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Speaking in front of institutional investors and money managers on Tuesday at the Bank of America Housing Symposium, PulteGroup’s VP of investor relations, Jim Zeumer, said America’s third-largest homebuilder still has “work to do in Oregon and Washington. … We have work to do to clear spec in some of our Western markets.”
By “work,” he means making affordability adjustments to better align with market conditions in PulteGroup’s Oregon and Washington communities.
While the state of Washington has seen active inventory rise 17% year over year, nationally aggregated inventory has slowed way down—up just 2.2% on a year-over-year basis between May 31, 2025, and May 31, 2026.
If you go back 12 months, that year-over-year national inventory growth rate was much higher (31.5%). After a period of softening in which leverage shifted more toward homebuyers, the supply-demand balance in the nationally aggregated housing market has been more stable in recent months, settling into what ResiClub considers a “soft” market. Again, for that comment, ResiClub is talking about the nationally aggregated market—regionally and locally, there’s a lot of nuance.
Nationally, we’re still below pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels (10.4% below May 2019). And some resale markets—in particular chunks of the Midwest and Northeast—remain, relatively speaking, tight-ish.
May inventory/active listings total, according to Realtor.com:
- May 2017 -> 1,253,854
- May 2018 -> 1,156,910
- May 2019 -> 1,180,920
- May 2020 -> 928,370
- May 2021 -> 447,662 (Pandemic housing boom overheating)
- May 2022 -> 479,462 (Pandemic housing boom overheating)
- May 2023 -> 582,441
- May 2024 -> 787,722
- May 2025 -> 1,036,101
- May 2026 -> 1,058,693
Between May 2024 and May 2025, U.S. active inventory across the country rose by 248,379 homes for sale.
Between May 2025 and May 2026, U.S. active inventory across the country rose by 22,592 homes for sale.
Below is the year-over-year active inventory percentage change by state.
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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 (14%).
Left: Year-over-year active inventory shift between May 2024 and May 2025
Right: Year-over-year active inventory shift between May 2025 and May 2026
And while active housing inventory is rising in most markets on a year-over-year basis, some markets still remain tight-ish.
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 summer are likely, relatively speaking, to have more power than their peers in many Southern markets.
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 Austin and Punta Gorda, Florida.
Many of these areas saw major price surges during the pandemic housing boom, with home prices getting stretched compared with 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: Some buyers, who would have previously considered existing homes, opted for new homes with more favorable deals over the past couple years—which then put some additional upward pressure on resale inventory.
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At the end of May 2026, 16 states were above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington. (The District of Columbia—which we left out of this table below—is also back above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels, too.)
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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 small year-over-year gains. At the national level, home prices are essentially flat year over year.
Click here for an interactive version of the table below
Below is another version of the table above—but this one includes every month since January 2017.
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If you’d like to further examine the monthly state inventory figures, use the interactive 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.
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