Housing Market Sees Biggest Uptick in New Listings in Almost 2 Years as Pending Sales Surge 21%

Record-low inventory of homes for sale has “created a complete storm of insanity,” in small, affordable markets like Boise, which is seeing an influx of buyers leaving the West Coast.

Key housing market takeaways for 434 U.S. metro areas during the 4-week period ending August 30:

• Median home sale price increased 12% from 2019 to $318,473—the highest on record.
• Pending home sales climbed 21% year over year, the largest increase since the four weeks ending October 18, 2015.
• New listings of homes for sale were up 7% from a year ago—the largest increase since the four weeks ending September 23, 2018. During just the last week of the period, new listings were up 11% from the same week a year earlier.
  “Rising home values are becoming a bigger and bigger reason some homeowners are deciding to sell and cash-in,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “But so far the increase in new listings is still far outpaced by gains in demand from buyers as measured by pending sales.”
• Active listings (the number of homes listed for sale at any point during the period) fell 28% from 2019 to a new all-time low.
• 46.9% of homes that went under contract had an accepted offer within the first two weeks on the market, the highest level since at least 2012 (as far back as our data on this measure goes).
• The average sale-to-list price ratio, which measures how close homes are selling to their asking prices, rose to 99.2%—an all-time high.
• For the week ending August 30, the seasonally adjusted Redfin Homebuyer Demand Index was up 26% from pre-pandemic levels in January and February.

“Demand has been high, but we’re down to a record-low number of homes for sale, which has created a complete storm of insanity,” said Boise Redfin agent Kristin Lopez. “The majority of my recent buyers have been people moving here from out of state: California, Washington and Oregon. I’ve done 10 sight-unseen offers for these buyers in just the past couple of months. They are purchasing primary residences and are moving here to stay.”

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