Inventory edges slightly higher year over year as rates rise

While it’s been a relatively boring year for housing inventory — even with higher mortgage rates — the movement in the last few weeks and easier comps have pushed inventory a tad higher, as we are at the midpoint of August. The question is: can we eke out a bit more growth before the seasonal decline? Today I will address that, as we are in the sixth month of the Iran conflict and mortgage rates are closer to yearly highs than lows. Housing inventory Housing inventory has had the most boring year post-COVID; not much is going on. Higher rates and weaker demand do create more inventory, as we are seeing now, but the growth is very light. We are closer to normal inventory levels for our data, which is roughly a tad over 1 million single-family homes during seasonal peak periods. So getting growth now takes more work than when we were rising from the record-low levels we saw during COVID. Housing demand tends to soften when mortgage rates are over 6.64%. We have seen this in our data for years, and 2026 has been no different except mortgage rates haven’t broken above 7% so the movement is very small. Because of this, the inventory growth we are seeing now is small, too. However, as th...