RealEstateNews 7.14.25

Weekly News Roundup

• Home Delistings Surge Almost 50%
• Housing Unaffordability Increasing Renters 
• Housing Supply Bounces Back

Home Delistings Surge Almost 50%

Delistings jumped 47% nationally in May from a year earlier, in a sign that sellers would increasingly rather wait than negotiate, according to the Realtor.com® economic research team’s latest monthly housing trends report. Year to date, delistings are up 35% from the same period in 2024. The increase is partly due to the overall expansion in active inventory, which was up 28% in June from a year earlier. Newly listed homes increased 8.8% from a year ago, but remained flat over the past two months.

Still, delistings are outpacing new listings, with 13 homes delisted in May for every 100 homes hitting the market—up from 10 in the spring of 2024 and 2023, and just six in 2022. The increase in delistings follows a surge in price reductions, as some sellers with unrealistic price expectations faced a softer market with limited buyers. Now, it seems that some sellers would rather wait out the market than accept a lower price for their home.

“Unlike past housing cycles where falling prices pressured underwater homeowners to sell, today’s homeowners benefit from record-high levels of home equity, so they have the flexibility to wait it out,” says Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel. “This allows many sellers to withdraw their homes from the market if their asking price isn’t met.” The trend is especially noticeable in the South and West, where inventory has surged back above pre-pandemic levels, and prices are flat or falling. 

“This year’s market is a study in contrasts,” says Danielle Hale, chief economist of Realtor.com. “Buyers are seeing more choices than they’ve had in years, but many sellers, anchored by peak price expectations and upheld by strong equity positions, are deciding to step back if they don’t get their number. “Looking forward, this dynamic will affect whether we tip from a balanced to buyer’s market, and if so, how quickly that happens,” she adds. Source: Realtor.com

Click for YouTube news summary

Housing Unaffordability Increasing Renters  

The number of first-time home buyers is dwindling. There were 1.1 million first-time buyers last year—380,000 fewer than in 2023 and almost half the historical norm, data from the National Association of Realtors shows. This year could be even worse judging by the weak spring home-selling season. Based on sales through May, the U.S. is on track to sell 4.03 million homes in 2025, fewer than last year’s tally, which was the lowest since 1995. The sharpest slowdown is happening among properties that cost less than $500,000, NAR data shows. That is the price range that usually attracts first-time buyers. The market for newly built homes is also slumping. In May, sales dropped 6% compared with the same month of 2024.

At today’s prices, buyers would need to earn $127,000 to afford the monthly mortgage repayments on a median-priced home, up from $79,000 in 2021, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Only 6 million of the country’s 46 million renters clear this hurdle. And a fresh obstacle to homeownership is emerging. Credit scores recently took a hit after a pause on reporting student-loan delinquencies to credit agencies ended.

The flip side of sluggish demand from first-time home buyers is a rapidly swelling population of tenants. In a bullish sign for landlords, the number of renter households in the U.S. has reached a record 46 million. At least 1.2 million of these households could be “trapped renters” who would like to buy, based on the above-average renter household formation seen over the past three years. The true extent of pent-up demand to buy is probably much greater. Gen Z and millennial Americans have lower rates of homeownership than baby boomers did at the same stage of life. Source: Wall Street Journal

Housing Supply Bounces Back 

It’s not a buyers’ market yet for house hunters, but the available inventory in some cities has jumped even higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to one report. Nationwide, the number of houses for sale is still lower than the pre-pandemic averages, but Realtor.com’s May housing report showed that inventory levels rose for the 19th straight month and were more than 30% higher than the same period last year.

And in places like Seattle, Dallas and Austin, Texas, the number of homes for sale is more than 50% higher than pre-pandemic levels. Inventory in Denver is double what it was before Covid. Indeed, 22 of the top 50 metro areas now have more inventory than they did in 2019. Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale said the report showed that inventory levels were beginning to realign after several years of unaffordable conditions. “In some areas, affordability concerns have also slowed buyer demand, giving the market room to breathe and contributing to gains in [the number of] homes for sale,” Hale said. “In general, we’re seeing strong inventory rebounds in metros that have built more in the last 6 years.” 

Although inventory levels are improving, Hale said that there is a still a 4.6 month supply of housing available nationwide, below the level of 6 months that generally defines a buyers’ market. The gains in inventory are the byproduct of a housing market that has been too expensive for most Americans to afford, Hale said. With few houses to choose from, home buyers have been facing higher prices as sellers are able to charge more amid competition among buyers. Meanwhile, high mortgage rates are keeping other potential home buyers on the sideline. All of this has led to an inventory “pile up” in some areas, as more houses sit on the market for longer, Hale said. It’s also helped spur homebuilders to construct more houses to meet the demand. Source: Yahoo Finance