After taking a break before the Independence Day holiday, home sellers were back this week. As we see more sellers, some housing market trends are gradually shifting in buyers’ favor. Although asking prices ticked up, we saw a smaller decline in homes for sale, and time on market was steady–both buyer-friendly trends. Buyers may be recalibrating plans and in some cases putting home shopping on hold as prices remain high, market conditions continue to be competitive, and people are getting back to activities like travel and theater-going. Homebuyers who are along for the ride in today’s market continue to have to move in the fast lane, but the competitiveness accelerator may be easing as we see more sellers.   

Weekly Housing Trends Key Findings

Key Findings:

• Median listing prices grew at 10.3 percent over last year, marking the 48th consecutive week of double-digit price growth. Despite this week’s uptick, the pace has been generally slowing since peaking in April at a 17.2% year-over-year pace. The median home listing price remains near its June record-high at $385,000, but we expect this year’s home prices to ease off of summer highs sometime in July or August in a much more typical fashion unlike in 2020 when prices didn’t cool for the season until November.

• New listings–a measure of sellers putting homes up for sale–were up 5 percent following the holiday.  While sellers apparently took a break to celebrate ahead of Independence Day, they returned this week. We’ve seen more new listings this year versus last in 13 of the last 16 weeks. The influx of new sellers over the last few months has contributed to slowing price growth and smaller inventory declines. 

• Total active inventory is still down, but just 35 percent from this time last year. The bad news is that if you thought last year was tough because there weren’t many homes for sale, this year is still worse. The good news is that the trend is improving in buyers’ favor. This is the 14th consecutive week of a smaller year-over-year decline.

• Time on market was again 23 days faster than last year. The typical active listing hit a new record fast pace of 37 days in June. Homes are still selling fast, but as we head into the fall and there are fewer buyers out shopping than in the spring, the housing market generally slows. Buyers will still want to act quickly on homes that are a good fit.

Source: Realtor.com