Stagnating home prices and an influx of new homes for sale created a 9% dip in August pending home sales, the lowest they’ve been since April 2021, a Redfin report shows.
The report showed asking prices of newly listed homes up 10% from last year to a median of $354,665, the lowest level since late April and down 1.8% from mid-June’s all-time high.
Nationally, the inventory of homes actively for sale in August decreased by 25.8% over the past year, a lower rate of decline than July’s 33.5% decrease.
The inventory of active listings is still down 52.8% from 2019. The number of active listings nationally declined by 25.8% over the last year, while the total inventory of unsold homes declined by 13.8%.
Homes that went under contract are still seeing accepted offers at a high rate, though the numbers are reduced from earlier this year. 48% of homes that went under contract had an accepted offer within the first two weeks on the market, above the 44% rate of a year earlier, but down 8% from the March 2021 peak.
“The housing market has clearly become slightly more favorable to buyers,” Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather said. “Homes are taking longer to sell, which gives buyers more time to make thoughtful decisions about whether to make offers. Home prices have plateaued, so buyers shouldn’t feel rushed to buy before prices rise further. And the fact that more sellers are dropping their list price is a sign that sellers have to be realistic about their price expectations.”
But while monthly listings varied, new home listing were almost exactly the same as this time last year, at -0.1%. The report credits the changes to “typical seasonal decline, down 10% from the 2021 peak reached during the four-week period ending June 27.”
A fall cooling-off period is normal, even in the current hot housing market, according to Ralph B. McLaughlin, chief economist and senior vice president of analytics at Haus, Inc.
“I think it’s absolutely likely that price growth will slow throughout the end of the year, as they’re already slowing from their peak in June,” McLaughlin said. “We expect price growth to moderate to the mid-high single digits by December.”