I've been watching the latest weekly data from Realtor.com Research, and there are some interesting cross-currents playing out in the national market right now. Year-over-year prices are still sliding, but here's what makes that a bit tricky to read: median listing prices have come down while the median price that actual buyers are looking at has stayed basically flat. That tells me the buyers who are still out there shopping are folks with real financial strength and clear goals, not just looky-loos browsing from the couch.
The inventory picture is becoming clearer by the week. Active listings have climbed to their highest point since late 2019, which is genuinely significant after years of that pandemic-era shortage that drove so much of the market's craziness. We're still not back to pre-pandemic levels, but buyers finally have real choices again. The catch is that the mix has changed: homes under $370,000 used to make up half the market back in 2021, but now they're down to just over 42 percent of inventory. The market composition is genuinely shifting.
What I'm tracking pretty closely is the speed of sales. This is the twelfth straight week homes have been selling at the same pace or faster than they did a year ago, which reverses a whole long stretch of slower sales that ran through late 2024. That's a real story, even though days on market are holding steady at levels we normally see during summer slowdown. And while new listings are still trickling in slower than they were a year ago, folks remain hesitant to list with mortgage rates still elevated.
What I am seeing locally in the Bay Area and East Bay is that this national pattern of more balanced inventory and stronger buyer qualification is already showing up in how my clients approach the market. The urgency that defined the last few years has genuinely cooled, which means both sides of a transaction need to come in with realistic expectations and solid numbers behind their positions.
