Days on market drops by nearly 50% amid inventory crisis

Inman News

New listings are up 19.1 percent year over year, but demand continues to outpace new listings, leading to increasingly fewer days on market.

Anyone out and about in the housing market today knows that homes are flying off the shelves. According to new data released from residential real estate data company HouseCanary, Inc., homes spent a median of 47.7 percent fewer days on market in April 2021 compared to the year before.

The report reveals that monthly new listing volume is up 19.1 percent from April 2020, but that rate of new inventory still can’t keep up with the crazy demand from homebuyers.

“Last spring, the real estate market was rocked as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns, but what ensued was a housing boom marked by residential home prices hitting all-time highs, record low mortgage rates, and extremely limited inventory coupled with unwavering demand from buyers,” Jeremy Sicklick, co-founder and CEO of HouseCanary, said in a statement.

“One year later, we are finally starting to see some positive developments on the supply side for the first time since the pandemic began. New listings are up 19.1 percent year over year, however, the number of listings under contract continues to outpace the increase in new listings, which leads us to believe that the supply shortage will hold strong in the short-term.”

Most new listings that hit the market within the last 52 weeks have been in the $200,000 to $400,000 price range, with nearly 43 percent of total net new listings (new listings minus any listings removed from the market during the same period) falling in this range.

Following that, 20 percent of net new listings fell into the $0 to $200,000 range, about 19 percent fell in the $400,000 to $600,000 range, and about 12 percent fell into the $600,000 to $1 million range. Only about 6 percent were above $1 million.

Accounting for homes that were removed from the market during this period, there were 329,633 net new listings put on the market in April 2021, up 36.7 percent from the year before.

Within the last year, about 3.46 million properties have gone under contract, up 14.1 percent from the same period in 2019. Properties in the $200,000 to $400,000 range again made up most properties that went under contract, with about 43 percent of contracts made since April 2020 in this price range.

Contract volume has increased most, however, in the $600,000 to $1 million range, compared to contract numbers from April 2019 to April 2020. Contracts within that price range were up 59.4 percent during the period from April 2021 to April 2020 compared to the year before.

Following that price range, contract volume over the last 52 weeks for homes in the $400,000 to $600,000 price range was up 36.8 percent from the same period in 2019, and contract volume for homes in the $200,000 to $400,000 range was up just 9.6 percent from the same period in 2019.

During the month of April alone, 368,241 single-family listings went under contract across the U.S., up 39 percent from the previous year.

HouseCanary’s data also reflects home prices that continue to rise nationwide. During the four-week period ending on May 7, the median price for all single-family homes was $384,565, up 0.5 percent from the previous month.

The median closed price of single-family homes during that same period was up 3.4 percent from the month before to $382,703.

Meanwhile, the median price of all single-family homes is up 17 percent year over year while the median price of closed listings is up 29.8 percent from May 2020.