by Calculated Risk on 10/13/2022 03:31:00 PM

Realtor.com has monthly and weekly data on the existing home market. Here is their weekly report released today from economist Jiayi Xu: Weekly Housing Trends View — Data Week Ending Oct 8, 2022. Note: They have data on list prices, new listings and more, but this focus is on inventory.

• Active inventory continued to grow, increasing 31% above one year ago.

Highlighting the roller coaster ride that the housing market and its participants have been on in the last few years, one’s take on the current number of homes for sale depends very much on the comparison point. After a period of unusually hot activity, financial conditions are cooling demand in the housing market and there are substantially more homes for-sale compared to one year ago. However, the market still falls short of pre-pandemic inventory levels by an even greater amount.
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• New listings–a measure of sellers putting homes up for sale–were again down, dropping 15% from one year ago.

This week marks the fourteenth straight week of year over year declines in the number of new listings coming up for sale. As mortgage rates near 7 percent, which is a level not seen in more than two decades, sellers who are also trying to buy a home, nearly 3 of every 4 potential sellers, have had to alter their trade-up plans. It appears that many have put selling on hold despite record levels of home equity, as higher mortgage rates and home prices sap purchasing power.

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

Note the rapid increase in the YoY change earlier this year, from down 30% at the beginning of the year, to up 29% YoY at the beginning of July.

Then the Realtor.com data was stuck at up around 26% to 30% YoY for 14 weeks in a row.  This was due to the slowdown in new listings, even as sales have fallen sharply.

Now YoY inventory is increasing again, suggesting sales are off more than new listings.