Buyers have more to choose from than they have in many months, but first-time buyers aren’t finding what they need

Buyers have more to choose from than they have in many months, but first-time buyers aren’t finding what they need and many have just stopped looking.

From HousingWIre:

After a year of extremely tight housing inventory, the housing market is showing signs of finally adding housing stock. The inventory of unsold homes rose by 7.3% to 1.32 million from June to July, the report found. However, even with the availability of more homes on the market, inventory for homebuyers is down 12% from 2020 (1.5 million).

Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR, said in a statement that as inventory starts to tick up, the intensity of multiple offers will lessen, leading to a more balanced housing market for homebuyers.

“Much of the home sales growth is still occurring in the upper-end markets, while the mid-to lower-tier areas aren’t seeing as much growth because there are still too few starter homes available,” Yun added.

…first-time homebuyers accounted for 30% of sales in July, dipping slightly from 31% in June and down from 34% year-over-year, NAR said.