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More homes are being taken off the market due to a lack of buyers

Last December, sellers pulled nearly 73,000 houses.

2/19/25 10:43AM

Typically, you’d think more homes being taken off the market is good news for real estate agents and analysts… But, with a surplus of new homes for sale and a shortage of buyers, US properties are increasingly being delisted to be moved on from, rather than moved into.

Data from analytics firm CoreLogic, reported by the WSJ last Thursday, showed a significant jump in housing delistings at the end of last year, with almost 73,000 homes being taken off the market in December — a 64% increase year-on-year, the highest level in almost a decade — after failing to find a buyer. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) also found that pending home sales retracted by 5.5% that month, after four successive months of growth.

Though this follows the trend that more houses tend to be pulled during winter months — fewer people generally go house-hunting as the year comes to a close, with sellers often relisting in the spring — the uptick is further proof that the US housing market is struggling, even with more properties becoming available.

Bye-the-buy

There’s been much chatter about a Great American housing shortage over the past decade. A post-pandemic house building slump, combined with more people staying put to keep their cheap mortgages, has kept US house prices at record highs despite rising interest rates.

However, per the WSJ, data from the National Association of Home Builders showed that the number of completed new homes grew 46% year-over-year to 118K in December, and the NAR also found that the number of homes for sale that same month was at 1.15 million (+16%).

So, if more homes are available… Why are sales still hovering near 30-year lows? Well, the demand part of the housing supply and demand equation is still being weighed down by two factors: affordability and security. Indeed, CoreLogic recently reported that home prices increased nationally by 3.4% in Dec ‘24, while 30-year fixed mortgage rates have inched back up towards 7%.

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Ahead of Mother’s Day, Google searches for “same day flower delivery” have ticked up a little earlier this year

If you’ve already made plans for a Mother’s Day gift in advance of this Sunday, congratulations. But if alarm bells are suddenly ringing, consider this a gentle reminder that, like a sizable share of the US population this time of year often does, you can still scrape together some last-minute flowers for the woman who carried you for nine months.

Data from Google Trends reveals that searches for “same day flower delivery” spike in the US in May every year, when Mother’s Day takes place. As we noted last February, the same query also gains traction around Valentine’s Day.

This year, however, it appears that searches for last-minute flowers have remained elevated in the last two months after the usual peak in February — with the search interest this April actually exceeding that seen around Cupid’s Day.

Honestly, we’re not sure why searches are spiking a little early. One explanation might be that Passover and Easter have overlapped at the start of April, and Americans wanted to celebrate with some flowers. Maybe it’s a host of Claude bots that are now running errands for AI-obsessed execs — or perhaps Americans are just impulse-buying some seasonal spring blooms after an unusually warm March, without a particular occasion.