Did lower mortgage rates already lower housing inventory?

Housing inventory growth has been slowing down since the last two weeks of June, as mortgage rates have been trending lower. However, last week we saw an actual decline week to week, which is rare for this time of year compared to recent years. 

What does this mean? Has active inventory peaked? Our new listings data is having its traditional seasonal decline, but active inventory has peaked in recent years in October and November. Are lower mortgage rates to blame?

For now, I believe it’s a combination of things: lower mortgage rates, new listings data declining and frustrated home sellers taking their homes off the market as they’re not getting the price they wanted. In any case, one thing is for sure: unless mortgage rates rise again, we’ve probably already seen the peak growth rate percentage of inventory in 2025.

Weekly housing inventory data

I was shocked that inventory fell last week; inventory has consistently grown in the first week of August in recent years. Now that mortgage rates are below 6.64% — is that the main reason? I don’t think so, as the growth rate of inventory has been slowing since the last two weeks of June. After waiting for the two weeks of July 4th to work out of the system, things stayed on the slow growth side, but a decline?

Still, the best story for housing in 2024 and 2025 has been the inventory growth and home-price growth cooling down. The inventory growth percentage peak was roughly 33% recently, and last week it fell to 24%. If mortgage rates shoot back up higher, then we can see an increase in active listings similar to what we saw in 2023 when rates hit 8%, but for now, the inventory growth story has been slowing down recently. 

Last week, inventory declined from the previous week.

• Weekly inventory change (Aug. 1-Aug. 8): Inventory fell from  865,620 to 859,096
• The same week last year (Aug. 2-Aug. 9): Inventory rose from 683,738 to 692,833

New listings data

The new listings data reached its peak during the week of May 23, totaling 83,143 listings. It’s encouraging that we met my minimum weekly target of 80,000 new listings, although I’d have liked to have seen a few weeks with numbers between 80,000 and 100,000. As the seasonal decline in listings has begun, we don’t want to show negative year-over-year data in new listings. 

However, this week, we did experience a negative year-over-year print. While this typically would raise my concern, we had an unusual spike during this week last year, so I wouldn’t place too much emphasis on this particular data point, at least for this week. Going out in the future, I don’t have any good explanation if we see negative year-over-year new listings outside the fact that some sellers are calling it quits for 2025.  

To give you some perspective, during the years of the housing bubble crash, new listings were soaring between 250,000 and 400,000 per week for many years. Here’s last week’s new listings data over the past two years:

• 2025: 66,372
• 2024: 75,373

Price-cut percentage

In an average year, around one-third of homes see price reductions, which is a regular part of the housing market. Homeowners often lower their sale prices when inventory levels increase and mortgage rates remain high. As a result, with more homes available and higher rates, the percentage of price reductions is greater than it was last year.

For my 2025 price forecast, I anticipated a modest increase in home prices of approximately 1.77%. This suggests that 2025 will likely see negative real home prices again. In 2024, my forecast of a 2.33% increase proved inaccurate, primarily because rates fell to around 6% and demand improved in the second half of the year. As a result, home prices increased by 4% in 2024. 

The rise in price reductions this year compared to last year reinforces my cautious growth forecast for 2025. This data line growth rate has also cooled down recently

Here are the percentages of homes that saw price reductions in the previous week in the last two years:

• 2025: 41.7%
• 2024: 39% 

10-year yield and mortgage rates and spreads 

In my 2025 forecast, I anticipated the following ranges:

• Mortgage rates between 5.75% and 7.25%
• The 10-year yield fluctuates between 3.80% and 4.70%

It’s all about the mortgage spreads this week. Mortgage rates hit their lowest levels for the year, but for the most part, the 10-year yield bounced off a key technical level that has held many times, and the 10-year yield was steadily rising all week. However, we didn’t see much damage to mortgage rates.  

I wrote about mortgage spreads this week and talked about it with Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler on the HousingWire Daily podcast as well.

Mortgage rates didn’t budge much. They started the week at 6.57% and got as low as 6.55%, then went back to 6.57%. The 10-year yield was rising this week, which would typically increase mortgage rates, but since the mortgage spreads were good, not much happened to rates. One thing to remember about mortgage spreads, we still have some room to go lower to get back to normal, as the chart below shows the history of the mortgage spreads.

Purchase application data

Last week, the purchase application data showed a 2% week-to-week growth and an 18% year-over-year gain. The year-over-year increase in new listings can help explain the growth in the year-over-year data for purchase apps. Now that mortgage rates are below 6.64%, if they continue to fall, we should see better week-to-week data, as we have seen in the past. It will be interesting to see the purchase apps data next. However, housing demand does get better when rates are near 6%, which I wrote about here.

Here is the weekly data for 2025:

• 14 positive readings
• 11 negative readings
• 5 flat prints
• 27 straight weeks of positive year-over-year data
• 14 consecutive weeks of double-digit growth year over year 

Total pending sales

The latest total pending sales data from HousingWire Data provides valuable insights into current trends in housing demand. Last year, we observed a significant shift when mortgage rates decreased from 6.64% to around 6%. Now that mortgage rates are at 6.57%, it will be interesting to see what happens with the data if we can get rates heading toward 6% with duration. 

Total pending sales: 

• 2025: 374,025
• 2024: 367,324

Weekly pending sales

Our weekly pending home sales provide a week-to-week glimpse into the data; however, this data line can also be impacted by holidays and any short-term shocks. Last week we did see a week-to-week decline in this data line. Even though we are in the seasonal decline, it will be interesting to see how this looks when rates are near 6%.

For the most part, since June, this data line has been positive on a year-over-year basis. These pending contracts typically fall into the sales data 30-60 days out. Remember, the year-over-year comps in home sales are at historic low levels. 

Weekly pending sales for last week:

• 2025: 68,413
• 2024: 70,896

The week ahead: Inflation week, Fed speeches and retail sales

This week, the key focus is on how the bond market responds to inflation. We are entering a phase where the markets, economic data, and the Federal Reserve will be in a standoff, much like the scene in “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” each waiting for the other to make a move. Last week, during employment reports, the bond market saw a decline in yields. Now, inflation is in the spotlight. Additionally, there will be speeches from Fed officials and retail sales data released on Friday. As always, we keep an eye out for the jobless claims data.

If the jobless claims start to break much higher, the Fed will be forced to cut rates more aggressively, as they would admit they were too old and slow to react to the labor data. For now, the initial jobless claims data is still historically low.