Potential homebuyers may soon see relief as the housing market added more inventory year-over-year for the first time since September 2019.
Total listings increased 3.5% from July 2021, according to Realtor.com data released August 9. But the one year jump in listings isn’t enough to mitigate a years-long decline in inventory. During this period, homebuyers struggled to find homes while sellers reaped the benefits of exorbitant offers earlier this year, MarketWatch reported earlier this year.
Total listings, which includes active and pending, were down 41.5% in March from five years ago. Inventory is down 29% for the month of July, an improvement of more than 12 percentage points.
Realtor.com aggregates data from Multiple Listing Service platform used by industry practitioners across the country. Use our interactive to see how inventory and median home price have changed in your county.
Individual markets tracked by MarketWatch have experienced dramatic shifts.
For large markets in March, El Paso, Wake County, N.C. and Clark County, Nev. suffered the biggest drop in total listings from five years earlier. While El Paso, TX has remained the county with the largest decline in inventory for all of 2022, Wake and Clark counties have dropped out of the top-10.
The small-sized market ranking tends to be more volatile because these are are more sensitive to changes in inventory. However, the top three spots in the small-sized market ranking held steady between June and July. All are counties situated in the mountains of northwest North Carolina.
In April, the counties with the largest drop in inventory from five years ago were Sawyer County, Wis., Chautauqua, N.Y. and multiple counties in Maine. The trend of more remote work drove people to make their primary residence a vacation destination.
The three mid-sized markets with the biggest decline have stayed the same for the past three months, Watuga County, N.C. — also in the North Carolina mountains — Virginia Beach, Va. and Chatham County, Ga.
All counties, or county equivalents, in the top-10 are concentrated in East-Coast states.
