Housing market power divide: States where buyers can find the most, and least, inventory right now

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s Resi Club in your inbox? Subscribe to the Resi Club newsletter. When assessing home price momentum, Resi Club believes it’s important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to increase rapidly 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 where sellers are gaining power. Since the national pandemic housing boom fizzled out in 2022, the power dynamic has slowly been shifting directionally from sellers to buyers. Of course, that shift has varied across the country. 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 47 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 47 months. Where is national active inventory headed now? While national active inventory is still up year over year, the pace of growth has slowed in recent months as softening has slowed. National active listings are up 4.6% on a year-over-year basis from April 30, 2025, to April 30, 2026, according to Realtor.com’s inventory data. But if you go back 12 months, that year-over-year national inventory growth rate was much higher (+30.6%). After a period in which leverage shifted more toward homebuyers, the supply-demand equilibrium in the nationally aggregated housing market has been more stable in recent months. Nationally, we’re still below pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels (-11.8% below April 2019) and some resale markets, in particular chunks of the Midwest and Northeast, still remain tightish, relatively speaking. April inventory/active listings total, according to Realtor