Latest Housing Trends.....

Weekly Housing Trends from Realtor.com - Key Findings

The median listing price grew at 8.6 percent over last year, marking five straight weeks of single-digit price growth after a 50-week streak of double-digit price growth. Despite the slower growth rate, the median home list price remains near its record-high July level of $385,000 at $380,000. Additionally, this rate of growth is still higher than we’ve seen historically. We expect prices to ease as we head into fall, as they have historically, which will mean still-strong pricing for sellers and a window of opportunity for buyers.

New listings–a measure of sellers putting homes up for sale–was up just 1.2 percent. The number of homeowners listing homes for sale has been a crucial bell-weather in an inventory-starved housing market, contributing much needed supply to eager buyers. In 20 of the last 23 weeks, we’ve seen more new sellers than 2020 and the gap with a more ‘normal’ 2019 pace has shrunk considerably. This week’s gain was again smaller than we’ve seen recently, but could be a temporary set-back as a more normal end-of-summer and back-to-school pattern emerges. This is a figure we’ll watch closely over the next few weeks.

Active inventory continues to play catch up to last year, and is down just 24 percent from a year ago. Buyers will still see fewer homes for sale than last year, but the gap continues to shrink, getting smaller for the last 21 weeks in a row. With fewer new listings coming up for sale this week, the pace of improvement slowed. At this rate, we may not see the inventory of homes catch up to last year by the end of 2021.

Time on market was down 15 days from last year. Homes that are in good condition and well-priced continue to sell fast. The typical active listing was on the market 39 days in August, just two days longer than June’s record-fast pace. We expect this more normal seasonal slowing to continue this year, even as homes continue to sell faster than in previous years.