Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-June 2026
This 2-part overview for mid-June provides a snapshot of the current housing market.
Note that the Census Bureau is now caught up on new home sales and housing starts. The Census Bureau will release May housing starts next week as originally scheduled.
The key story for existing homes are:
Sales in May were up 3.2% YoY, but still historically low.
Sales SAAR (seasonally adjusted annual rate) have been very low over 3 years.
Months-of-supply is above pre-pandemic levels.
However, inventory growth has slowed significantly.
There are also significant regional differences, with some areas seeing more inventory and price declines, and other areas - like the Northeast - seeing smaller increases in inventory and house prices are increasing.
It also appears 2026 will be a difficult year for homebuilders. There are still a large number of completed homes for sales, a larger than normal number of unsold homes under construction and they are reducing prices to compete with more existing home inventory.
Active Listings for Existing Homes Up Slightly Year-over-year
Realtor.com reports in the May 2026 Monthly Housing Report: Sellers Are Meeting the Market—and Buyers Are Showing Up that new listings were up 2.1% year-over-year in May. And active listings were up 2.2% year-over-year.
Year-on-year active listings growth is down from last month (when it was +4.0%). In general, year-on-year listing growth has been decelerating since last spring. Nationwide inventory is 11.6% below typical 2017–19 levels, about the same as the 12.5% shortfall last month.
Active listing growth has slowed recently. Also note the seasonality for active listings. We should expect active listing to pick up through July - but listings are still below pre-pandemic levels (2017 - 2019 on the graph).
Here is some more data on supply and sales.
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