The inventory of homes for sale across much of America has dropped recently. People who want to relocate, mostly from large cities to modest-sized ones, have found that this pattern has caused a scarcity of homes for sale in these areas with smaller populations. Put simply, so many homes have been sold in desirable destinations that there are few left on the market. This has given great leverage for sellers to get high prices and is a challenge for home buyers.
Why are Americans moving? Partially, they want to escape high real estate and cost of living prices in the largest cities. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed millions of people to work from home.
Realtor.com’s recently released “Where Did All the Homes Go? Here Are the Cities With the Most Places for Sale—and the Ones With the Fewest” points out that in January, only 408,922 homes for sale across America, which has 332 million residents.
The problem will not be improved soon. Ali Wolf, chief economist at housing research firm Zonda said, “Some sellers want to sell. But because inventory is tight, they don’t want to put their home on the market and sell and then have nowhere to go.”
The study looked at inventory in the 300 largest cities based on total listing per 1,000 owner-occupied homes. Additionally, according to the methodology, researchers “narrowed our findings to one metro per state for geographic diversity.”
The city with the most homes for sale was Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It had 40 listings per 1,000 households. The median list price in January was $334,990.
These are the 10 cities with the most homes for sale:
- Myrtle Beach, S.C. (40 listings per 1,000)
- Destin, Fla. (35)
- Warner Robins, Ga, (35)
- Jacksonville, N.C. (34)
- Daphne, Ala. (33)
- Kahului, Hawaii (26)
- Atlantic City, N.J. (25)
- Lake Havasu City, Ariz. (23)
- Provo, Utah (22)
- Iowa City, Iowa (20)
Click here to see which city has the highest home prices in America.
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