Realtor.com Reports Weekly Active Inventory Up 34% Year-over-year; New Listings Down 15%

by Calculated Risk on 10/20/2022 01:35:00 PM

Realtor.com has monthly and weekly data on the existing home market. Here is their weekly report released today from Chief Economist Danielle Hale: Weekly Housing Trends View — Data Week Ending Oct 15, 2022. Note: They have data on list prices, new listings and more, but this focus is on inventory.

• Active inventory continued to grow, increasing 34% above one year ago. … This week’s big jump in the active inventory trend (from 31% last week to 34% this week), even as new listings remain low, suggests that buyers are likely being squeezed by the renewed advance of mortgage rates which were very near 7% last week and are likely to top that mark this week.
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• New listings–a measure of sellers putting homes up for sale–were again down, dropping 15% from one year ago. This week marks the fifteenth straight week of year over year declines in the number of new listings coming up for sale. Seasonally, fewer homeowners contemplate a home sale as the temperature cools and the holidays approach. Still, the consistent declines relative to one year ago signal dwindling enthusiasm on the part of potential sellers.

Here is a graph of the year-over-year change in inventory according to realtor.com. 

Note the rapid increase in the YoY change earlier this year, from down 30% at the beginning of the year, to up 29% YoY at the beginning of July.

Then the Realtor.com data was stuck at up around 26% to 30% YoY for 14 weeks in a row.  This was due to the slowdown in new listings, even as sales have fallen sharply.

Now YoY inventory is increasing again, suggesting sales are off more than new listings.