Housing Market Spotlight: When housing market signals don’t agree

St. Louis looks, at first glance, like a market where buyers are absorbing new supply quickly. Over the past 11 weeks, new pending sales have outpaced new listings every week. In the latest data, there were 896 new pendings against 659 new listings, or roughly 136 homes going under contract for every 100 newly listed. At the same time, active inventory has grown from 4,855 to 5,549, an increase of 14.4%. Those two signals might seem contradictory, but together they tell us something important about how to read a local housing market. The relationship between new listings and new pendings can show whether buyers are keeping pace with new supply, but it doesn’t necessarily tell us what is happening to the larger pool of homes already on the market. The national backdrop Nationally, active inventory rose to 883,673 in the week ending Sept. 4, up from 879,764 the prior week. New listings came in at 68,142, while new pending sales totaled 64,447. That works out to roughly 95 new pendings for every 100 new listings. The national price-cut share also reached 42.14%, essentially matching last year’s level for the first time this year. As HousingWire lead analyst Logan Mohtashami noted in t...