Jiayi Xu: Weekly Housing Trends View — Data Week Ending June 10th, 2023
• Active inventory growth slowed again, with for-sale homes up just 10% above one year ago. The number of homes for sale continues to grow, but compared to one year ago, the pace is slowing. While today’s shoppers still have many more homes to consider than last year’s shoppers did, worries about high inflation, rising interest rates, and escalating home prices have caused many prospective buyers, especially more first-time buyers, to postpone their plans to purchase a home. This, in turn, has contributed to an increase in the number of homes listed for sale. However, the ongoing decrease in new listings has restrained the growth of active inventory, and there is a possibility of further deceleration in the upcoming weeks.
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• New listings–a measure of sellers putting homes up for sale–were down again this week, by 22% from one year ago. The number of newly listed homes has been lower than the same time the previous year for the past 49 weeks. As the year-over-year declines fluctuated in the -20% to -26% range, there are no clear signs of sellers re-entering the market at a steady pace. The large decline in new listings is primarily driven by the mortgage “locked-in” as many existing homeowners benefit from mortgage rates that are significantly lower than the current level.
Here is a graph of the year-over-year change in inventory according to realtor.com.
Inventory is still up year-over-year – from record lows – however, the YoY increase has slowed sharply recently.