U.S. home listings were up 8 percent year over year, reaching their highest level in four years during the four weeks ending Aug. 30, but buyers aren’t showing up to match them.
Pending sales slipped to their lowest point since February over the same stretch, according to a report from Redfin.
The imbalance between the two trends is shaping up to be the story of the fall market. New listings rose 8 percent year over year and 2.1 percent from the previous week, the highest total since August 2022. Active listings climbed 2.4 percent year over year. Pending sales, meanwhile, fell 2.5 percent year over year and dipped slightly from the week before, Redfin reported.
Market Snapshot: Week ending Aug. 30
- Median sale price: $398,632, up 2.2 percent year over year
- New listings: 383,795, up 8 percent year over year, the highest total since August 2022
- Pending sales: 308,282, down 2.5 percent year over year, the lowest level since February
- Months of supply: four, up from 3.7 a year earlier
- Homes sold above list price: 25.9 percent, up from 25 percent a year earlier
- Average weekly mortgage rate: 6.66 percent, near its highest level in the past year
Months of supply rose to four, up from 3.7 a year earlier. Redfin considers four to five months a balanced market, with lower figures signaling conditions that favor sellers, so the shift suggests some room is opening up for buyers who’ve spent the past few years competing for scarce inventory.
Price remains the sticking point. The median U.S. home-sale price rose 2.2 percent year over year to $398,632, and the average weekly mortgage rate climbed to 6.66 percent, near its highest level in the past year. There’s a small counterweight, though; the median asking price fell 0.1 percent year over year, which Redfin said reflects sellers adjusting their expectations as buyers push back on cost.
Not every market is cooling at the same pace. About a quarter of homes that sold, 25.9 percent, went for above asking price, Redfin reported, and a handful of cities are still running hot.
San Francisco’s median sale price rose 9 percent year over year, the largest increase among major metros, while Seattle’s fell 6.2 percent, the steepest decline. The two cities’ diverging paths were the subject of a separate Redfin analysis Inman reported this week, tied to differing fortunes in each city’s tech sector.
Seattle’s slowdown shows up elsewhere in the data too. Pending sales there dropped 15.1 percent year over year, the steepest decline in the country, even as new listings rose nearly 17 percent, Redfin reported.
