America’s housing market is lopsided

The US housing market is like Shailene Woodley and Theo James––doing Divergent things. While every locality has its own nuances, many are starkly different, and there’s a widening range of time that homes are sitting on the market around the country, according to a new Wall Street Journal report.

• The state with the fastest-moving market last month was Rhode Island, where the median home sat on the market for 37.5 days. The slowest-moving was Montana, at 108.25 days.
• This marks the widest gap between any two states for any February since 2020.

Location matters: In Southern Florida––where builders are dangling incentives to sell newly built homes and second-home owners and retirees are increasingly looking to exit––78% of real-estate agents say sellers of existing homes outnumber buyers, according to a recent John Burns survey.

But in the Northeast––where data shows more sellers are putting off moving to hold on to low mortgage rates––it’s flipped; ~81% of agents say buyers outnumber sellers there. The Midwest also has a buyer-heavy ratio.

Big picture: Nationally, about half of real estate agents are convinced it’s a seller’s market (buyer-heavy), per the survey. US home sales increased nationwide in February. And overall, prices keep climbing like Alex Honnold. A measure of prices across 20 cities rose 4.7% in January compared to a year earlier.