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A few days after I launched ResiClub in October 2023, I wrote an article titled “The key housing market metric heading into 2024.” In it, I reaffirmed a point I had also made at Fortune in 2022: that some traditional rules of thumb—i.e., months-of-supply thresholds for what constitutes a buyers’ market versus a sellers’ market—could struggle in this post–Pandemic Housing Boom environment, where there’s downward pressure on prices.

For the time being, I suggested that an easy-to-create and useful metric for housing stakeholders to follow—one that helps gauge short-term pricing momentum and whether downside risk might manifest—is a local market’s level of active inventory compared to that same market’s inventory level in the same month of pre-pandemic 2019.

The thinking was that markets where active inventory remains well below 2019 levels would still exhibit some tightness, while those where inventory has surged back to or above pre-pandemic 2019 levels would experience a shift in the supply-demand equilibrium more in favor of homebuyers.

Heading into 2025, I recreated that analysis showing the dynamic was still holding true.

Fast-forward to today, and this particular data cut still proves useful (overtime ResiClub believes its usefulness will diminish—just not right now).

Generally speaking, housing markets where active housing inventory for sale has surged above pre-pandemic 2019 levels have experienced weaker or softer home price growth (or even outright home price declines) over the past 36 months. Conversely, housing markets where active housing inventory for sale remains far below pre-pandemic 2019 levels have, generally speaking, experienced more resilient home price growth over the past 36 months.

Indeed, just look at the scatter plot below showing “Shift in home prices since their local 2022 peak” Vs. “active inventory for sale now compared to the same month in 2019” for the nation’s 250 largest metro area housing markets.

Below is the same scatter plot as the one above, only its color scheme is adjusted to show which markets have LESS active inventory now than in 2019 (BROWN) and which markets have MORE active inventory right now than in 2019 (GREEN).

Click here for an interactive version of........

© Fast Company