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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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U.S. homebuyers are finally facing more options on the market, as the number of for-sale inventory surged across the country last month, according to data by Realtor.com.
Even in the current deeply divided U.S. housing market, where the South and the West are experiencing a starker correction than the Northeast and the Midwest, all regions reported increases in the number of homes available.
Inventory surged 14.4 percent in the West, 12.3 percent in the South, 11.1 percent in the Midwest, and 7.5 percent in the Northeast in the last 12 months, according to the Realtor.com December 2025 Monthly Housing Trends report.
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Why It Matters
Higher levels of inventory across the country last year, mainly due to ongoing affordability issues which have shrunk demand, have been fundamental in pushing home prices down.
While in the regions that have seen the biggest increases in the availability of for-sale homes prices have been declining—for example, in Florida and Texas—in markets where the supply shortage remains most acute, prices have continued rising.
At the national level, the result is that home price growth has slowed down significantly over the past year, even if it has not stopped completely or reversed. Experts expect inflation to outpace home price growth this year, leading to real home prices actually declining for a second consecutive year in 2026.
What To Know
Inventory rose in most metropolitan areas in the country in December, with 48 of the 50 largest U.S. markets reporting year-over-year increases. But the sharpest jumps were posted in the following five cities:
- Washington, D.C.: +32.8 percent;
- Charlotte, NC: +30.8 percent;
- Las Vegas, NV: +29.2 percent;
- Seattle, WA: +28.8 percent;
- Raleigh, NC: +26.7 percent.
“Homes are spending longer on the market, so they’re building up in some of these areas,” Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com, said in the report. “And then in some of these markets, new inventory is actually coming on at a higher pace than it was in 2024.”
It is maybe not surprising to see Washington, D.C., dominate the list, considering that the city’s market was thrown into chaos in 2025 by the massive layoffs of federal workers ordered by the so-called, now defunct Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Berner said that the Washington, D.C. market “is just experiencing a slowdown generally, and that’s what’s making homes pile up on the market more. Some uncertainty among people who are employed by the federal government might be leading them to look to move.”
Washington, D.C., agent Scott MacDonald, president of Re/Max Gateway in Fairfax, Virginia, told Realtor.com that despite this inventory surge Washington, D.C. “is nowhere near a buyer’s market, but the good news is that buyers can get contingencies in their contracts again, which is good in my opinion.”
The situation is slightly different in the other metros in the top five, where the increases have mostly been driven by sellers who have stopped waiting for better conditions to put their property on the market.
In Charlotte, Realtor.com reports, inventory has been growing due to a combination of new construction and more resale sellers coming to the market after waiting for mortgage rates to come down.
More sellers are also listing their property in Las Vegas, which is now normalizing after years of “extremely low supply,” Robert Little, Las Vegas real estate agent with Re/Max Advantage, told Realtor.com.
According to Little, the increase in inventory on the Las Vegas market is not bad news. “The key point is that this is healthy inventory, not distress,” he said.
“Buyers finally have options again,” he said. “More inventory means less pressure, more choice, and better negotiating power.”
Sellers are also finally coming to the market in Seattle, but local real estate agent Jessie Culbert Boucher of Compass told Realtor.com that the inventory available in the city is “not what people are looking for and it’s not always the most desirable.”
Raleigh is one of these markets that have been quickly cooling down after overheating during the pandemic years. The main reason behind the recent pile-up in inventory in the city is new construction, which is now struggling to find buyers as demand have subsided due to higher costs.
“There’s a lot of new inventory coming onto the market, just in homes coming into existence,” Berner said in the report. “There’s more competition for sellers because you’re not only competing against your neighbor, you’re competing against builders in these new communities, too.”
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