New home listings fall as median prices increase
New home listings nationwide fell 17% from last year, while median home sale prices are up 15%, according to a recent Redfin report.
Redfin found during a four-week period ending Feb. 21, median home sale prices increased to $321,250, a 15% increase year over year. Additionally, the asking price of newly listed homes hit an all-time high of $343,961, an 11% increase from last year. These increases happened all while new home listings were down 17% from 2020. The report also showed pending home sales increased 18% year over year.
The report’s findings came from data obtained from 400 metro areas across the country during that time period.
Continued growth in homes coming under contract was also evident according to the report’s findings with 55% of homes under contract receiving an accepted offer within the first two weeks of being on the market, compared to a 44% rate during the same period in 2020. Homes under contract accepting an offer within one week of hitting the market was at 43%. (up from 30% during the same time period last year).
Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman compared today’s housing market to a Soviet-era supermarket with most shelves empty in remarks made on Redfin’s Q4 earnings call this week, according to a press release.
“In the week leading up to this call, demand slackened for the first time in months, probably because of cross-country snowstorms. But prior to that, the stories we heard from our agents were harrowing, juicy and bizarre,” he said in the release. “Migrations are warping the space-time continuum of small-town economies. The affordability crisis that flowed like some huge, unspent electrical charge from San Francisco to Seattle to Portland to Denver and to Boise is now reaching virtually every town in North America, bringing dazzling prosperity but also new anxieties.”