The median home for sale is spending 45% longer on the market than it was at this time last year, according to Zillow's research team
By Daniel Houston
For all but the most competitive home listings, buyers no longer have to make a rushed offer on a house just to have a chance before it gets swept off the market.
Half of the homes with a Zillow listing on the week of Oct. 16 had spent at least 54 days on the market, up from a median of 38 days the same time last year, according to a new report from Zillow’s research team. And the share of homes selling in a week or less has fallen from 1 in 3 in the spring months of 2021 and 2022, to 1 in 10 this month.
At this pace, the typical home listing by the end of the year could sit on the market for 68 days, according to the report. It’s a big shift, but still indicates a market that remains somewhat fast-moving compared to what industry professionals were used to seeing before the pandemic began.
“That said, this projected level would still be well shy of pre-pandemic time on market, indicating that some market competition remains, even with buyers pulling back in the face of affordability challenges, in part due to a muted flow of new for-sale listings,” Zillow’s report reads.
Much of this has to do with well-known annual patterns. Homes are known to move faster in the spring as a flood of new listings comes online and buyers jump to offer on their favorites. In the fall and winter, homes can sit for longer before getting a quality offer. But there’s more to this slowdown than just the changing of the seasons.
The number of days the median home spends on Zillow has been well above 2021 levels since the beginning of the summer, as higher mortgage rates drove a cooldown in price growth and more recently spurred price drops. In October, home listings may have even spent more days on the market than they did at the same time in 2020.
The slowdown in activity isn’t only showing up in the decline of fast-selling homes. Nearly half of all homes on the other end of the spectrum are now taking longer than 60 days to sell. That’s nearly double the share from the fast-paced late spring market earlier this year. If the trend continues, Zillow’s research team expects by the end of the year the typical Zillow listing may be spending 10 days longer on the market than it would have at the end of 2021. “That said, this projected level would still be well shy of pre-pandemic time on market, indicating that some market competition remains, even with buyers pulling back in the face of affordability challenges, in part due to a muted flow of new for-sale listings,” the report reads.
First published at Inman.com on October 31, 2022 by Daniel Houston at
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