Realtor.com Reports Weekly Inventory Up 28% Year-over-year; Inventory growth is slowing

Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Realtor.com Reports Weekly Inventory Up 28% Year-over-year

Excerpt:

As I noted earlier, Inventory will Tell the Tale about the housing market. And housing inventory is increasing, but the pace of growth has slowed in recent weeks.

As the housing market slows, we need to watch inventory very closely. This will give us a hint on what will happen with house prices.

Realtor.com has monthly and weekly data on the existing home market. Here is their weekly report released yesterday from Chief Economist Danielle Hale: Weekly Housing Trends View — Data Week Ending August 6, 2022.. Note: They have data on list prices, new listings and more, but this focus is on inventory.

Active inventory continued to grow, but the pace slipped to 28% above one year ago.  The rate of improvement actually slipped this week as the number of new listings continues to come in lower. The big positive for today’s shoppers is that they have more homes to consider than last year’s shoppers did. Nevertheless, our July Housing Trends Report showed that the active listings count still trails its 2020 and 2019 levels by more than 15% and 45%, respectively. More improvement in active inventory is likely needed to bring balance, but the recent trend may be at-risk if homeowner attitudes toward selling now continue to deteriorate.

Realtor InventoryHere is a graph of the year-over-year change in inventory according to realtor.com.

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