One of the biggest challenges in today’s real estate market is the lack of homes for sale relative to the number of people looking to buy. To illustrate how limited housing inventory remains, let’s look at the latest information on active properties, homes for sale, for a given month, compared to more normal values.
The graph below helps illustrate this point. It uses historical data to provide a more concrete look at how much the numbers are still lagging behind the level of inventory typical of a more normal market (see graph below):
It’s worth noting that 2020-2022 are not included in this graph. That’s because they were truly abnormal years for the housing market. To make the comparison fair, those have been omitted so they don’t distort the data.
When you compare the orange bars for 2023 with the last normal years for the housing market (2017-2019), you can see the count of active listings is still far below the norm.
What Does This Mean for You?
If you’re thinking about selling your house, that low inventory is why this is a great time to do so. Buyers have fewer choices now than they did in more normal years, and that’s continuing to impact some key statistics in the housing market. For example, sellers will be happy to see the following data from the latest Confidence Index from the National Association of Realtors (NAR):
- The percentage of homes that sold in less than a month ticked up slightly to 74%.
- The median days on the market went down to 18 days, showing homes are still selling fast when priced right.
- The average number of offers on recently sold homes went up to 3.3 offers.
