The spring buying season is just around the corner, and this year the housing market landscape might not be as daunting for buyers and sellers, according to a new report.
The number of homes for sale has been steadily creeping downward, helping list prices stabilize and giving both buyers and sellers a little more confidence. Overall, national inventories have dropped more than 20 percent since last year, according to a Realtor.com report, and houses are staying on the market for shorter periods. List prices are looking up, too, rising almost 7 percent since last February.
Still, the housing market has numerous hurdles to jump before experts are willing to say it's truly in recovery mode. That's especially true when you drill down to state or local markets. Take for instance some of the hardest hit markets—Florida or Phoenix, Ariz.—and they have some of the largest year-over-year declines in inventories and healthy increases in median list prices, both good signs.
But shift to the places that didn't see huge home value run-ups during the housing boom—Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee—and they're now registering some of the largest declines in median list prices year over year.
Despite the variation local markets are seeing, encouraging numbers nationally can go a long way in boosting Americans' perception of the housing market locally, says Steve Berkowitz, CEO of Realtor.com. So even if your hometown is lagging national trends, the prospect that conditions are improving boosts morale.
The bottom line is there's still a long way to go before the housing market reaches some sort of equilibrium, especially with the gigantic shadow inventory still looming. Experts anticipate inventory to rise as more sellers put their homes on the market this spring home buying season, and as foreclosures held up by legal delays begin to trickle onto the market.
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