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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 beyond seasonality could suggest a market that is heating up.
Since the national pandemic housing boom fizzled out in 2022, the national power dynamic has slowly been shifting directionally from sellers to buyers. Of course, across the country, that shift has varied.
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 46 months. Conversely, local housing markets where active inventory remains far below pre-pandemic 2019 levels have, generally speaking, experienced, relatively speaking, more resilient home price growth over the past 46 months.
Where is national active inventory headed?
National active listings are on the rise on a year-over-year basis (+8.1% between March 31, 2025, and March 31, 2026). This indicates that homebuyers have gained some leverage in many parts of the country over the past year. Some seller’s markets have turned into balanced markets, and more balanced markets have turned into buyer’s markets.
Nationally, we’re still below pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels (-13.6% below March 2019), and some resale markets, in particular chunks of the Midwest and Northeast, still remain, relatively speaking, tight-ish.
While national active inventory is still up year over year, the pace of growth has slowed in recent months as softening has slowed.
March inventory/active listings total, according to Realtor.com:
- March 2017 -> 1,172,713
- March 2018 -> 1,067,281
- March 2019 -> 1,115,940
- March 2020 -> 937,319
- March 2021 -> 440,589 (Pandemic housing boom overheating)
- March 2022 -> 354,016 (Pandemic housing boom overheating)
- March 2023 -> 562,444
- March 2024 -> 694,820
- March 2025 -> 892,561
- March 2026 -> 964,477
If we maintain the current year-over-year pace of inventory growth (+71,916 homes for sale), we’d have 1,036,393 active inventory come March 2027. (Note: That’s not a prediction—I’m just showing what the math looks like if that pace continued.)
Below is the year-over-year active inventory percentage change by state.
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While active housing inventory is rising in most markets on a year-over-year basis, the pace of growth continues to decelerate across much of the country (see the side-by-side maps below). In fact, Florida—home to many of the weakest regional housing markets over the past two years—is now seeing active inventory edge down a little year over year (-8%).
LEFT: Year-over-year active inventory shift between March 2024 and March 2025
RIGHT: Year-over-year active inventory shift between March 2025 and March 2026
And 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 in those places, too).
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 in the spring are likely, relatively speaking, to have more power than their peers in many Southern markets.
In contrast, active housing inventory for sale has neared or surpassed pre-pandemic 2019 levels in many parts of the Sunbelt and Mountain West, including metro-area housing markets such as Austin and Punta Gorda, Florida.
Many of these areas saw major price surges during the pandemic housing boom, with home prices getting stretched compared with local incomes. As pandemic-driven domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates rose, markets like Punta Gorda and Austin faced challenges, relying on local income levels to support frothy home prices.
This softening trend was accelerated further by an abundance of new home supply in the Sunbelt. 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, have opted for new homes with more favorable deals over the past couple of years—which then put some additional upward pressure on resale inventory.
Click here to view an interactive version of the map below.
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At the end of March 2026, 11 states were above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington. (The District of Columbia—which we left out of this table below—is back above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels, too. Softness in D.C. proper predates the current admin’s job cuts.)
Click here to view an interactive version of the chart below (best done on desktop).
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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 and as incomes have a chance to slowly catch up. While home prices are falling some in pockets of the Sunbelt, a big chunk of Northeast and Midwest markets are still eking out a little year-over-year price appreciation. Nationally aggregated home prices are pretty close to flat, year over year.
Click here for an interactive version of the table below.
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Below is another version of the table above—but this one includes every month since January 2017.
Click here to view an interactive version of the chart below.
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If you’d like to further examine the monthly state inventory figures, use the interactive below.
Over the coming months, let’s keep an eye on Florida, which has now entered its seasonal window when its active inventory typically begins to rise again. (So far, the seasonal jump has been tame.) To better understand dynamics across Florida, read this ResiClub PRO report.
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