New listings and contract signings have each reached their highest levels since 2022, with contract signings up 4.5% year-over-year in April — the strongest reading in three years — as sellers who priced their homes competitively from the start found buyers willing to act.
That’s according to Realtor.com’s Spring 2026 Housing Market Progress Report, which shows the housing market is more dynamic through the first four months of 2026 than at any point since mortgage rates first surged in 2022.
“For the first time in three years, we’re seeing contract signing growth that genuinely outpaces the trend of the recent past,” said Jake Krimmel, senior economist at Realtor.com. “Buyers have been sidelined but they haven’t disappeared – they’ve simply been waiting for the right conditions. In the metros where sellers have come to market with realistic prices, buyers are showing up. That supply-demand-price alignment is what separates a dynamic market from a stagnant one, and we’re beginning to see it take hold in a meaningful way.”
Realtor.com said that new listings and contract signings each represent one side of a functioning housing market with sellers coming to market and buyers responding by going under contract.
The report tracks both flows and finds that where sellers have priced their homes realistically, buyers are showing up — a pattern that separates moving markets from stagnant ones in 2026, Realtor.com noted. The report tracks the full arc of 2026 year-to-date, from January through April, at the national, regional, and local level across the top 50 metros.
Realtor.com noted that the two metrics that define a functioning spring market, new listings and contract signings, are each at their highest levels since 2022, and for the first time in three years, both are moving in the right direction at the same time. Through April, Realtor.com said, new listings are up 1.4% year-over-year and 22% above the 2023 trough. Contract signings, which had been stuck 20 to 25 percentage points below 2022 levels from 2023 through 2025, increased 4.5% year-over-year in April, accelerating from 2.9% in March.
Growth in Signings Outpaces Growth in New Listings
Realtor.com said that acceleration matters beyond the headline number.
It said that year-to-date contract signings are up 2.9% versus 2025 and 4.1% above their 2023 low, and growth in signings is now outpacing growth in new listings, narrowing the gap between supply recovery and demand recovery that has defined the past three springs.
Realtor.com noted that with homes that go under contract typically closing within four to six weeks, that demand signal is on track to show up in closed sales data by June and is the clearest evidence that the 2026 housing market is beginning to move.
Across the top 50 metros, Realtor.com noted that 34 have seen more contract signings year-to-date in 2026 than over the same period in 2025, and 31 have seen more new listings.
Trends are widespread, but the strength varies considerably by market, Realtor.com said.
Twenty-one metros have seen both new listings and contract signings rise year-over-year — markets genuinely delivering on the spring promise. The Midwest dominates this group, Realtor.com said, with Kansas City (+12.5% listings, +20.7% contract signings), Louisville (+13.6%, +18.9%), Indianapolis (+14.7%, +6.6%), Columbus (+8.0%, +7.9%), and Cincinnati (+10.8%, +4.7%) all showing strong two-sided momentum.
Price Corrections
A more surprising cluster of markets is seeing contract signings rise despite fewer new listings than last year, Realtor.com said. Phoenix (-0.4% listings, +8.1% signings), Austin (-3.5%, +7.6%), and Jacksonville (-9.5%, +5.2%) all fit that profile, the website noted.
These markets have undergone significant price corrections over the past two years, Realtor.com said, and buyers are responding even where new supply has not surged.
Not all markets have found this footing, however.
Realtor.com noted that Las Vegas (-0.8% listings, -8.4% signings) and Tampa (-12.2%, -3.1%) show stagnation driven by weak demand, with days-on-market climbing by more than a week year-over-year. Hartford (-13.1%, -9.2%) and Providence (-8.0%, -5.6%), by contrast, are constrained by limited supply, with inventories still below pre-pandemic norms and time on market falling compared to last year, Realtor.com noted.
Realtor.com noted that the pattern of which markets are most and least active is not random.
It said that at the start of this year, the Realtor.com Market Clock placed eight of the top 50 metros in buyer’s market territory, with nearly all of them in the South. So far this year, almost all of those markets have seen fewer new listings than last year.
Sellers in buyer’s markets know the conditions are not in their favor, and many are choosing to wait, Realtor.com noted.
On the seller’s market side, the picture looks different.
Of the 13 seller’s markets identified by the Market Clock at the start of the year, some — such as Kansas City (+20.7% contract signings) and Columbus, Ohio, (+7.9%) — are among the most active markets in the country, with both new listings and signings rising.
Seller pricing behavior is one of the most consequential variables in determining whether a local market moves or stagnates, Realtor.com noted. Nationally, the median list price per square foot is down 2.4% year-over-year in April, and yet the share of listings with price cuts has also declined, by 1.25 percentage points.
