National Housing Market Overview
Contrary to the "mortgage rate lockdown" theory, which suggests that higher mortgage rates would lead to a stagnant inventory as homeowners hesitate to sell, the national housing market is showing signs of resilience. According to Logan Mohtashami's weekly market tracker, inventory is growing despite mortgage rates being above 7%. This increase in inventory is partly due to most home sellers also being buyers, contributing to a healthy circulation of properties.
(graph above: the dark maroon line represents 2024)
Weekly Inventory Data:
The inventory has shown year-over-year growth, with a slight increase from 497,608 to 498,339 in the last week of February to the first week of March.
Comparatively, during the same week in 2023, inventory decreased from 430,395 to 419,419.
The inventory bottomed in 2022 at 240,194 and peaked in 2023 at 569,898.
To put things into perspective, active listings in 2015 were significantly higher at 958,304.
New Listings Data:
New listings are growing yearly but are still slightly lower than desired in 2024.
With the onset of the spring selling season, an increase in new listings is expected to match or surpass previous years.
New listings for the last week over several previous years:
2024: 52,189
2023: 48,156
2022: 49,019
Local Housing Market: New Castle County, Delaware
Turning our attention to the local housing market in New Castle County, Delaware, we observe a different trend. New listing data this week is down from 2022 and 2023. In 2024, new listings came in at 116 homes, compared to 123 homes in 2023 and 150 homes in 2022 for the same week.
However, when comparing inventory levels this week to last week's, there is a slight increase. Last week saw 112 new listings hit the market, while this week we saw 116 new listings.
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