Home Sales and Inventory are starting to show improvements over 2022
Week Ending Nov 10, 2023
New listings volume and the weekly sales volume are now running at a slightly better pace than the same week last year. Both have been below 2022 all year long. When we started the year, sales were running 30% fewer than last year. But we’ve finally recovered the pace, and the data now implies the sales rate for 2024 will be greater than this year.
Altos Research tracks listings, pending and sales on a weekly basis and reports them immediately, they don’t lag a month behind like many other published information. These graphs are showing a 7 year history of statistics.
Home prices continue to be 1-2% above last year and look to end the year at that level. The median price of single family homes in the US is just under $430,000.Weekly Available Inventory
Inventory has been rising very late in the year. That rise is now complete. Last year at this time sellers and buyers were hitting the brakes hard. This year is slow of course, but not dropping, so we finally show fractionally better sales rate growth over the same week a year ago. Statistics and Charts courtesy of Altos Research and Housing Wire.
567,000 single family homes on the market. Unchanged from last week.Inventory has (finally) peaked for the year. (Same chart as above)The Altos rule: if rates go up, inventory will build in 2024. If rates fall, inventory will fall again.Weekly New Listings + Immediate Sales
66,000 new listings (single family) this week, with 11,000 of those already in contract.More new sellers this year than the same week a year ago. This shows some improvement on our supply-constrained market Also, more immediate sales. Buyers leaned into the new supply, which also implies slight sales volume growth coming.In the “Weekly New Listings + Immediate Sales” chart below, watch to make sure there’s no flood of sellers or shrinking immediate sales that indicate a weakening market.
Weekly New Contracts Pending
52,500 new contracts started this week for single family home purchases. That’s low but was more than the same week last year.
Percent of Properties with Recent Price Reductions
As long as rates don’t spike again, 2024 is set up for slight home sales gains over 2023Price reductions have also peaked for the year. 39.2% of the homes on the market have had a price cut.The takeaway from the “Percent of Properties with Recent Price Reductions” chart is that there are no real signals for future sales price declines.
