We finally have six weeks of numbers that hit my housing inventory growth model perfectly in 2024. Last year, with higher mortgage rates, we had zero weeks at this level so I am now giving 2024 inventory growth a grade of A.
Low inventory has plagued the housing market since the pandemic, plummeting to all-time lows in March of 2022 when we only had 240,000 single-family homes available for sale. Today that number is 668,383. While this is still far from average, it’s a huge plus that we are no longer in a savagely unhealthy low inventory market in parts of the country.
Yes, home prices are still rising in 2024, but the pace is significantly slower than in 2020 and 2021. The labor market has allowed mortgage rates to stay higher for longer and with the inventory growth this year, I feel much better about rates falling than I did in 2022 or 2023. I recently spoke about this in an interview on CNBC.
Weekly housing inventory data
I know I shouldn’t count a kickback holiday week as positive inventory growth, but it’s my chart party, and I will roll it out how I like. So we are accepting the sixth week this year of inventory hitting into the range of 11,000-17,000, with inventory growth of 16,910 last week.
Weekly inventory change (July 12-19): Inventory grew from 651,453 to 668,383
The same week last year (July 14-21): Inventory rose from 471,603 to 480,448
The all-time inventory bottom was in 2022 at 240,497
The yearly inventory peak for 2024 is 668,383
For some context, active listings for this week in 2015 were 1,201,808
New listings data
New listings data, while growing year over year as expected, hasn’t hit my minimum target of 80,000 for the peak weeks this year. So far the weekly high print in 2024 is only 72,329. The seasonal decline in new listings will begin soon and we will see if we get fewer sellers in the second half of the year than the current trend.
Here are the number of listings for last week over the last several years:
2024: 68,681
2023: 62,859
2022: 80,089
Price-cut percentage
In an average year, one-third of all homes take a price cut — this is standard housing activity. As rates have stayed elevated, the price-cut percentage is higher than in the last two years, and certain pockets of the U.S. have higher inventory than the national data.
A few weeks ago, on the HousingWire Daily podcast, I discussed that the price-growth data will cool down in the year’s second half. Here are the price-cut percentages for last week over the previous few years:
2024: 39%
2023: 34%
2022: 35%
Pending sales
Below is the Altos Research weekly pending contract data year-over-year to show real-time demand. With more sellers who are buyers, we have a tad more demand this year. Compared to the purchase application data, these are live weekly contracts, where purchase apps data looks out 30-90 days.
2024: 382,435
2023: 378,227
2022: 418,983
