Sellers are coming back faster than buyers

The best way to describe the housing market is sellers are coming back faster than buyers. It’s simply easier to list a home than buy a home today. And this is why the housing temperature has changed. Let’s do a deep dive today into supply vs demand, and I suspect many areas around the country can relate to this.

UPCOMING SPEAKING GIGS:

5/8/25 Empire Home Loans (register here)
5/13/25 PCAR
5/21/25 Grounded Real Estate
6/5/25 Auburn Marketing Meeting
6/12/25 Realtist of Sacramento
9/16/25 Culbertson & Gray (private)
9/26/25 PCAR
9/30/25 Elk Grove Regional MLS Meeting
10/15/25 EDH Coldwell Banker (private)
10/21/25 Orangevale MLS Meeting
11/4/25 SAR Main Meeting

SUPPLY IS THE GATEWAY TO MORE SALES

Sometimes people freak out when hearing about more supply hitting the market, but it’s important to realize more supply is the gateway to getting more sales. I’ve been talking about this lately with my friend Geoff Black, and I wanted to give him props for the gateway language. Anyway, if we continue to see the pile of listings grow faster than the pile of sales, that could put downward pressure on prices, which could eventually bring more buyers into the market. Only time will tell how the market unfolds, but more supply is what we want to see. And for my real estate friends, today is all about mindset. If you are struggling about the market changing, my advice is to figure out how you can see opportunities instead of negatives. 

MISSING 35,000 LISTINGS

This is the x-factor for why prices have not dropped heavily in recent years. Over the past three years we’ve seen about 35,000 sellers NOT list their homes. This visual compares the number of new listings with the pre-2020 average. Imagine how different the market would feel if we had all that extra supply. And do you see how the trend is improving? We’re starting to get more listings, so we are not as far from the norm today.

Here’s a different way to look at the same thing. The dotted line represents the pre-2020 average, and the blue line is what we’ve seen happen.

SELLERS ARE REALLY STARTING TO THAW OUT

The number of listings today is still historically low, but it’s notably different than last year, and the market really feels it. Do you see sellers thawing out in these stats?

THERE WERE 10,000 MORE ACTIVE LISTINGS IN 2008

There is so much comparison to 2008 right now, but back then we had about 10,000 extra active listings, which is why prices were able to drop so quickly. Sometimes people accuse me of sugarcoating when I share stuff like this, but this is math. The reason prices haven’t plummeted in recent years despite glaring affordability issues is we haven’t had a huge imbalance between supply and demand.

IT’S EASIER TO BE A SELLER THAN A BUYER

Lifestyle needs are happening more readily for sellers before the math is working for buyers. In other words, lifestyle changes are compelling sellers more than affordability is working for buyers.

NO LONGER AT THE LOWEST LEVEL EVER

Here’s a different way to look at the number of active listings. We are now beating the previous four years, which is nice to see. In 2023, we hit the lowest level of listings we’ve seen in decades. It’s worth noting that sellers are NOT rushing the market like some people think, but we are seeing very healthy growth since the low point two years ago. We’re just feeling the extra growth in the market since the number of buyers hasn’t kept up.

MORE SALES HAPPENING IN 2025 (TRUE STORY)

There have actually been more sales in 2025 so far compared to 2024. This is probably being overshadowed by larger growth with listings, but this is positive news. I know it’s barely more than one year ago, but more is what we want to see.

WAITING FOR VOLUME TO EXPLODE

The strange part about today is we’ve had depressed volume for longer than what we saw during the Great Financial Crisis. Back then, market volume peaked in August 2005, and after 2.3 years we started to see a huge increase in volume again due to a massive climb in supply that led to prices dropping very quickly. I get that there were other differences then, but today we’ve had depressed volume for nearly 3 years with just a little bit of growth. I think many people have been saying things like, “volume change precedes price change,” and I completely get that. But we have to concede that prices today have remained higher because we’ve had tens of thousands of sellers not list their homes.

SELLERS ARE WAKING UP FASTER THAN BUYERS

The biggest story today is sellers have been outpacing buyers. We’ve had about 19% more new listings from January to April compared to last year at the same time, but just slightly more sales. In actual numbers, there have been about 1,500 extra new listings this year compared to 100+ extra closed sales. Do you see why the market feels different in 2025? 

Thanks for being here.

LEAVING COMMENTS: The captcha is not working perfectly.  If you open up a new browser, that should solve the issue. It’s been a problem to comment when clicking from my weekly email. My apologies.

Questions: What stands out to you about the stats above? I’d love to hear your take on things.

If you liked this post, subscribe by email (or RSS). Thanks for being here.