Zillow Weekly Market Report Through August 22
Home seller confidence is growing and the number of new homes on the market is recovering closer to levels seen last year. Still, buyer demand is outpacing this new supply as newly pending sales are up big in year-over-year numbers, driven partly by mortgage rates that fell even further this week.
Buyer demand is holding strong
- Newly pending sales were up 16.5% from the same week last year as strong buyer demand is continuing into the late summer. That’s the biggest year-over-year jump since mid-February, before the coronavirus pandemic took hold.
- Home sellers that accepted an offer last week typically did so after 13 days, which is 13 days faster than a year ago.
More sellers are entering the market, but demand is still outpacing supply
- New for-sale listings were down 10.6% year over year last week. That’s the narrowest gap since late March, a possible sign that sellers are belatedly entering the market as home shopping season extends later in the year than usual.
- Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey shows confidence is growing that now is a good time to sell a home. In July, 45% of respondents shared that belief, up from 41% in June and a recent low of 29% in April.
- Still, due to the pace of pending sales, total for-sale inventory fell further below last year’s level. As of last week, there were 28.9% fewer homes on the market than a year ago.
Last week marked biggest year-over-year list price growth since summer 2019
- The median U.S. list price is $345,255, 8.3% higher than a year ago. That’s the biggest annual change since the week ending July 13, 2019.
- The share of listings with a price cut is holding steady at 4.2%, which is down from 5.7% at this time last year.
- In the week ending July 11, the median sale price of U.S. homes was $277,500, a 5.1% year-over-year increase.
Methodology
The Zillow Weekly Market Reports are a weekly overview of the national and local real estate markets. The reports are compiled by Zillow Economic Research and data is aggregated from public sources and listing data on Zillow.com. New for-sale listings data reflect daily counts using a smoothed, seven-day trailing average. Total for-sale listings, newly pending sales, days to pending and median list price data reflect weekly counts using a smoothed, four-week trailing average. National newly pending sales trends are based upon aggregation of the 38 largest metro areas where historic pending listing data coverage is most statistically reliable, and excludes some metros due to upstream data coverage issues. For more information, visit www.zillow.com/research/.
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