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Thursday, November 10, 2022

Realtor.com Reports Weekly Active Inventory Up 42% Year-over-year; New Listings Down 20%

by Calculated Risk on 11/10/2022 04:27:00 PM

Realtor.com has monthly and weekly data on the existing home market. Here is their weekly report released today from Chief Economist Danielle Hale: Weekly Housing Trends View — Data Week Ending Nov 5, 2022. Note: They have data on list prices, new listings and more, but this focus is on inventory.

Active inventory continued to grow, increasing 42% above one year ago. Inventory accelerated by a more modest amount this week, but it was still the fourth consecutive week of roughly 2+% inventory gains after a fair amount of stability since July. Inventory growth even in the face of fewer newly listed homes indicates how many buyers have retreated from the housing market rather than navigate higher costs stemming from higher purchase prices and higher mortgage rates.
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New listings–a measure of sellers putting homes up for sale–were again down, dropping 20% from one year ago. This marks the eighteenth week of year over year declines in homeowners listing their home for sale, a sign that homeowners are well aware of the market’s reset. This data suggests that many potential sellers may be joining buyers in “wait-and-see” mode.
Realtor YoY Active ListingsHere 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 had fallen sharply.

Now YoY inventory is increasing again with even higher mortgage rates, suggesting sales are off more than new listings.