{"id":76082,"date":"2023-04-13T12:29:58","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T19:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/?p=76082"},"modified":"2023-04-13T14:16:26","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T21:16:26","slug":"housing-market-update-new-listings-home-prices-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/housing-market-update-new-listings-home-prices-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing Market Update: Buyers Can\u2019t Buy if Sellers Won\u2019t Sell"},"content":{"rendered":"

New listings of homes for sale are down 25% from a year ago, marking the eighth straight month of double-digit declines. That\u2019s making it difficult for buyers to find homes but giving some sellers a competitive edge.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

New listings of U.S. homes for sale dropped 25% from a year earlier during the four weeks ending April 9, continuing an eight-month streak of double-digit declines. That\u2019s the biggest drop since the start of the pandemic, but there was a holiday weekend effect:\u00a0 Easter fell a week earlier this year than last year, so it\u2019s likely that last weekend\u2019s holiday made the new-listings decline larger than it would have been if Easter fell during last year\u2019s comparison period.<\/span><\/p>\n

People are reluctant to sell because they don\u2019t want to give up their low mortgage rate, it\u2019s hard to find another home to buy and many Americans recently moved. Although rates are down from their November peak, this week\u2019s average is <\/span>6.27%<\/span><\/a>; 85% of homeowners have a rate <\/span>far below<\/span><\/a> 6%. The bright side for homeowners who are listing now is that desirable, well-priced homes are being snapped up in bidding wars in markets where demand outpaces supply.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

New listings fell from a year earlier in all 50 of the most populous U.S. metros, with the biggest declines in California. They dropped most in Sacramento and Oakland (-47% YoY apiece), San Francisco (-43.2%), San Jose (-42.9%) and San Diego (-41.4%). The scarcity of homes hitting the market, along with elevated mortgage rates, is holding back sales. Pending home sales dropped more than 30% in each of those metros, more than the 19% nationwide decline.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While pending sales are down, early-stage homebuying demand is ticking up, with mortgage-purchase applications <\/span>up 8%<\/span><\/a> from a week earlier, seasonally adjusted.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Angela Langone<\/a>, a Redfin agent in San Jose, said there aren\u2019t enough listings to go around, with multiple offers on many homes. Both new listings and pending sales are down more than 40% from a year ago in San Jose.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMany buyers here aren\u2019t held back by high mortgage rates; it\u2019s the lack of inventory that\u2019s really getting in their way,\u201d Langone said. \u201cI have several clients who are serious about buying a home and they\u2019re actively looking, but they can\u2019t find anything right now and they\u2019re waiting for more homes to trickle onto the market.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Buyers have more options in other parts of the country. In Nashville, TN, for instance, new listings and pending sales were both down about 14% from a year earlier\u2013but those are some of the smallest drops in the country.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Inventory isn’t a major problem here because the greater Nashville area is so sprawling, and there are a lot of newly built homes on the market in the suburbs,” said Nashville Redfin agent Jennifer Bowers<\/a>. “Builders went big in the outskirts of the city over the last few years and now they’re offering incentives to attract buyers, to the point where individual sellers are having a hard time competing. For buyers willing to stray from the city center, there are plenty of homes for sale.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Two new pieces of economic data serve as tea leaves we can read to anticipate how mortgage rates will trend over the next few months: It\u2019s unlikely they\u2019ll skyrocket,\u00a0 but it\u2019s also unlikely they\u2019ll come down enough to motivate locked-in homeowners to sell. The March consumer-price index and jobs report showed that inflation <\/span>continued to cool<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>wage growth<\/span><\/a> ticked down from the month before, but inflation is still higher than the Fed\u2019s target.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Fed has made some progress cooling inflation with rate hikes but there\u2019s still work to be done,\u201d said Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather<\/a>. \u201cEven if the Fed chooses not to hike rates next month, which would likely bring down mortgage rates, the limited supply of homes for sale would remain a major obstacle for would-be buyers. Rates dipping below 6% would probably pique the interest of more buyers, but enough homeowners have rates in the 3% or 4% range that we\u2019re unlikely to see a big uptick in new listings.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Home Prices Falling in More Than Half of the U.S.<\/span><\/h2>\n

The median U.S. home-sale price fell 2.3% year over year to roughly $364,000, the biggest decline in more than a decade.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Prices fell significantly more than that in some metros, but rose in others. Home-sale prices dropped in more than half (29) of the 50 most populous U.S. metros, with the biggest drop in Austin, TX (-13.9% YoY). Next come four West Coast metros: Oakland (-11.4%), San Francisco (-10.9%), Seattle (-10.9%) and Sacramento (-10.6%).\u00a0 That\u2019s the biggest annual decline since at least 2015 for Seattle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other end of the spectrum, sale prices <\/span>increased <\/span><\/i>most in Fort Lauderdale, FL, where they rose 11.6% year over year. Next come Milwaukee (9.5%), Miami (8.5%), Cincinnati (7.3%) and Providence, RI (7.2%). <\/span><\/p>\n

Leading indicators of homebuying activity:<\/span><\/h2>\n