The market has been topsy-turvy over the past several years, as home prices, mortgage rates, seller activity and homebuyer demand have struggled to find equilibrium.
However, real estate has now apparently stumbled into a rare — and potentially fleeting — moment of balance: Residential portal Realtor.com’s latest market report revealed that inventory last month in the nation’s 50 largest markets reached five months of supply at the current sales pace. And that made August the first balanced summer month since Realtor began tracking the metric in 2016.
A 20.9 percent year-over-year increase in active listings tipped the scales, with 1,098,681 homes on the market. Thirty-six percent of active listings in August were new (402,268), representing a 4.9 percent increase from the previous year. Homes are sitting on the market longer, with the median days on market from 2024 to 2025 increasing from 53 to 60 days.
Increased inventory and diminished demand have also halted median listing price growth, with the metric remaining unchanged from August 2024 ($429,990), according to Realtor.com’s report. However, homesellers are doing their best to move their home off the market, with 20.3 percent of listings in August undergoing a price cut — a 1.1 percent year-over-year increase.
Danielle Hale | Credit: Realtor.com
“The national housing market is now more balanced between homebuyers and sellers at five months of supply, but that balance conceals a wide range of local realities,” Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale said in a written statement.
Miami; Austin, Texas; Orlando, Florida; New York; Jacksonville, Florida; Tampa, Florida; and Riverside, California, are strong buyers’ markets, with inventory ranging between 6.1 months and 9.7 months of supply, the report notes.
Los Angeles (5), Denver (4.9) and Portland, Oregon (5.1), fell in the middle, topping out at 5.1 months of supply.
Meanwhile, Milwaukee (2.7); St. Louis (2.9); Grand Rapids, Michigan (2.9); and Boston (3) are strong seller’s markets.
Although buyers and sellers overall are on a more even playing field, that hasn’t translated to higher activity.
Pending home sales, which reflect contract signings, dipped 1.3 percent year-over-year in August. Sellers are retreating as well, with new listing growth slowing from July and delistings rising 41 percent year-to-date.
“Signs of a cooling market are evident in demand-side indicators,” the report said of the drop in pending sales. “[And] a rising delisting rate suggests that sellers are increasingly unwilling to accept current market prices or conditions, pulling their homes from the market instead.”
“The ratio of delistings to new listings — a metric that captures the flow of homes in and out of the for-sale market — climbed to 0.24 in July. This means that for every 100 new listings that came onto the market, 24 previously listed homes were removed without selling,” it continued. “This pullback could put downward pressure on inventory later in the year, reducing buyer choice even as market momentum slows.”
The sales slowdown is most pronounced in the South and West, with the median days on market in each region increasing eight days— compared to three in the Midwest and two in the Northeast. Twenty-seven of the top 50 metros are now seeing listings linger longer than their pre-pandemic averages, with the sharpest slowdowns in Nashville (+21 days) and Miami (+16 days), the report read.
Despite weakening national sales metrics, Hale said this isn’t necessarily the time for consumers to run for the hills. Instead, they should look to local trends to determine whether a deal may fall into their laps in the coming months.
“The takeaway for buyers and sellers alike is that local conditions, not national headlines, are what matter most for pricing, competition, and timing,” she said.
