Inman News
Annual new listing growth jumped from 1.7% to 6.4% in 1 week. However, Realtor.com said the listing jump hasn’t translated to more home sales as homebuyers struggle with affordability
Home sellers are leaning into a late-summer rally, according to Realtor.com’s latest weekly real estate market update.
New listings grew 1.7 percent year over year for the week ending Aug. 2. However, growth then jumped to 6.4 percent year over year by Aug. 9, representing a 276 percent week-over-week change. Despite the jump, Realtor.com Senior Economic Research Analyst Hannah Jones said new listing growth is still behind the historical norm, signaling sellers’ lingering reluctance to jump into an uncertain market.
“This marks a pickup compared to the previous week, though the number of new listings remains below the spring and early summer norm,” she said in a prepared statement.
The rise in new listings for the week of Aug. 9 marked the 93rd consecutive week of inventory gains, the report said, pushing active inventory to 1.1 million listings. But while homebuyers have 22.1 percent more homes to choose from compared to last August, they’re not rushing to the market.
“Active inventory is growing significantly faster than new listings, an indication that more homes are sitting on the market for longer,” Jones said.
Affordability represents the main barrier for homebuyers, as annual median listing price growth held steady from 2024, rising 0.8 percent year over year to roughly $429,000. The median list price per square foot, which accounts for changes in home size, increased 0.4 percent year over year, representing 24 consecutive months of growth.
Mortgage rates are still complicating the affordability equation for many homebuyers, even as rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages have moved to a 10-month low.
The average rate has moved from 6.63 percent to 6.58 percent over the past week, the report said. However, consumer worries about inflation and tariffs are still holding homebuyers back, as evidenced by the demand for purchase loans only ticking up 1 percent week-over-week during the week of Aug. 8.
Median listing growth, mortgage rate trends, and general uncertainty about the economy have made homebuyers move more slowly, with the median days on market ticking up six days compared to August 2024.
“The pace of home sales has been sluggish this summer as still-high housing costs and general economic uncertainty deterred would-be buyers,” Jones said in the report.
In response to homebuyers’ skittishness, homesellers are reducing their asking prices. In July, roughly a fourth of active inventory had a price reduction, with the majority of reductions happening in the South and West.
“Facing dwindling buyer interest, many sellers are adjusting course, lowering prices or rethinking whether to sell at all,” she said.