Dave:
If you’re watching inventory climb right now, it can look like supply is surging. But a big part of what is hitting the market is not truly new supply. It is homes that tried to sell last year, got pulled, and are coming back as re-listings. And this is a really new phenomenon in inventory dynamics that really changes how you should be thinking about market dynamics. I’m Dave Meyer, and today I’m joined by Mike Simonsen to break down this re-listing trend, why it’s happening, how to separate re-listings from new listings, and what it tells us about seller behavior, buyer demand, and price pressures as we head into the spring market. We’re also gonna dig into why inventory can rise without sending prices lower, how pending sales can improve at the same time, and what investors should do with this information in the next few months. This is On The Market.
Let’s get into it. Mike, welcome back to On the Market. Thanks for joining us again.

Mike:
Dave, it’s always great to be here.

Dave:
Well, we are excited to have you here. I was thinking about writing an episode to talk about de- listings and re-listings, and, you know, I figured why not just have the inventory master himself come join us. So we’re excited to, to hear from you. So it seems like this, this trend that we’re seeing with a lot of interesting movement in inventory kind of started in the fall with de- listings, right? Can you maybe just give us some background on what’s going on there?

Mike:
Yeah. So the housing market stayed slow for four years now. And if you’re a seller trying to get an offer for your house and, and if you don’t get the, the price you want, you can cut the price or you can pull the house off the market and try again, wait for better conditions. Both of those things were happening last year. Both of those things were happening at a, at an elevated pace. So the most of any, you know, recent years. And so that means like you cut your price and maybe you get the offer and then you move it, but if you don’t have to sell, the option is like to withdraw or de- list or let it expire. And, and there’s any number of ways that that happens. You know, so we watch that. And one way to, to track that is not just in a total number of those, but also as a percentage of the new listings.
So like, what percent of the people who are listing now ultimately withdraw-

Dave:
Oh, interesting. …

Mike:
Is an interesting way to think about it, right? Yeah. So it’s, if there’s more homes on the market, there’s gonna be more withdrawals, there’s gonna be more sales and what, you know, like all the numbers will be bigger. So doing it as a percentage of new listings is an interesting way to look at it.

Dave:
So what did you find? I mean, I, I’m, I’m curious because yeah, like of course if more things are being listed for sale, there’s probably more de- listings, but proportionally, what was going on?

Mike:
So proportionally, you get a few things. You get, uh, you get a kind of a canoe shape in the year, uh, where de- listings climb over the holidays and then fall again in the spring, you get fresh new inventory and you get new buyers. And so you’re not withdrawing over the spring, but then if the, the year progresses and you don’t have a buyer, now you start thinking about it. And so it’s very common to have more withdrawals over the holidays. As a percentage of new listings though, last year might have been 35 or 40% in the third quarter. So 30, 35% of those new listings are ultimately getting frustrated. And that compares to like 25% the year before- Okay. … which, which compares to maybe 20%, you know, each- Yeah. … year or longer in a slow market, you see more people who are getting frustrated.
Over the holidays, that might normally drop to 50% or s- you know, last year, 24 was 60%, and in December of 25, we counted 80%- Oh, whoa. … uh, in that. Oh my God. Really dramatic. Like a elevated number of de- listings. So that’s as a percentage of the new listings. January dipped back down to 44%, so dips down, uh, and will fall February or fall lower again in March, April will be the lowest months, and then, and then you get a little, uh, elevation in the spring. So that’s the de- listing. Okay. So de- listing is definitely elevated, hasn’t resumed back down to the very normal, you know, the more normal levels, like it’s still elevated. All of those pieces are in place now. Okay. Uh, it really kicked in last year.

Dave:
De-listing’s probably not a sign of a healthy market, right? Like it reflects some imbalance between buyer demand and, and supply out there, right, or pricing, uh, mismatches. But the, the thing I kept thinking about, it was like, it also, maybe it reflects health in home sellers, that the fact that they are able to pull their property off the market rather than continuing to slash prices, or at least that’s what I was thinking, like there’s not e- this is better than forced selling, which is kind of the other option, right?

Mike:
Uh, I think that’s exactly what it reflects. In other words, almost everybody in the country s- still has the best mortgage terms-

Dave:
Yes.

Mike:
… ever in the history of mankind. And so for those folks, if they don’t get the offer, one option is to sell never. It is super cheap to hold the house.
Yep. Um, each day, that be- there’s fewer and fewer of those folks. Some of those people, you know, those deals transition. There are more people who have expensive mortgages, and so that option fades a little bit every day. Uh, but there’s still a lot of them. Mm-hmm. And at the same time, there are folks, even if you don’t have a cheap mortgage, like let’s say you bought in 2023, you still have your job, unemployment’s low, and so you may want to move, but find yourself with really no price appreciation over the past few years, or maybe negative if you bought at the peak in Austin or something like that. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And now it’s, you know, it’s painful to take that loss. It is. So you say, “Well, I’m gonna try to do it at a, at a gain, but I can’t, and so I’m gonna wait.” So it also is a reflection of the fact that basically everybody’s still employed.
Yeah. You know, unemployment is still low. So there isn’t force selling on that side really either, yet in the cycle. Maybe that comes, but it hasn’t come yet.

Dave:
Right. Of course this can change. Like if unemployment shoots up, something will change, right? It, it will, but there’s no evidence of that just yet. I think, you know, when you hear these ideas that there’s gonna be massive foreselling or foreclosure crisis, that is speculation. I’m never gonna say it could never happen, but it is speculation at this point, not, not really evidence. We gotta take a quick break, everyone, but we’ll be right back with Mike Simonsen. Welcome back to On the Market. Let’s jump back in with Mike Simonsen. So, Mike, you alluded to sort of the flip side of this though. I remember reading something you, you wrote talking about de- listings and saying, like, maybe what happens in the spring? Are they all gonna be relisted or are these permanently coming back? So maybe update us on the re-listing trend now.

Mike:
Yeah. So I think, you know, it is very easy to look at the, the, the de- listings of last year purely as supply for this year, like supply that wants to happen. These are home sellers that want to sell. Therefore, if they come back on the market, there could be a flood of inventory, uh, that, uh, of these folks who clearly tried to sell but couldn’t sell. And so that’s the intuitive take, right? Wow, there’s a lot of de- listings. If they come back, then there’s a lot of selling. There’s a lot of listings and, and there’d be a lot of active inventory, and maybe that has therefore, uh, negative price implications, right? More supply. My observation in, in, in the Compass data, we dove in and looked and, uh, did some, some evaluation of, like, who are the D-listers?

Dave:
Mm-hmm.

Mike:
And it turns out that most of them are- Flippers? Owner-occupiers.

Dave:
Oh, really? Okay. I thought it was gonna be all flippers. That’s super

Mike:
Interesting. So most of them are not investors or flippers.

Dave:
Interesting.

Mike:
Okay. Most of them are owner-occupiers, and that means that these are actually delayed demand- mm-hmm. … as well as delayed supply. Yeah. So these are folks who wanna move up or wanna move down, but they’ve delayed it because they, the conditions aren’t right. So if conditions improve or as conditions improve, you could look at these and see that most of them are owner-occupiers, most of them are two transactions that wanna happen. And so there is shadow demand there as well. Now there’s, there are some investor flippers. There are some folks like, you know, in some of the second home markets of Florida, where maybe these are not two transactions. These are people like, “I just wanna unload this thing.” And to that extent, those would be, those would add to supply. But-

Dave:
Yeah.

Mike:
… in our analysis, most of the folks we see, because de- listing, it’s not just happening in Florida, it’s everywhere.

Dave:
Yeah. Okay. That was kind of my next question is, like, it’s just ubiquitous.

Mike:
It is, you know, is by our measurement and when I get to talk to agents across the country, they’re all, you know, “Well, I had a seller, he tried, and, you know, it’s probably overpriced, but the, the, you know, he’s gonna wait and try again.” That is super common.

Dave:
Yeah. I wonder what happens with transaction volume in the next couple of months because I, I think at some point people just have to realize, like, rates are probably not going down that much this year and, like, maybe, you know, we’ll get, you know, sort of a proportionate rise in supply and demand at the same time and hopefully kick us back up from that dismal, uh, home sales <laugh> report that we had at 3.9 million. I’m curious if you think that’s likely this year.

Mike:
Well, uh, so in, in our data, in the weekly data, we don’t see nearly as dip, uh, as NAR reported. I am suspect of the seasonal adjustment they did. I, I can’t find that. I can’t find a massive dip in the data anywhere.

Dave:
Okay.

Mike:
So I didn’t see it. Maybe, maybe timing of the snowstorm and there, maybe there was some end of month closings- Yeah. … that didn’t happen in the NAR data. I don’t, I don’t know where it came in, but man, I couldn’t find it in, in any of the, the real time. Uh, you know, uh, December, the pendings in December slowed, and so, you know, not great improvement in endomen, but, like, we’re measuring a few percent every week, uh, better, typically better than, than a year ago.

Dave:
I’m optimistic. I, I just feel like, you know, I saw this dealer report that came out the other day that said the average mortgage payment now is 8.4% lower- Yeah. … than it was a year ago. And I just gotta believe it’s, you know, we’re still not great affordability, but any improvement in affordability has gotta help get those pendings and the transaction volume up a little bit, right?

Mike:
Yes. I, I agree. It’s, yeah, it’s 8% cheaper now, and every dollar makes a few more people, puts a few more people in the market. Mm-hmm. And so, yes, I think that’s, that’s the case. We, you know, the one week we saw dip that last week with the deep freeze below year over year. But here’s the thing, you know, my assumption and my hypothesis about the, the de- listings relistings is that these are really two transactions that wanna happen. And right now, we can see the relistings and there are 75,000 single family homes that are now relisted. They were pulled last fall and they’re relisted back on the market now. It’s like 11% of the active inventory.

Dave:
It’s a lot. Yeah.

Mike:
It’s higher than last year, right? They are coming back on the market now. But if they come back on and the, the pendings don’t climb, or if they come back on and inventory expands- mm-hmm. … that would disprove my hypothesis, right? That would just say that these are people, this is only supply that wants to come on the market. You know, if there’s 75,000 people, like, if inventory is rising by 75,000, uh, because these are all relisted, that’s a thing I’m looking for. Mm-hmm. What we’re seeing though is that active inventory is actually, it’s not yet below last year at this time, but in Florida, it is below. There are fewer homes for sale in Florida now than last year at this time. Really? And I think- That

Dave:
Is surprising.

Mike:
… almost nobody is aware of this, right? Yeah. And you, if you ask anybody, they’d assume inventory in Florida is expanding.

Dave:
Yeah. Like one thing that I have been tracking is what you would expect in a normal correction, right, is that in the markets where prices are declining and their softness, new listing data is declining the fastest, right? Like, aga- another sign that people just have the option not to sell and in markets like Florida, they’re just choosing not to.

Mike:
Yeah. But, you know, we have sales up 8% in the pen to weekly pending data. Sales are up 8% year over year in Florida. Oh, interesting. Okay. So there’s more sales happening too. There’s more homes available to buy. There’s more transactions that can happen. There are some bargain hunters happening. Yeah. Like there’s, there’s a few of those things coming into place, uh, that are keeping sales a little bit elevated and inventory falling in Florida. So inventory is still up 8%, 8.5% year over year nationwide, but that was, you know, inventory a year ago has grown by 30%.

Dave:
Right. Yeah.

Mike:
And so it’s now down to 8%. And on the cur- if the current trends hold, we could be negative year over year by June. We could have inventory shrinking.

Dave:
Right. I know. It’s wild. It, it just makes you laugh about all these, like, doom and gloom things that we’re saying over the last couple years that we’re gonna see this massive explosion of inventory. I think, uh, on this show, we’ve been a little bit more measured and maybe that’s proving correct. But I, I think that, you know, that phenomenon is super interesting and important for our audience because it tells us a lot about, like, where the housing market might be going, which I wanna ask you about. But before we do, the last thing, just on the pure inventory side, new listings are down, right? Are you seeing that as well, that fewer people are posting new properties for sale?

Mike:
In our data, weekly new listings are really about the same as they were- Flat. … a year ago.

Dave:
Okay.

Mike:
In the last two weeks with the deep freeze and storm- Yeah. … they dipped below last year. That’s totally common in February. Like storms happen, and so you can get, like, if the storm happens in January, then l- you’ll get the dips earlier. But in general, outside of that weather, uh, I’d say that they’re about the same as they were, uh, a year ago, maybe, you know, within a few percent plus or minus.

Dave:
Yeah. The market is adapting in the way that, to me, logically makes sense, right? This is not … We’ve moved to a buyer’s market, so to see, in, in a lot of markets, to see sellers choose not to sell makes sense, right? Like, especially given the recency bias <laugh> that’s going on, right, where they’re like, “Oh, my neighbor sold three years ago, like, 100,000 over asking. I don’t wanna sell into this market.” It’s just not that appealing to sell these days. So I think, you know, it does seem like the market is heading towards some more stable equilibrium. At least that’s what I’m seeing. What, what is your sort of outlook for the year from here?

Mike:
Yeah. Our outlook for the year is that because inventory’s up and affordability improves not just mortgage rates, but, you know, income’s rising faster than home prices- Yep. … in most of the country, like, that approves affordability, that leads us to forecast about a 5% sales growth in 2026, 5%, not huge, but a little bit. Yeah. And in the weekly data, the weekly pending data, it’s been, uh, been coming out, right, three, five, 8% improvements over last year, like I said, with the dip for the storm for the first week, last week, but, but in general, it’s been averaging about three, 5% more. So that, in my view, bears out our forecast. A year ago, the opposite was happening. So we kept coming in slightly under, you know, and a year ago, mortgage rates were 100 basis points higher- Yeah. … than they are now. And so we were missing on the forecast numbers each week.
And so this, this year, they’re, they’re coming in right, right where they need to, to have a, a full year of, of gains. It would, you know, we looked at scenarios of, like, what would it take to have a big gain year? Yeah.

Dave:
What would

Mike:
It take to have, like, a 10% growth year in home sales? And a bunch of things would have to align at the same time to make that happen, like, you know, mortgage rates dip maybe into the fives in the first quarter here.

Dave:
Yeah.

Mike:
That kind of thing would move. But it’s also, it’s not just that, it’s also the jobs market, unemployment’s still relatively low, and the latest numbers, you know, show it just seems like it’s actually dipping. The number that I’m, that I care about really for the year is the hiring rate. So even though unemployment’s low, companies are hiring at a rate that is- Yeah.
… much more like a deep recession. I know, it’s weird. It’s weird, right? They’re holding on- Yeah. … everybody’s, like, holding onto the job they have and, you know, it’s like, if I wanted to sell my house in Chicago to move to Denver, but I’m afraid about getting a job in Denver, I’m delaying that move. And so I’m not selling in Chicago and I’m not buying in, in Denver. So if hiring rate ticks up during the year, maybe, you know, you get some Fed rate cuts, you get a, whatever, you get AI investment things, whatever the things are, hi- if hiring rates improve this year, I believe that will have a cascading effect down to the housing market- Yeah. … allow people to go like, okay, now I can finally move out of Ohio and, and go to Texas where I’ve been wanting to go for a while.

Dave:
Interesting. Yeah. And I guess that probably just extends beyond voluntary relocations too, where companies are probably not hiring people from other states and asking them to relocate to a new location, which, uh, we see that in the migration data now too, that it’s, it’s slowing down generally.

Mike:
Yeah. And migration data is a little tricky because it’s lagging. Yeah. It’s, you know, backward looking, but all of it shows a lot less migration, you know, 24 and 25 really, uh, down migration in places like Tampa with actually out migration, negative. Um, I, I would expect Tampa flips around this year and actually comes back to positive growth on the, on the migration side because we didn’t have any hurricanes last year. People have a short memory. <laugh>

Dave:
Yeah. We gotta take one more quick break, but we’ll be right back. Stick with us. Welcome back to On The Market. I’m Dave Meyer, joined today by Mike Simonsen. Let’s jump back into our conversation. Mike, I think what you’re saying to me sounds encouraging. I know 5% sales growth, flat home prices may not sound like the most exciting thing in the world to people listening to this, but you gotta bottom out somewhere, right? Like, yeah, if, if the switch gets flipped, I think that’s a good sign. We’re not gonna get, in my view, some dramatic recovery all of a sudden. And if that comes, it’s probably because something bad has happened in the economy. Like, you know, if mortgage rates drop to 4%, it’s because something bad has happened, or if we see a huge influx of supply, it’s because unemployment’s popping up. You know, like something not good is going on.
And so it’s frustrating. It’s hard to be patient when you’re in this industry for three or four years and it’s just kind of stunk. But, you know, the fact that things are moving in a positive direction and are no longer getting worse is a good sign, I think.

Mike:
I think so. And, and the way we’ve described it is really, it’s sort of the, the next era of the housing market. In the last era, the last four years has been ultra low sales, but affordability is sort of relentlessly getting worse.

Dave:
Yeah. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Mike:
And we’re now, we have sufficient inventory in most of the country where sales can climb, like in Florida right now, but also prices are flat or down, meaning incomes rise faster than home prices, meaning affordability gets to improve for the first time in many years.

Dave:
Yep.

Mike:
So you have the next era, which is allows sales to increase and improving affordability, where the last era was the opposite of that. Sales were low and affordability kept getting worse. Yeah. So in that sense, you know, that, that next era is underway and it may be multiple years of that where it’s slight growth in sales each year- mm-hmm. … which would be, you know, a growth market. I’ll take anything we can get.

Dave:
Exactly. That’s the sentiment we need around here. <laugh>

Mike:
And, and, and likewise with the affordability improvements, you know, not a- Yeah. … not a price cor- not a major price correction, but, but slowly every year getting an improvement on affordability slowly gets us back into line where actually things need to be, right, for, for affordability for the median income family.

Dave:
100%. I mean, I, you know, we’ve talked about this before. I’ve labeled this in, in the bigger pockets community, we’re calling it the great stall. Like it’s not, you know, it’s not this dramatic thing, but we have to see home prices stagnate a little bit, I think, to get back to a healthy market. And to, the only way we get affordability is either prices, you know, you could have a dramatic event like a crash, which no one wants, right? The patient approach is, yeah, real home prices are negative. They’ve been negative for a while now. And just for everyone listening, that means not the price you see on Zillow or Compass, you know, like that’s the nominal home price. That means not inflation adjusted. But by most measures, you know, everyone’s got different data. We’re somewhere between zero and 2%-ish up year a year, something like that.
Inflation this, this past year was two and a half-ish percent towards three. Wage growth, similar, right? And so when you combine those things, affordability is getting better without a crash. And that’s, I think, personally, I think that’s what we got for at least this year and maybe even longer. I don’t know how long you think this might last, Mike.

Mike:
Oh, I think it’s probably these conditions are, uh, underway for a while- Yeah. … would be my expectation. Um, I mean, there could be big catalysts that change things, but- Sure. … but if you think about it, we’re in this 6% mortgage rate range and we’d have to have some big crisis for it to drop dramatically lower. There are some forces that wanna push mortgage rates down and, but there’s plenty of forces that are pushing the bond rates up and therefore mortgage rates up too. So I don’t see anything in the data that suggests a big crash in, you know, a big dip in mortgage rates. Yeah. Mortgage rates are impossible to forecast. Yes. Like they could go up, they could go down, uh, but, but, uh, I haven’t seen any indication of dramatically down yet either. If we were to get the unlucky and get some inflation news or the jobs market heats up or something, mortgage rates could push the other direction.

Dave:
Yes, that’s correct.

Mike:
And that would, I think we’d have immediate correction on prices- Yeah. … and slower sales. I think, you know, whatever recovery we have right now is consistent, but also very fragile.

Dave:
Yeah. I think just psychologically, there’s obviously the economic element of it, but psychologically, I don’t think anyone, if we saw six and a half, six and three quarters again, it, it would hurt. You know, people who’ve been sitting on the sidelines, I don’t think they’re gonna be able to justify that. So I’m with you. I think from an investor standpoint, it means lock in what you can today and underwrite deals today. But as an investor, I like these conditions. It’s just more predictable than it’s been in the last couple years. There’s still a ton of uncertainty. But I just feel like 23, 24 was just like peak uncertainty. No one knew, like, could interest rates go down 1% next month? Maybe. Could they go up 1% next month? Maybe. Now it’s like at least the variance is smaller. You know, the fluctuations are smaller and that just makes buying a home feel much more approachable to me.
Whether you’re a homeowner or a real estate investor, stability, I think is like a good place for us to be.

Mike:
Yeah. I mean, you know, that’s right. Like you wanna be able to underwrite your deal and if it, if it pencils out at mortgage rates in the sixes, then it pencils out. If it doesn’t, you’re not, you don’t wanna make the deal because you’re hoping it’s gonna fall. You know, and on the other hand, if you start a deal and it’s at six, and by the time you’re done with the deal, it’s at seven and a half, that doesn’t help anybody. <laugh> Right.

Dave:
Yeah. And I think from, from my seat, you know, I, I just am enjoying the fact that you don’t need to make these split second decisions anymore on a deal. Like you can think about it for a week or two. You could go visit it. You can have your property manager and your contractor in the building before you go and write an offer. Those are the conditions I think as an investor, I appreciate. But I would imagine that translates to homeowners too when we talk about home sell volume. You know, the years of just writing offers sight unseen, I don’t miss it at all, even though there was crazy appreciation. I don’t miss that at all. Yeah. I personally would rather something like this where it’s just a little bit more balanced. Um, so thank you, Mike, for, for sharing all this information with us.
Before we get out of here, any other insights you have with your work at Compass or inventory news you wanna share with the, on the market community?

Mike:
Well, I do think that this withdrawn and re-listings phenomenon is the data to watch each week this spring.

Dave:
Okay.

Mike:
If we’re seeing the relists come back in, which we are, if it’s not com- accompanied by an increase of demand and the demand, you know, numbers, that’s the bearish scenario. Mm-hmm. But as of right now, it is, they’re both, we see the relist and we see the demand coming back in and that, so that is bearing out the hypothesis that these are generally owner-occupiers.

Dave:
Mm-hmm.

Mike:
Generally two transactions waiting to happen. And if we’re lucky, that means there’s a lot of two transactions and it actually translates into good growth for home sales in the first and second quarter.

Dave:
Great insight, Mike. Thank you. See, this is why we gotta have you on. You know, I learned something very new. I assumed it was flippers and investors and learning that changes my opinion about this a little bit. So Mike, thank you as always, always great insight information. We appreciate you being here.

Mike:
Always great to see you, Dave.

Dave:
And thank you all so much for listening to this episode of On the Market. If you like this episode, make sure to share it with someone. If you hear anyone who’s confused about inventory or what’s going on with the market, what’s likely to happen, share this episode with them, hopefully they’ll learn something too. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.