by Calculated Risk on 11/09/2023 09:35:00 AM

Realtor.com has monthly and weekly data on the existing home market. Here is their weekly report: Weekly Housing Trends View — Data Week Ending Nov 4, 2023

• Active inventory declined slightly, with for-sale homes lagging behind year ago levels by 0.2%. For 20 straight weeks, the number of homes available for sale has registered below that of the previous year, though by just a small margin this week.

• New listings–a measure of sellers putting homes up for sale–were up this week, by 0.6% from one year ago. Since mid-2022, new listings have registered lower than prior year levels, as the mortgage rate lock-in effect freezes homeowners with low-rate existing mortgages in place. Over the last two weeks, however, the trend has reversed as new listings during the week outpaced the same week in the previous year by 0.6%, smaller than the previous week’s spike. This week’s stabilization comes after a spike last week, falling more in line with the shrinking gap in new listings over the last few months. With the number of homes for sale already limited, a lack of growth in new listings is likely to continue to weigh on existing home sales in the months ahead.

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

Inventory was down 0.2% year-over-year - this was the 20th consecutive week with a YoY decrease following 58 consecutive weeks with a YoY increase in inventory.  

The YoY decline in inventory has generally been getting smaller recently and I expect inventory to be up YoY soon - but still historically very low.

New listings really collapsed a year ago, so the YoY comparison for new listings is easier now - and although new listings remain historically very low, new listings are now up YoY.