Survey: New Listings Growth Is Key to Market Recovery

According to realtor.com, an increase in new listings growth is has surpassed pre-pandemic numbers.

Realtor.com released its Weekly Recovery Report, revealing that new listings growth is creating a welcome boon to the housing market recovery. According to the report, new listings growth for this past week (ending August 8) rose so much that they surpassed January’s new listings. This increase marks the very first time that the number of new listings has managed to meet or surpass pre-pandemic numbers.

More good news: realtor.com reveals that, as of the reporting date, all four major components of housing activity in America’s market (new listings, housing demand, asking prices, and the pace of sales) are surpassing the pre-COVID baseline of January 2020 levels.

According to realtor: "The Weekly Housing Index leverages a weighted average of realtor.com search traffic, median list prices, new listings, and median time on market and compares it to the January 2020 market trend, as a baseline for pre-COVID market growth. The overall index is set to 100 in this baseline period. The higher a market's index value, the higher its recovery and vice versa."

The Housing Market Recovery Index reached a rating of 105.6 for the week ending August 8), marking a 1.9 point uptick over the week prior, and 5.6 points above the pre-COVID baseline.

New supply growth reached a rating of 101.7 across the United States, thus surpassing January’s growth by 1.7 points.

Javier Vivas, Director of Economic Research for realtor.com, remarked on the report’s findings, particularly focusing his comments on how sellers are coming into play in today’s market: ”Seller confidence has been improving gradually after reaching its bottom in mid-April, and now it appears to have reached an important recovery milestone. After five long months, sellers are back in the housing market; while encouraging, the improvement to new listings is only the first step in the long road to solving low inventory issues keeping many buyers at bay."

Further highlights from the Weekly Report reveal that although new listings growth have fully recovered to pre-COVID levels, the numbers still fell short (down 6%) from reaching where they were a year prior. Also noted was an increase (9.9%) in median listing prices over last year. As for total inventory, that was down 36%.