Listings for Sale
How many homes are currently listed for sale in an area, relative to the size of its housing stock, and how that count has changed.
On this page
The number of homes currently listed for sale in an area, expressed per 1,000 homes so that a small ZIP code and a large county can be compared on the same footing.
realtor.com defines the underlying count as "the count of active single-family and condo/townhome listings for a given market during the specified month," which excludes listings that have already gone pending (Housing Inventory: Active Listing Count in the United States). It is a snapshot of what is on the market at a point in time, not a count of everything that was listed at any point during the month.
More listings for sale generally means a buyer has more to choose from and more room to negotiate; fewer listings generally means a tighter market. This family is read that way here — more supply is treated as the buyer-favourable direction, the same reading applied to new home construction.
Metrics in this family#
Listings for sale
The trailing 12-month average count of active listings, per 1,000 homes.
Listings for sale change, 1 year
The percentage change in that count over the past year.
Listings for sale change, 3 year
The percentage change in that count over the past three years.
Listings for sale change, 5 year
The percentage change in that count over the past five years.
Listings for sale vs seasonal norm
How the current count compares with the typical count for this time of year in this same area, rather than with a fixed number of years back.
Considerations#
This counts listings, not homes. A single home that is listed, withdrawn, and relisted within a window can be represented more than once in the underlying feed; realtor.com's own methodology updates over the years were aimed in part at handling duplicate listings more consistently, and figures from before those updates are not directly comparable to more recent ones.
Small ZIP codes are thin. Many ZIP codes have only a handful of active listings in a given month, so a small absolute change can look like a large percentage move. The trailing 12-month average is used here specifically to damp that month-to-month noise.
The count is seasonal. In most places, more homes are listed for sale in spring and summer than in winter, so a year-over-year comparison mixes a genuine market shift with the ordinary seasonal cycle. The seasonal-norm reading compares a place with its own typical pattern instead.
Coverage thins with geography. County and metro figures are reported every month for every county and metro area realtor.com covers; ZIP-level figures are not, and the newest month does not include every ZIP code with history.
References#
- 1Housing Inventory: Active Listing Count in the United Stateshttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ACTLISCOUUS