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.
