Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-November

In this 2-part overview of the housing market for mid-November, I’ll discuss new and existing home inventory and sales, house prices, mortgage rates, rents and more.

Year-over-year Decline in New Listings

Here is a graph of new listing from Realtor.com’s October 2023 Monthly Housing Market Trends Report showing new listings were down about 3.2% year-over-year in October. The year-over-year decline has been shrinking, mostly because new listings collapsed in the 2nd half of 2022. From Realtor.com:

Newly listed homes were 3.2% below last year’s levels, improving from a decline of 9.1% in September. While listing activity declined seasonally, the count of newly listed homes in October only dropped by 2.6% compared to September, compared to an average of 5.8% since 2017. Nevertheless, high mortgage rates continue to impact selling activity as homeowners feel ‘locked-in’ to previously low rates.

For the local markets I track that have reported so far, are show new listings were down significantly less year-over-year than earlier in the year.

For these areas, new listings were down 10.7% YoY. Potential sellers that are locked into their current homes with low mortgage rates has pushed down new listings.

Last month, new listings in these markets were down 18.2% YoY. The YoY decline in new listing has been getting smaller, mostly because new listings collapsed a year ago as mortgage rates increased.

Based on the recent trend, it is likely new listings will be up YoY soon, but still at historically low levels.

Impact on Active Inventory