Austin Business Journal writes, "The first few weeks of 2025 have brought an uptick in home listings, but whether housing inventory currently on the market is priced to sell remains to be seen.
New for-sale listings rose 7.9% in the four-week period ending Feb. 2 compared to the same timeframe a year earlier, according to data from Redfin Corp. (Nasdaq: RDFN). Despite the increased inventory, pending sales were still down 8.1% year over year.
Some of the pending sales slowdown could be seasonal or related to economic uncertainty, but mortgage rates and high home prices — including among newly listed inventory — are also keeping many would-be buyers sidelined.
Inventory is beginning to accumulate, and some homes are taking longer to sell, largely because they're not priced to sell, said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin.
"Prices are still quite high," she said. "The median price of new listings is up 5.7% from last year and, at the same time, pending sales are down. I think there is a disconnect between what sellers are expecting and what buyers are willing to make offers on."
It likely will take either price reductions or sellers being willing to accept offers below asking price to see more existing homes sold, Fairweather added.
Realtor.com found similar trends in January. It reported the total number of unsold homes — including homes under contract — grew by 17.1% compared to January 2024. That's despite a 24.6% uptick in the number of homes actively for sale compared to the same month a year prior.
Newly listed homes grew by 10.8% in January over the same time last year and increased 37.5% compared to December 2024 — the largest December-to-January increase since January 2020, according to Realtor.com.
Homes also are sitting on the market longer, according to Realtor.com, which found the typical home in January spent 73 days on the market. That's five more days than the typical home on the market in January 2024.
Redfin estimates there's currently about five months of supply on the market nationally, up from 4.4 months the year prior. Because of the recent uptick in inventory, the typical home is selling for 2% less than list price, the biggest discount in nearly two years, according to Redfin.
Affordability continues to be the signature challenge in the for-sale housing market. The median monthly housing payment is currently $2,784, up 8.3% on an annual basis and only $21 shy of the all-time high, according to Redfin. Mortgage rates have been a key lever for housing affordability since they began rising in 2022.
"If [mortgage rates] go from 7% to 6.5%, that could unleash all kinds of buyers onto the market," Fairweather said. "But that's really up in the air right now.""
Source: Austin Business Journal
Written by: Ashley Fahey
Published: February 10, 2025
Posted by Grossman & Jones Group on
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