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 ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.

When assessing home price momentum, ResiClub 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.com:

• April 2017 -> 1,198,424
• April 2018 -> 1,102,064
• April 2019 -> 1,137,198
• April 2020 -> 941,733
• April 2021 -> 435,663 (pandemic housing boom overheating)
• April 2022 -> 379,978 (pandemic housing boom overheating)
• April 2023 -> 562,966
• April 2024 -> 734,318
• April 2025 -> 959,251
• April 2026 -> 1,002,935

If we maintain the current year-over-year pace of inventory growth (+43,684 homes for sale), we’d have 1,046,619 active inventory come April 2027. (Note: That’s not a prediction—I’m just showing what the math looks like if that pace continues.)

Below is the year-over-year active inventory percentage change by state.

While active housing inventory is rising in most markets on a year-over-year basis, the pace of growth continues to decelerate across much of the country (see the side-by-side maps below). In fact, Florida—home to many of the weakest regional housing markets over the past two years—is now seeing active inventory edge down a little year over year (-12%).

Above, left: Year-over-year active inventory shift from April 2024 to April 2025

Above, right: Year-over-year active inventory shift from April 2025 to April 2026

And while active housing inventory is rising in most markets on a year-over-year basis, some markets still remain tightish.

As ResiClub has been documenting, both active resale and new homes for sale remain the most limited across huge swaths of the Midwest and Northeast. That’s where home sellers in the spring/summer are likely, relatively speaking, to have more power than their peers in many Southern markets.

Active inventory in April 2026 compared to pre-pandemic April 2019:

• Southwest —> +23%
• West —> +3%
• Southeast —> -2%
• Midwest —> -35%
• Northeast —> -50%

In contrast, active housing inventory for sale has neared or surpassed pre-pandemic 2019 levels in many parts of the Sunbelt and Mountain West, including metro area housing markets such as Punta Gorda, Florida, and Austin.

Many of these areas saw major price surges during the pandemic housing boom, with home prices getting stretched compared to local incomes. As pandemic-driven domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates rose, markets like Punta Gorda and Austin faced challenges, relying on local income levels to support frothy home prices.

This softening trend was accelerated further by an abundance of new home supply in the Sunbelt. Builders are often willing to lower prices or offer affordability incentives (if they have the margins to do so) to maintain sales in a shifted market, which also has a cooling effect on the resale market, with some buyers, who would have previously considered existing homes, opting for new homes with more favorable deals over the past couple years. That then puts some additional upward pressure on resale inventory.

Click here to view an interactive version of the map below.

At the end of April 2026, 12 states were above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington. (The District of Columbia—which we left out of the table below—is also back above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels.)

The big picture

Over the past several months, the post-boom softening has lost momentum, and inventory growth has decelerated on a year-over-year basis. That said, the nationally aggregated housing market remains soft. While home prices are declining in some parts of the Sunbelt, a large share of Northeast and Midwest markets are still eking out modest year-over-year gains. At the national level, home prices are essentially flat year over year.

Below is another version of the table; this one includes every month since January 2017.

If you’d like to examine the monthly state inventory figures further, use the interactive chart below.

Florida—which has been the epicenter of housing market weakness over the past two years, particularly in Southwest Florida—is no longer seeing the upward burst in inventory. Indeed, the intensity of Florida’s housing market correction is easing across many pockets of the state.

Click here to view a sortable version of the chart below.

---

View the full article