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States with the least—and most—housing market inventory heading into the fall

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Nationally aggregated inventory is up just 2.1% on a year-over-year basis from July 31, 2025, to July 31, 2026.

While that’s up a tad from the +1.9% year-over-year pace last month, it’s decelerated significantly since last year.

If you go back 12 months, that year-over-year national inventory growth rate was much higher (+24.7.%). After a period of a burst of softening in which leverage shifted more toward homebuyers, the supply-demand balance in the nationally aggregated housing market has been more stable over the past year, settling into what ResiClub considers a “soft” market. Note, however that there’s a lot of nuance regionally and locally.

Nationally, we’re still below pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels (9.1% below July 2019), and some resale markets, in particular chunks of the Midwest and Northeast, still remain, relatively speaking, tight-ish.

July inventory/active listings total, according to Realtor.com:

  • July 2017 -> 1,322,659
  • July 2018 -> 1,261,916
  • July 2019 -> 1,239,534
  • July 2020 -> 822,834
  • July 2021 -> 546,686 (pandemic housing boom overheating)
  • July 2022 -> 691,652
  • July 2023 -> 647,135
  • July 2024 -> 884,273
  • July 2025 -> 1,102,787
  • July 2026 -> 1,126,252

From July 2024 to July 2025, U.S. active inventory across the country rose by 218,514 homes for sale.

From July 2025 to July 2026, U.S. active inventory across the country rose by 23,465 homes for sale.

Right now, we’re looking at state inventory data. ResiClub members (paid tiers) can get our monthly interactive deep-dive analysis looking at inventory shifts and signals for 800-plus metro areas, 3,000 counties, and 25,000 zip codes. ResiClub PRO details here.

Below is the year-over-year active inventory percentage change by state.

Click here to view an interactive version of the year-over-year map below.

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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%).

From left: Year-over-year active inventory shift from July 2024 to July 2025; year-over-year active inventory shift from July 2025 to July 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 Punta Gorda, Florida, and Austin.

Many of these areas saw major price surges during the pandemic housing boom, with home prices getting stretched compared to 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 have opted for new homes with more favorable deals over the past couple of years—which then put additional upward pressure on resale inventory.

Click here to view an interactive version of the map below.

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At the end of July 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 is also back above pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels.)

Click here to view an interactive of the chart below (best done on desktop).

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Big picture: Over the past year the post-boom softening hasn’t been as strong as it was in 2024 or 2025, 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, large parts 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.

As ResiClub has been closely documenting, Florida—which has been the epicenter of housing market weakness over the past 2.5 years, particularly in Southwest Florida—is no longer seeing the same upward burst in inventory.

Indeed, the intensity of Florida’s housing market correction is easing across many pockets of the state. There are still pockets of weakness, particularly in Southwest Florida, but the burst of softening has let up. Some builders have also reported that their affordability adjustments have helped them better meet the market in the state. To really get a sense of the zip ode nuances, I recommend using the ResiClub Terminal.

Click here to view an interactive/searchable version of the chart below.

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