"While the decline was zero, this week marked the first time in more than a year that there were fewer active listings than a year ago," noted Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com®, in her analysis of the data for the week ending June 24." Notably, it highlights a key reason why home prices haven't fluctuated much despite high costs."

We'll analyze this and other just-released data in the latest edition of "How's the Housing Market This Week?" with an analysis of what this latest news and other just-released real estate statistics mean for homebuyers and sellers.

For homebuyers, the real estate market seems to be caught in a protracted battle of good news versus bad news.

On one side is the typical decline in home prices, which registered 0.9 percent below last year for the week ending June 24. In June 2022, the median home price hit an all-time high of $ 449,000, while this June, asking prices dipped to $ 441,000.

"This means that in June 2023, home asking prices recorded a year-over-year decline for the first time in our data series, a trend that was seen in 2017," Hale explained, adding that prices have fallen for three consecutive weeks.

Meanwhile, mortgage rates rose slightly after trending lower for much of June. Rates on 30-year fixed-rate loans, which averaged 6.79 percent on June 1, moved down to 6.71 percent in the week ending June 29, according to Freddie Mac data.

While overall inventory slowed for the first time in the week ending June 24, newly listed homes have been tumbling for nearly a year, posting a 51-week decline.

Newly listed homes were down 29 percent this week from a year ago, although seller confidence has picked up recently.

Buyers have pulled back from the frenzy of the pandemic era as higher mortgage rates cut into the purchasing power of their housing dollars, but sales of existing homes have largely stabilized and sellers are pulling back even more," Hale said.

Understandably, sellers who have locked in low mortgage rates over the past few years are reluctant to trade in affordable monthly payments for higher ones. In fact, one in seven homeowners aren't buying this year because of mortgage rates, so it's unlikely that overall inventory will spike any time soon.

The housing market is not only shrinking, it has been slowing for some time. Compared to last year, homes stayed on the market for 13 more days in the week ending June 24. This marks a 49-week extension in the time it took to sell a home compared to the same week a year ago.

However, looking at the bigger picture of real estate, homes are selling faster than the average from 2017 to June 2019. housing data for June 2023 shows homes were on the market for 43 days, 10 days faster than the 2017 to 2019 timeframe.

Will the number of homes for sale continue to shrink?

Home buyers who are holding on to their homes are likely to get burned out during the typically busy summer months.

Based on current housing market data, Hale expects overall inventory in 2023 to "decline overall this year."

"The continued lack of existing home sellers is hindering the recovery of inventory as buyers adjust to a higher mortgage rate environment," Hale said.

But there is another path to homeownership for buyers: new homes.

"The pace of the market varies greatly by local market, and our hottest housing market report for May shows that the Northeast and Midwest markets have the fastest pace and the most buyer interest, even though existing sales in those areas may be held back by tight inventory," Hale said." However, new home sales in these areas are climbing."