{"id":5472,"date":"2026-06-03T14:27:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=5472"},"modified":"2026-06-03T14:27:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:27:40","slug":"latest-housing-data-points-to-relief-for-homebuyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=5472","title":{"rendered":"Latest housing data points to relief for homebuyers"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
It feels like it’s been years since I wrote consecutive stories that held positive news for homebuyers.<\/p>\n
In more than a decade covering mortgages and housing markets, most of the headlines have focused on rising rates, tight inventory, bidding wars, and worsening affordability.<\/p>\n
Not today. Buyers are about to get their second good-housing-news story this week\u2014 and it should leave many feeling fairly hopeful.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Home prices take biggest tumble in 9 years<\/h2>\n
The just-released May Monthly Housing Report from Realtor.com shows that home prices took their largest tumble in years last month. The median listing price for May was $429,500 \u2014 down 2.4% from one year ago and the steepest annual drop seen since 2017.<\/p>\n
The average price-per-square-foot fell even more at -2.5% \u2014 a record-setting decline, according to the listing platform.<\/p>\n
Price declines were the biggest in the West, where listing prices fell -4% year over year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the metro level, Austin, Texas, saw prices fall the most at -8.3%, while Memphis and Buffalo, NY, saw -5.9% and -5.8% declines, respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More Housing & Real Estate<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n
New mortgage pilot rewrites credit rules for first-time homebuyers<\/li>\n
Realtor group flags \u2018mismatch\u2019 squeezing middle-class homebuyers<\/li>\n
Bankrate makes bold housing market reset claim<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The best news, says Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel, is that price reductions are down compared to a month ago. While over 17% of listings saw a price cut in May, the number is down 1.6% from a year ago \u2014 something Krimmel says indicates a more manageable market than we\u2019ve seen in the recent past.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps the most telling price signal in May came from what did not happen: price cuts fell rather than rose,\u201d said Jake Krimmel, senior economist at Realtor.com. \u201cIn a crashing market, sellers list optimistically and get forced to cut. What we\u2019re seeing is different in a key way: sellers are using current market conditions as price discovery from the start, pricing for current conditions rather than selling under distress.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat combination tells you sellers have internalized the more buyer-friendly conditions and are adjusting price expectations before listing rather than after. This is a meaningful behavioral shift, and it\u2019s precisely why buyers are still showing up despite rates above 6.5%,\u201d Krimmel says.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
Real estate listing prices dropped the most since 2017 in May. <\/p>\n
Home listings rise, giving buyers more options<\/h2>\n
As if lower listing prices weren\u2019t enough, buyers actually have more listings to choose from these days, too. Total active listings for May jumped 5.6% between April and May, and 2.2% over a year prior.<\/p>\n
There were nearly 475,000 new listings in May alone.<\/p>\n
Buffalo saw the biggest year-over-year increase in listings at 19.9% over April, followed by Providence, RI, and Richmond, VA. The increase in inventory may help explain Buffalo’s decline in listing prices. As supply rises and buyers have more options, competition can ease and put downward pressure on prices.<\/p>\n
At the regional level, the best news came for buyers in the Midwest, where listings jumped more than 8% over the last year. The Northeast saw a 7.2% increase in listings over the same period.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Northeast and Midwest reversal matters because both regions have been inventory-starved for years, locked in by homeowners sitting on low-rate mortgages with little incentive to list,\u201d Realtor.com reported. \u201cThe fact that new listings in the Northeast are now running nearly 9% ahead of last year \u2014 compared to a decline just two months ago \u2014 is a meaningful signal that the lock-in effect may be loosening where buyers need relief most.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the second positive month in a row for new listings. Realtor.com\u2019s previous report shows that new listings jumped 4% in April, notching the highest April numbers since 2022. Listing prices decreased that month, too.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not enough to solve the \u201chousing market mismatch” that the National Association of Realtors noted recently, but it\u2019s a move in the right direction. As Chris Lim, president and chief growth officer at REMAX, says, it\u2019s\u00a0 \u201ca market that\u2019s continuing to find its balance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, it\u2019s a steadier, less competitive environment than we\u2019ve seen recently, and that\u2019s giving both buyers and sellers a better chance to make confident decisions,\u201d Lim says.<\/p>\n
Related: The housing market may finally be favoring homebuyers<\/strong><\/p>\n
It feels like it’s been years since I wrote consecutive stories that held positive news for homebuyers. In more than a decade covering mortgages and housing markets, most of the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[246],"tags":[343,6555,1898,896,3351,547],"class_list":["post-5472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-popular","tag-data","tag-homebuyers","tag-housing","tag-latest","tag-points","tag-relief"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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