• The typical U.S. home value climbed slightly from January to February (0.05%), as buyers began to return for the spring homebuying season. Home values are 4.4% higher than one year ago but 4.0% lower than their peak last July, which was followed by 6 straight months of declines.
• New Orleans home values fell the most among top-50 markets: -0.7% month-over-month.
• Home values were lower than last February in 13 major markets, with San Francisco experiencing the biggest drop (-7.7%).
• There were 22.2% fewer new listings than last February, and 31.4% fewer than in February 2020.
• Active inventory was at its 2nd-lowest level in Zillow data back to 2018: 16.7% higher than last February but 38.1% below February 2020’s level.
• Newly pending listings were down 19.1% year-over-year, and down 5.4% from February 2020.
• Asking rents climbed 0.3% month-over-month, snapping a 3-month streak of substantially lower rent growth than normal.

Note: This is an early preview of Zillow’s monthly housing market data from Zillow’s Economic Research team, offering an accelerated first look at the previous month’s key housing metrics. More detail and analysis will be included later in the month in our standard full-length Monthly Rental Report and Monthly Market Report.