The brief moment of lower mortgage rates, coupled with some bettering signs in affordability, have led to a margin of improvement in housing inventory and the market as a whole, according to new data.
Zillow’s March Market Report found that pending listings (listings that changed from for-sale to pending status rather than closed sales) grew a whopping 29.8% month-over-month and 4.6% year-over-year to 281,546 listings, the second-largest monthly total seen since May 2025, and before that since August 2022. New listings totaled 384,854, up 35.6% month-over-month and 0.1% year-over-year.
Zillow Chief Economist Mischa Fisher noted that despite the market “volatility” housing has been experiencing since the pandemic, as of late, there have been “persistent signals that the market has turned a corner.”
“Pent-up demand from three years of low sales volume and winter storms in January and February, along with the tailwind from lower mortgage rates earlier in the year, seem to have buoyed the market as home shopping season kicked off,” he continued. “In particular, the rapid acceleration of daily page views per listing we saw in March was a noteworthy improvement over the dormant market of recent years.”
Additionally, homes for sale totaled 1.23 million in March, up 9.5% month-over-month and 4.2% year-over-year. Sales also shot up 25.2% month-over-month and 3.7% year-over-year to 300,398 homes.
The largest inventory spikes were in Raleigh, North Carolina (+26%); Seattle, Washington (+23.8%); Louisville, Kentucky (+23.4%); Indianapolis, Indiana (+15.6%); and Minneapolis, Minnesota (+15.1%).
Only 10 markets (out of 50) observed falls in inventory, led by Jacksonville, Florida (-11.4%); Miami, Florida (-8.4%); Hartford, Connecticut (-7.5%); and San Francisco, California (-7.1%).
Affordability also observed some improvement in March, as the monthly mortgage payment on a typical home fell 4.4% year-over-year to $1,789 (assuming a 20% down payment and excluding taxes and insurance). However, payments did see a rise of 1.5% month-over-month due to the rise in mortgage rates.
