For the third time in less than a week, a new report indicates that housing inventory is slowing down — and moving in the opposite direction compared to what most agents and homebuyers wanted.
The report, out Monday from Redfin, reveals that active listings dipped 1.4 percent in November relative to October. The report describes this as “the biggest drop since June 2023 on a seasonally adjusted basis.” The report further shows that new listings dropped 2.2 percent month over month, hitting “the lowest level since April 2024 on a seasonally adjusted basis.”
TAKE THE INMAN INTEL SURVEY FOR DECEMBER
The takeaway is that homesellers are “retreating.” And the report posits that the retreat is a response to behavior from homebuyers.
“Home sellers are retreating in part because buyers are retreating,” the report notes. “Buyers are skittish due to high mortgage rates and economic jitters, which means many sellers aren’t getting the list price they hoped for. As a result, some are opting to delist their homes or not list at all.”
On top of that, the report indicates that “the typical home that sold last month went for 1.6 percent less than its final list price — the steepest November discount in six years.”
“Sellers have to price their homes very reasonably to attract interest,” Carlos Castillo, a Redfin Premier agent in Los Angeles, is quoted as saying in the report.
Redfin’s report goes on to say that pending sales fell 2.5 percent month over month in November, which was the largest such dip since December 2024, and that existing home sales were flat.
The report is the latest in a genre that captures the housing market at a particularly slow moment. Other examples include a report from Zillow last week that pointed to ongoing “seasonal cooling,” and another from the National Association of Realtors showing that “inventory growth is beginning to stall.”
Seasonality late in the year is not unusual, and indeed November and December tend to be slower months for real estate professionals. But the current slowness comes after years of high rates and slow sales, and collides headlong with agents’ hopes that there might be something of a year-end rally.
Instead, Redfin’s report indicates that “while mortgage rates have ticked down in recent months, they remain much higher than they were in 2020 and 2021, and Redfin agents say many house hunters are waiting to jump into the market until rates fall further.”
There are silver linings in certain cases, including that buyers who are in the market have leverage, but ultimately the report paints a grim picture.
“Redfin economists expect existing-home sales to end the year roughly flat with 2024,” it states, “which was the worst year for sales since 1995.”
