This is the second installment of Inman Market View, an ongoing monthly data series. The goal: To put more local data in the hands of the Inman community, and to place it in a context that’s highly relevant for the U.S. brokerage industry.
The real estate industry trudged through the second quarter of the year with little sign of new momentum in sales or revenue, even as shifts in buyer and seller dynamics continued to dramatically reshape inventory.
The number of active listings in the U.S. market was up 30 percent year-over-year from April through June, bringing national inventory levels back within 14 percent of where they stood this time of year in pre-pandemic times.
That’s a significant shift from the first three months of the year, when inventory was still 23 percent below normal seasonal levels.
But in many local markets, the picture can look quite different.
Inman Market View, a new series of tools for Select subscribers, utilizes listing data from Realtor.com and analysis by the Inman team to help place each local market’s data in context during this pivotal moment for real estate.
In the tool below — an interactive map of 500 major metro areas, which together account for nearly 90 percent of the U.S. population — you can toggle between several different metrics. Each metric has two views: a “Y/Y” (which stands for year-over-year) approach that compares the most recent three months’ data to the same period last year; or a “vs. 2017-19” option that compares the same recent three-month period against a 2017-2019 baseline to see how the pandemic era has reshaped housing in different parts of the country.
(For the best experience, view the tool on a desktop browser or in landscape mode in mobile.)
To drill down even deeper into the path each market has taken through the pandemic years, explore the interactive chart tool below.
Use the first dropdown menu to select from any of the nation’s 150 largest housing markets — a collection of metros that contains nearly 75 percent of U.S. residents. Then, use the second dropdown menu to select from the same metrics seen in the map above.
With the tools above, special care has been taken to help account for the occasional noisiness of month-to-month data in small and midsize markets.
By using three-month rolling windows, these tools are able to avoid much of the month-to-month volatility at the local level and spot durable trends. And by comparing all recent periods to the same span of time in previous years, the tools help account for seasonal patterns in a highly seasonal business.
Each of the metrics above is intended to represent a core concept that Inman tracks on a regular basis. Understand the definitions below to get the most out of the tools.
Metric glossary
Below are the main core concepts that Inman is tracking, along with definitions and other notes for each of the metrics.
SUPPLY — New listings
- The number of new listings that entered the market in a given month
DEMAND — Listing outflow
- The number of properties that left the active-listing pool in a given month, either due to a pending sale or a delisting from the market
- This level of listing outflow offsets the number of new listings coming online to explain the total monthly change in the active-listing pool
- Note: Delistings are a problematic component of this metric, but cannot be removed due to data limitations. The vast majority of outflowing properties consist of pending sales, and the metric generally tracks closely with sales trends over time.
INVENTORY SNAPSHOT — Active listings
- The total number of active listings on the market that are not marked as “pending” at a given point in time
SPEED OF SALE — Days on market
- The amount of time a typical property sits on the market before it either closes or is removed from the market, using each month’s median days on market weighted by the same month’s total listing outflow
BUYER COMPETITION — Outflow volume per active listing
- A market’s listing outflow over a given period, expressed as a share of its active-listing pool at any given time during the same period
- This is essentially the inverse of the commonly cited “months supply” metric — higher outflow rates generally indicate more buyer demand for a typical listing, and higher upward pressure on home prices
PRICE MOVEMENT — List price
- The price level assumed for a given three-month window, using each month’s median list price weighted by the same month’s total listing outflow
BROKERAGE REVENUE — Potential commission pool
- The value of the estimated pool of commissions that were available to brokerages during a given period, based on 5.5 percent of the list price multiplied by total listing outflow
- Note: This metric is blind to important factors that vary by market, such as average commission rates and splits, as well as the number of serious agents competing for business in the area. It’s not adjusted for inflation. It also doesn’t consider how much real estate activity is a result of new construction. This metric is best used for a broad overview and tracking trends over time.
