by Calculated Risk on 5/16/2024 05:07:00 PM

What this means: On a weekly basis, Realtor.com reports the year-over-year change in active inventory and new listings. On a monthly basis, they report total inventory. For April, Realtor.com reported inventory was up 30.4% YoY, but still down almost 36% compared to April 2017 to 2019 levels. 

 Now - on a weekly basis - inventory is up 35.0% YoY.

Realtor.com has monthly and weekly data on the existing home market. Here is their weekly report: Weekly Housing Trends View—Data for Week Ending May 11, 2024

• Active inventory increased, with for-sale homes 35.0% above year-ago levels.

For the 27th straight week, there were more homes listed for sale versus the prior year, giving homebuyers more options. In fact, last week saw the highest number of homes for sale since August 2020, a significant milestone. Though new listing activity has softened, the recent strength in listing activity means buyers are seeing more homes for sale than they have in almost 4 years. Though buyers are seeing more options at a national level, inventory abundance varies geographically. The South leads the way in inventory growth, with a 43.0% increase in inventory annually in April, while the Northeast saw inventory increase just 4.0%.

• New listings–a measure of sellers putting homes up for sale–were up this week, by 6.6% from one year ago.

Seller activity continued to climb annually last week and accelerated relative to the previous week’s growth. However, the annual increase in new listings was lower than almost every week back to early February, signifying a slowdown in new listings growth. .

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

Inventory was up year-over-year for the 27th consecutive week.  

However, inventory is still historically very low.

New listings remain below typical pre-pandemic levels although up year-over-year.