This is the first installment of Inman Market View, an ongoing monthly data series. The goal: to put more local data in the hands of the Inman community, and to place it in a context that’s highly relevant for the U.S. brokerage industry.
Real estate agents and brokerage leaders are inundated with data each month from dozens of sources.
But that data can often be incomplete, siloed or otherwise difficult to place in a useful context.
That’s why we’re launching Inman Market View, a new interactive project from Inman’s data and news team that seeks to put more local market data directly in the hands of real estate professionals.
This new series aims to allow our Select subscribers to see how their own local market has navigated the treacherous path through a pandemic boom and resultant slowdown, and to compare its path to that of other markets across the country. The tools below utilize listing data from Realtor.com and data wrangling and analysis by the Inman team.
The first result is an interactive map of 500 major metro areas, which together account for nearly 90 percent of the U.S. population.
In the tool below, you can toggle between metrics. Each metric has two views: a “Y/Y” approach that compares the most recent three months’ data to the same period last year; or a “vs. 2017-19” option that compares the same recent three-month period against a 2017-2019 baseline to see how the pandemic era has reshaped different parts of the country.
(For the best experience, view the tool on a desktop browser or in landscape mode in mobile.)
To drill down even deeper into the path each market has taken through the pandemic years, explore the interactive chart tool below.
Use the first dropdown menu to select from any of the nation’s 150 largest housing markets — a collection of metros that contains nearly 75 percent of Americans. Then, use the second dropdown menu to select from the same metrics seen in the map above.
With the tools above, special care has been taken to help account for the occasional noisiness of month-to-month data in small and midsize markets.
By using three-month rolling windows, these tools are able to avoid much of the month-to-month volatility and spot durable trends. And by comparing all recent periods to the same span of time in previous years, the tools account for seasonal patterns in this highly seasonal business.
Each of the metrics above is intended to represent a core concept that Inman tracks on a regular basis. Understand the definitions below to get the most out of the tools.
Metric glossary
Below are the main core concepts that Inman is tracking, and definitions and other notes for each of the metrics.
SUPPLY — New listings
- The number of new listings that entered the market in a given month
DEMAND — Listing outflow
- The number of properties that left the active-listing pool in a given month, either due to a pending sale or a delisting from the market
- This level of listing outflow offsets the number of new listings coming online to explain the total monthly change in the active-listing pool
- Note: Delistings are a problematic component of this metric, but cannot be removed due to data limitations. The vast majority of outflowing properties consist of pending sales, and the metric generally tracks closely with sales trends over time. Still, Inman’s listing outflow metric will be less accurate than your local sales data.
INVENTORY SNAPSHOT — Active listings
- The total number of active listings on the market that are not marked as “pending” at a given point in time
SPEED OF SALE — Median days on market
- The amount of time a typical property sits on the market before it either closes on a sale or is removed from the market
- Half of listings spend longer than this on the market, while the other half spend less
- Note: This is the only metric in the tools above that is expressed in terms of a single month, instead of a three-month rolling window.
BUYER COMPETITION — Outflow rate per active listing
- A market’s listing outflow over a given period, expressed as a share of its active-listing pool at any given time during the same period
- This is essentially the inverse of “months supply” — higher outflow rates generally indicate more buyer demand for a typical listing, and higher upward pressure on home prices
PRICE MOVEMENT — Weighted list price
- The price level assumed for a given three-month window, using each month’s median list price weighted by each month’s total listing outflow
BROKERAGE REVENUE — Potential commission pool
- The value of the estimated pool of commissions that were available to brokerages during a given period, based on list price multiplied by total listing outflow
- Note: This metric is blind to important factors that vary by market, such as average commission rates and splits, as well as the number of serious agents competing for business in the area. It’s not adjusted for inflation. It also doesn’t consider how much real estate activity is a result of new construction. The metric best used for a broad overview and tracking trends over time.
