Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-February 2024

This 2-part overview for mid-February provides a snapshot of the current housing market.

Let’s talk house prices, sales, inventory, mortgage rates, rents and more!

I always like to start with inventory, since inventory usually tells the tale!

New Listings for Existing Homes Up Year-over-year in January

Here is a graph of new listing from Realtor.com’s January 2024 Monthly Housing Market Trends Report showing new listings were up 2.8% year-over-year in January. This is just a slight increase from the record low for January set in 2023. From Realtor.com:

Providing a boost to overall inventory, sellers turned out in higher numbers this January as newly listed homes were 2.8% above last year’s levels. This marked the third month of increasing listing activity after a 17-month streak of decline, however this month’s improvement is lower than last month’s 9.1% growth rate.

Note the seasonality for new listings. December and January are seasonally the weakest months of the year for new listings. It seems very likely that new listings will be up year-over-year in 2024, but we will have to wait for the March data to see how close new listings are to normal levels.

Impact on Active Inventory