Inventory is a key housing metric—here’s what state level inventory is telling us right now

Today’s letter is brought to you by Epum!

ResiClub has a new data partnership with Epum, a real estate research lab which is focused on tracking commercial real estate projects—including single-family rental and built-to-rent—in planning or under construction nationwide.

Epum’s platform is the definitive resource for tracking, visualizing, and analyzing parcel-level site plan approvals, rezonings, and special exceptions for new housing or other CRE projects in planning.

All ResiClub readers are welcome to use the ResiClub discount code (ResiClub22025), to receive 10% off when subscribing to Epum.

You can watch Epum’s product demo here.

When assessing home price momentum, ResiClub believes it's important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate pricing softness or weakness. Conversely, a rapid decline in active listings could suggest a market that is heating up.

Generally speaking, local housing markets where active inventory has jumped above pre-pandemic 2019 levels have experienced softer home price growth (or outright price declines) over the past 36 months. Conversely, local housing markets where active inventory remains far below pre-pandemic 2019 levels have, generally speaking, experienced more resilient home price growth over the past 36 months.

Where is inventory heading into summer? As ResiClub communicated to ResiClub PRO members in late 2023—and reaffirmed last fall—we expect national active inventory to approach pre-pandemic 2019 levels in the second half of 2025. That’s still the trajectory we’re on.

National active listings are on the rise (+31.5% between May 2024 and May 2025). This indicates that homebuyers have gained some leverage in many parts of the country over the past year. Some sellers markets have turned into balanced markets, and more balanced markets have turned into buyers markets.

Nationally, we’re still below pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels (-12.3% below May 2019) and some resale markets, in particular big chunks of Midwest and Northeast, still remain tight-ish.

May inventory/active listings* total, according to Realtor.com:

May 2017 -> 1,253,854 📉

May 2018 -> 1,156,910 📉

May 2019 -> 1,180,920 📈

May 2020 -> 928,370 📉

May 2021 -> 447,662 📉 (overheating during the Pandemic Housing Boom)

May 2022 -> 479,462 📈 

May 2023 -> 582,441 📈 

May 2024 -> 787,722 📈 

May 2025 -> 1,036,101 📈 

IF we maintain the current year-over-year pace of inventory growth (+248,379 homes for sale), we'd have...

1,284,480 active inventory come May 2026

1,532,859 active inventory come May 2027

Below is the year-over-year percentage change by state.

Click here to view an interactive version of the year-over-year map below

While active housing inventory is rising in most markets on a year-over-year basis, some markets still remain tight-ish (although it's loosening).

As ResiClub has been documenting, both active resale and new homes for sale remain the most limited across huge swaths of the Midwest and Northeast. That’s where home sellers this spring had, relatively speaking, more power.

In contrast, active housing inventory for sale has neared or surpassed pre-pandemic 2019 levels in many parts of the Sun Belt and Mountain West, including metro area housing markets such as Punta Gorda and Austin. Many of these areas saw major price surges during the Pandemic Housing Boom, with home prices getting stretched compared to local incomes. As pandemic-driven domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates rose, markets like Tampa and Austin faced challenges, relying on local income levels to support frothy home prices. This softening trend is further compounded by an abundance of new home supply in the Sun Belt. Builders are often willing to lower prices or offer affordability incentives (if they have the margins to do so) to maintain sales in a shifted market, which also has a cooling effect on the resale market: Some buyers, who would have previously considered existing homes, are now opting for new homes with more favorable deals. That puts additional upward pressure on resale inventory.

Click here to view an interactive version of the map below

At the end of May 2025, 10 states were above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Hawaii, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington. (The District of Columbia—which we left out of this analysis—is also back above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels too. Weakness in D.C. proper predates the current admin’s job cuts).

Click here to view an interactive of the chart below (best done on desktop)

Big picture: Over the past few years we’ve observed a softening across many housing markets as strained affordability tempers the fervor of a market that was unsustainably hot during the Pandemic Housing Boom. While home prices are falling in some areas around the Gulf, most regional housing markets are still seeing positive year-over-year home price growth. That said, given the current softening, ResiClub expects that as the year progresses, more markets will fall into the year-over-year decline camp.

Below is another version of the table above—but this one includes every month since January 2017. (Sorry if it’s a little blurry—click the interactive link to see a version that isn’t blurry)

Click here to view an interactive version of the chart below

If you’d like to further examine the monthly state inventory figures, use the interactive below. [To better understand ongoing softness and weakness across Florida, read this ResiClub PRO report].

Click here to view an interactive/searchable version of the chart below

Another state seeing noticeable softening/weakening: Colorado.

All the charts above show active listings*, or everything currently for sale.

Below is a look at the national chart for new listings**, which has been suppressed since mortgage rates spiked. Some analysts call this the “lock-in effect.” Some homeowners who would otherwise like to sell and buy something else have opted to stay put to avoid losing their lower mortgage rate/monthly payment or they simply can’t afford to buy at these prices/rates.

That said, this so-called “lock-in effect” could be easing up…

Look at the number of new listings in 2025—it’s higher than in 2023 and 2024. However, it hasn’t translated into a noticeable uptick in existing home sales. If new listings continue to rise and aren’t absorbed, it could put additional upward pressure on active inventory.

* Active listings (i.e. what ResiClub often calls “inventory”) = “The count of active listings within the specified geography during the specified month. The active listing count tracks the number of for sale properties on the market, excluding pending listings where a pending status is available. This is a snapshot measure of how many active listings can be expected on any given day of the specified month” according to Realtor.com.

** New listings = “The count of new listings added to the market within the specified geography. The new listing count represents a typical week’s worth of new listings in a given month. The new listing count can be multiplied by the number of weeks in a month to produce a monthly new listing count” according to Realtor.com.

We're seeing widespread housing market softening—the biggest shift has been in the Sun Belt

Yesterday, I joined Charles Payne on Fox Business to discuss widespread housing market softening. You can watch that segment here.

In some Northeast and Midwest markets that "softening" so far means home prices aren't going up as much. But in many pockets of the Sun Belt—in particular areas with mounting unsold spec inventory—it means home prices are falling or showing a trajectory to fall.

Here are the 3 most recent additional research articles that ResiClub PRO members have received:

Institutional landlords are selling more homes than they are buying right now

Homebuilder unsold inventory at decade high: Housing markets to find deals in

Analysis: Where the single-family build-to-rent market is headed in 2026 and beyond