Inventory is rising again, but agents are still scrounging for new listings. Hundreds of brokers and agents shared what’s working in still-tight markets in new responses from the Intel Index survey.
This report is available exclusively to subscribers of Inman Intel, the data and research arm of Inman offering deep insights and market intelligence on the business of residential real estate and proptech. Subscribe today.
Imagine the housing market as a grocery store.
In this metaphor, the pickings have been slim, the shelves poorly stocked for the last few years. It was the real estate version of a stereotypical Soviet supermarket — which is pretty depressing.
But lately, something has started to change.
“What we’re seeing is the supermarket shelves are starting to get restocked,” Realtor.com Senior Economist Ralph McLaughlin recently told Intel. “They’re not fully stocked like they were before the pandemic, but they’re on their way.”
In other words, the housing inventory situation in the U.S. is improving. This is good news. But for a variety of reasons, the market is actually complicated. So far, 2024 has hardly been a boom time.
To better understand what’s going on, Intel spoke to economists and polled hundreds of agents and brokerage leaders in late June as part of the Inman Intel Index survey.
The takeaway from these efforts is something of a two-edged sword: On the one hand, there’s more inventory on the market now than there was a year ago. But on the other, inventory is still far below pre-pandemic levels and demand remains suppressed.
The result is that agents have become heavily dependent on their existing spheres to cope with a market that’s still characterized by challenges.
Inventory is improving
Experts who spoke to Intel for this story agreed that overall inventory is improving.
- Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather recently told Intel that “inventory is the highest it’s been this time of year in at least the…