I wanted to walk you through what Realtor.com Research is seeing in the national housing market as of mid-July. The week after the Fourth of July holiday brought the kind of activity we typically expect during that time of year. Sellers came back strong, with significantly more homes listing than the previous week, and we saw price reductions hit six figures for the first time all year. These are normal seasonal patterns following the holiday slowdown.
What's really interesting from a bigger picture standpoint is the inventory situation. According to Realtor.com Research, active listings have stayed above 1.1 million homes for four straight weeks now, which is the longest stretch like this we've seen since November 2019. This represents genuine year-over-year growth that's been building since late 2023. That's meaningful because more homes on the market gives buyers actual choices, something we haven't had consistently for quite a while.
On the pricing front, we're continuing to see median listing prices sit below last year's levels week after week, a pattern that started back in mid-January and keeps rolling. The research shows that while asking prices are declining on an annual basis, homes aren't getting marked down quite as aggressively as they were this same time last year. The days homes spend on the market remain stable compared to a year ago, suggesting the market isn't shifting dramatically in either direction right now.
What I am seeing locally here in the Bay Area and East Bay is that this kind of stability in inventory and pricing actually creates opportunity for both sides of a transaction. Buyers aren't watching prices collapse anymore, but they're also not desperate to jump on the first listing they see. Sellers have more time to present their homes properly and connect with serious buyers rather than just hoping something sticks. For areas like Fremont especially, this normalizing effect means we can focus on the actual value proposition of properties rather than getting caught up in the panic or urgency that defined earlier years.
