What’s New
The recent flood of new inventory in the U.S. housing market has brought the number of homes sitting vacant and waiting for a buyer close to levels seen only during the 2008 bubble, the real estate analyst Nick Gerli said.
Gerli, the CEO of the real estate data platform Reventure App, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that for-sale speculative, or “spec,” homes—new houses built under the assumption that builders will be able to sell them easily for a profit—”just hit the second highest level ever.”
“Builders are doing their part to inundate the housing market with supply,” Gerli wrote on X. “Only other time there has been more builder spec inventory was [the] 2008 bubble.”
Newsweek contacted Gerli for comment by email on Tuesday outside normal working hours.
A “For Sale” sign outside a house in Houston on August 12, 2021. The number of newly built, ready-to-move-in homes for sale sitting vacant on the market has exploded in the South this year, reaching levels close to 2008, the real estate analyst Nick Gerli wrote.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Why It Matters
According to Gerli, the explosion of inventory in certain markets of the country is “quite the rebound from the shortage experienced from 2012-22.”
The country has long struggled with a housing shortage that has inflated prices and pushed the property ladder a little further from many Americans’ reach.
New inventory is good news for the housing market, but not if a slowdown of home appreciation isn’t matched by a rise in demand from buyers. At the moment, with stubbornly high mortgage rates and still rising home prices, sales remain relatively low despite pent-up demand in the market.
Home builder spec homes for sale just hit 2nd highest level ever.
Quite the rebound from the shortage experienced from 2012-22.
Builders are doing their part to inundate the housing market with supply.
Only other time there has been more builder spec inventory was 2008… pic.twitter.com/3rM99KwGgZ
— Nick Gerli (@nickgerli1) December 23, 2024
What To Know
Housing inventory dipped dramatically at the national level between 2008 and 2022, when the country underbuilt compared to general demand, causing an ongoing shortage that has squeezed many aspiring first-time homebuyers out of the market.
This trend is now slowly turning. As Gerli’s data showed, the number of spec homes on the market this year reached 124,000—the highest level in at least the past decade, though it remains lower than in 2008, when it was about 199,000.
Many of the new homes for sale on the U.S. markets remain unsold because their prices are still higher than many can afford.
At the national level, according to Redfin’s latest data, the median sale price of a home was $430,010 in November—up 5.4 percent compared to a year earlier. The number of homes for sale was up 10.3 percent year over year in the same month, for a total of 1,689,082. During the same time, Redfin reported, the number of homes sold rose by 4.4 percent.
Gerli wrote on X, “The fact that spec inventory has skyrocketed so quickly in the last 6-12 months represents a big shift in the housing market.”
This is especially true for the South, he added, “where builders have a majority of their spec inventory. States like TX/FL/TN are seeing an overflow of homes on builder lots available for sale.”
According to the real estate analyst, these regions are no longer experiencing a housing shortage. “Active listings on the re-sale market have spiked and are back to pre-pandemic levels,” he wrote.
On the other hand, the housing shortage is still ongoing in the Northeast and Midwest, “areas the builders ignore,” Gerli said. “You can see active listings in the Northeast/Midwest on re-sale market are still in a big deficit to pre-pandemic.”
What People Are Saying
Nick Gerli, the CEO of Reventure App, wrote on X: “We could see even more spec inventory hit the market in 2025, because the builders also have a lot of homes for sale under construction. There’s 266,000 houses for sale currently under construction.
“That’s also the 2nd highest level for any previous housing cycle. Only trailing the mid-2000s bubble.”
What’s Next
Gerli isn’t the only analyst to warn that the U.S. housing market might slide in a similar direction to the one that led to the 2008 housing crash.
In a recent report investigating the effect of the insurance crisis on U.S. housing markets, the Senate Budget Committee warned that rising premiums, combined with still high home prices and mortgage rates, might lead to a housing crash worse than the one in 2008.
“In certain communities, sky-high insurance premiums and unavailable coverage will make it nearly impossible for anyone who cannot buy a house in cash to get a mortgage and buy a home,” the Senate Budget Committee said in the report.
“Property values will eventually fall—just like in 2008—sending household wealth tumbling. The United States could be looking at a systemic shock to the economy similar to the financial crisis of 2008—if not greater.”