The US housing market just crossed a psychological threshold. Active listings have topped 1.1 million homes for the first time since 2019, marking a slow but meaningful recovery from the inventory desert that defined the pandemic-era buying frenzy.
To put that number in perspective: in May 2021, there were roughly 447,670 homes actively listed for sale in the US. The market has essentially added the equivalent of an entire mid-sized city’s worth of housing options since then.
The numbers tell a nuanced story
Active inventory hit 1,102,615 in June 2026 and climbed further to 1,126,252 in July. Redfin, which uses a broader measurement methodology, pegged total homes for sale at nearly 1.5 million as of June. No matter which data source you prefer, the direction is clear: there are meaningfully more homes available today than at any point in the last seven years.
Current inventory remains approximately 11.6% below the average levels recorded between 2017 and 2019. The pace of improvement has also slowed considerably. Year-over-year inventory growth is hovering around 2%, a far cry from the double-digit percentage jumps that characterized earlier phases of the recovery.
