It’s been over a month since housing inventory levels saw a week-over-week increase but we got a slight increase for the week ending September 19th, according to Altos Research’s weekly report.
- Available inventory of single-family homes for sale rose almost 1% this week back up to 552,000
- We have 26% more homes on the market now than last year but 43% fewer than in 2019 before the pandemic.
Prices Hold. The Median price of a single-family home in the US held steady at $439,900, this is unchanged from last week and is still down 3.3% from the high reported in July. Mike Simonsen, CEO of Altos, believes prices will finish up 10.0% for the year.
- The median price of a new listing this week actually jumped up to $399,000.
Price Cuts. The percent of homes on the market with price reductions ticked up slightly this week to 40.6%, this up 0.6% percentage points from the prior week.
Rents Fall. Median rent for single-family homes ticked down to $2275, this was the third week in a row of declining rents but is only down slightly from the highs we saw in mid-summer.
- Simonsen mentioned this was a metric to keep an eye on. He posed the question “Are we seeing the first signals of rents peaking?”
BOTTOM LINE: Inventory levels may have stopped their slide temporarily but we are far from healthy levels.