, fuel cell systems, pneumatics, automation, cleanroom protocols, and troubleshooting. Students leave with credentials aimed at immediate employment or entry into apprenticeship programs in industries that are, by any honest measure, actively trying to hire people who know what a fuel cell system is.

It’s worth noting who the E-Tech team was racing against. The field included university students — SUNY and RIT competitors — and the BOCES team finished second in endurance by a margin of seven laps. The first-place car completed 171 laps; the E-Tech car finished 164. That gap is close enough that the outcome reads less like an upset than like a proof of concept.

The promotional category — judged separately — went to Capital Region BOCES outright.

Ahead of Valentine’s Day, Albany Mayor Dorcey L. Applyrs officiated a vow renewal ceremony that felt less like a spectacle and more like a quiet civic rite. The couples came from across the Capital Region. The storied room hosted the matrimonial celebration as a way to celebrate the return of one of Albany’s cherished restaurants.

The venerable State Street institution, has long trafficked in oysters and tradition. On Friday, it trafficked in memory. The tables were set in Valentine’s red. Live music drifted through the dining room. A celebratory luncheon followed the ceremony, though the meal felt secondary to the moment.

“I walked around a few tables and I heard 50 years, 30 years, and 25 years—you give us hope,” Applyrs said before helping each couple renew vows in a mass ceremony.

To stand in public and say again what you once whispered in private is a kind of bravery. It suggests that romance, in its truest form, is not theatrical. It is municipal. It lives in neighborhoods and lunchrooms and long marriages that outlast trends and headlines.

For a few hours on State Street, love was not an abstraction. It was local. It had names and dates and stories that loop back through Jack’s dining room like a well-worn refrain.