- Home delistings reached a nine-year high in December after the market was inundated with sellers but not enough buyers.
An influx of housing inventory has left homeowners pulling their listings off the market at a high rate as there are not enough buyers to keep up with sellers.
Home delistings in December spiked 64% from a year ago to 73,000, their highest levels since 2015, according to CoreLogic data cited by the Wall Street Journal.
While delistings typically surge in the winter, the magnitude of the latest jump indicates an unusually wide mismatch in supply and demand.
On the supply side, December saw 1.15 million U.S. homes on the market, a 16% increase from a year ago, according to the National Association of Realtors.
But demand has been weak. In 2024, home sales fell to the lowest level in nearly 30 years as mortgage rates stayed high.
High home prices have also weighed on demand. Even new homes, which are increasingly being built smaller and priced lower, have seen less uptake. The number of completed homes that are ready to occupy rose 46% in December to 118,000, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
As supply outweighs demand, delistings allow homeowners to avoid selling for less than others in the neighborhood in the hopes that conditions will improve.
In fact, spring is typically the season when prospective buyers go house hunting, and more sellers may put their homes back on the market then.
