Source: Realtor.com —
Where are all the homes, anyway? Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic ignited a nationwide housing boom, wannabe buyers have been plagued by bone-dry home inventory levels in many markets—causing them to either wait on the sidelines for more choices or slug it out in frantic bidding wars for the scraps of the market.
Now, as we head into the crucial spring real estate season, buyers are still finding no shortage of challenges: Home prices are historically high, mortgage interest rates are rising, and folks are once again swamping open houses, spilling out onto sidewalks.
But there is a silver lining: In many markets, there are a lot more homes to choose from. And the data team at Realtor.com® found the metropolitan areas where the overall home listings are up the most.
Let’s be clear: The nation is still suffering from a severe housing shortage. But compared with one year ago, there are about 250,000 more homes for sale. Housing inventory has been on the upswing since the middle of 2022, with the number of active listings on Realtor.com hitting 626,000 in January 2023.
It’s not that all of a sudden more people are listing their homes for sale. In fact, fewer new listings—the lifeblood of the housing market—went on the market in January of this year compared with January 2022. The difference is that homes are now taking longer to sell. There are simply fewer buyers who can afford to purchase real estate with mortgage rates approaching 7% for 30-year fixed-rate loans.
So, the properties that aren’t snapped up immediately—the desperate fixer-uppers, the overpriced digs, the oddly configured places woefully lacking curb appeal, the homes in less desirable areas—are piling up on the market as the number of home sales has dropped. The result is more options for potential buyers and more time to consider their purchase or even negotiate with sellers.
Unfortunately for buyers, the rise in homes for sale hasn’t resulted in prices falling, at least in the majority of these places. In fact, prices are still rising in many of these areas.
That’s why, in the estimation of Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale, it’s not quite a buyer’s market yet, because affordability is still a challenge.
“We’re seeing inventories grow from record lows, so the percent-change figures are huge,” she says.
Even with the jump in homes for sale, a 65% increase from January 2022, Hale points out, inventory is still far below where it was in January 2019, when there were more than 1.1 million homes on the market.
The upshot for now, Hale says, is that buyers have more homes to choose from and more time to weigh their potential purchase. That all amounts to a good negotiating position.
“Sellers might have to come down or find some other way to sweeten the deal for buyers,” she says.
In the 10 metro areas on our list alone, there were 30,500 more listings in January 2023 than in January 2022.
To come up with this list, we used publicly available listing data on Realtor.com to figure out where home inventory was up the most in January 2023 compared with the same time a year earlier. We included only the metro with the largest percentage increase in year-over-year active listings per state to ensure geographical diversity.
(Metros include the main city and surrounding towns, suburbs, and smaller urban areas.)
So where are more homes up for sale?
1. Ogden, UT
Year-over-year active listings increase: 392%
Median home list price: $542,450
Ogden, about one hour north of Salt Lake City, attracted scores of out-of-town (and often out-of-state) buyers during the pandemic bidding home prices up. Builders put up scores of new homes. But as the number of buyers moving into the area has dwindled and locals are grappling with higher mortgage rates, the number of homes for sale has nearly quintupled since January last year.
It’s worth noting, though, that in January 2022, the inventory in Ogden was extremely low. There were fewer than 300 active listings then, in a metro with 709,000 residents. How quickly things can change.
With more than 1,300 active listings in January 2023, the number of listings for the size of the population is now close to the same figure nationally.
And buyers in the Silicon Slopes, as the tech-heavy area is known, can still find homes priced just a little lower than in Salt Lake City. Plus, they’re not far from several ski resorts.
2. Huntsville, AL
Year-over-year listings increase: 319%
Median home list price: $389,800
Huntsville, located in the northern end of Alabama near the Tennessee border, has thrived in recent years, due in large part to its role as a regional technology hub and for its aerospace industry.
It’s home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the famous children’s Space Camp. Boeing, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman also have a presence there.
