New listings “fly off the shelf” for one reason, there are not enough homes being built or listed for sale. MLS listings were over 1.4 million 7-8 years ago, fell as low as 800,000 during COVID and have been less than a million during the entire Biden presidency.
Graph and download economic data for Housing Inventory: Active Listing Count in the United States (ACTLISCOUUS) from Jul 2016 to Jan 2025 about active listing, listing, and USA.
fred.stlouisfed.org
Part of this is definitely massive pre sales to institutional investors because those houses never officially get listed.
People are significantly overpaying for houses based on illusionary influences. The illusion is that market/demand forces are driving prices, but they are not. These private equity firms are willing to buy entire, multi- hundred home subdivisions and let them sit empty just to constrain supply. The artificial supply constraint drives up prices with no underlying real economic reason other than manipulation.
Companies like Black Rock have one goal, end private ownership of houses. Once they do that they can extract money from every person for the rest of their lives. How will they do that? Greatly overvalue prices, dump into any weakness causing rapid devaluation (like happened in 08/09) and then buy everything for pennies on the dollar. They have the assets to handle that short term volatility, home owners that overextend to buy don’t.