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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the pandemic housing boom, housing demand surged rapidly amid ultralow interest rates, stimulus relief, and the remote work boomwhich increased demand for space and unlocked WFH arbitrage as high earners were able to keep their income from a job in, say, New York City or Los Angeles, and buy a home in, say, Austin or Tampa. Federal Reserve researchers estimate that new construction would have had to increase by roughly 300% to absorb the pandemic-era surge in demand. Unlike housing demand, housing stock supply isnt as elastic and can’t ramp up as quickly. As a result, the heightened pandemic era demand drained the market of active inventory and overheated home prices, with U.S. home prices rising a staggering 43.2% between March 2020 and June 2022. Of course, a lot has changed since then. Not long after mortgage rates spiked in 2022 and return-to-office mandates gained a bit of momentum, national demand in the for-sale market pulled back and the pandemic housing boom fizzled out. The longer we’ve remained in this strained housing demand environment, the more the total number of U.S. active sellers is outmatching the total number of active homebuyers. According to a recent Redfin analysis, there were nearly 490,041 more U.S. home sellers than buyers in April 2025. Thats the most that home sellers have outmatched homebuyers in over a decade. For comparison, at the height of the pandemic housing boom in April 2022, there were 436,106 more U.S. homebuyers than sellers. The balance of power in the U.S. housing market has shifted toward buyers, but a lot of sellers have yet to see or accept the writing on the wall. Many are still holding out hope that their home is the exception and will fetch top dollar, writes Redfin economist Asad Khan. But as sellers see their homes sit longer on the market and notice fewer buyers coming through on tour, more of them will realize that the market has adjusted and reset their expectations accordingly. According to Redfin, theres a wide variation across the country. Thats something that ResiClub has also previously noted. Most of the softest housing markets where homebuyers have the most power are in the Sun Beltin particular, pockets of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, and Texas. While the tightest markets where home sellers still have the most power are in pockets of the Northeast and Midwest. While regional variation continues to exist, the housing market across much of the country has, directionally speaking, shifted toward homebuyers over the past year. How did Redfin calculate this? The number of sellers in the market is simply active listings, or the total number of homes actively for sale at any point during a given month. Active listings data come from the MLS, writes Redfin. Redfin economists added: Because there is not a similar metric measuring how many buyers are actively in the market, we developed one. We took active listings and pending sales from the MLS [multiple listing services] to estimate what fraction of homes on the market will sell within a given month. Analogously, we estimated what fraction of buyers on the market will find a home within a given month using Redfin data on the typical time from first tour to purchase. The ratio of these two data points approximates the ratio of buyers to sellers in the market. “We then multiplied that ratio by the number of active listings to get the estimated total number of buyers in the market. Note that our estimate of buyers is not based on Redfin traffic or customer acquisition data, and the purpose of this analysis is to measure the number of buyers and sellers in the housing market as a whole. All metrics that go into our calculation of the number of buyers and sellers in the market are seasonally adjusted. In terms of market labels, Redfin economists view the current housing market as a little softer/weaker than Zillow economists do. (You can find Zillow’s updated market labels here.)
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E-Commerce
Ding, ding, ding! Chime Financial is finally ready to go public. The 13-year-old digital banking services company has set a target valuation of $11.2 billion for its highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO), according to a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). That would amount to raising roughly $832 million while offering 32 million shares, priced between $24 and $26. Per Chime’s S-1 statement, the company says it has 8.6 million active members and generates $251 in revenue per active member, on average. San Francisco-based Chime intends to list its stock on the Nasdaq and trade under the ticker CHYM. It has not announced a listing date. Notably, the $11.2 billion valuation is a sizable fall from the $25 billion ceiling Chime hit after a $750 million funding round in 2021a time when many fintech companies were riding high due to the pandemic. However, it also recently disclosed that its 2024 revenue was on an uptick, hitting $1.67 billion, up from $1.28 billion a year earlier. At the same time, its net losses have narrowed during that period, from $203.2 million in 2023 to $25.3 million last year. Fast Company reached out to Chime for additional comment, but the company declined. Getting into the ring Chimes IPO has been a long time coming and is expected to be one of the most anticipated offerings of the year. Digital banking services from non-banks and so-called “digital challenger banks” are no longer a niche offering, according to a recent analysis from Deloitte. The report said consumers had registered some $98 billion in global digital deposits as of 2023, even as many of the new entrants offering such services are not yet turning a profit. Fintech companies have also hit stumbling blocks after getting a big boost in interest from consumers during the pandemic, and thats caused some companies in the space to put their IPO plans on ice. Perhaps most recently was Swedish fintech company Klarna, which reportedly paused its IPO plans in early April. Turmoil caused by the Trump administrations tariff regime and erratic trade policies has also thrown the IPO market off its axis, but there are signs that activity could be ramping up once again. Data from Renaissance Capital shows that year-to-date, 100 IPOs have been filedan increase of 19% from last yearand that 81 have priced, an increase of 40%. In addition to Chime, some other anticipated IPOs that could happen this year include StubHub, Discord, Liquid Death, Panera, SpaceX, and Shein.
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E-Commerce
The United Kingdom will build new nuclear-powered attack submarines, get its army ready to fight a war in Europe and become “a battle-ready, armor-clad nation,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday, part of a boost to military spending designed to send a message to Moscowand Washington.Starmer said Britain “cannot ignore the threat that Russia poses” as he pledged to undertake the most sweeping changes to Britain’s defenses since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.“The threat we face is more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the Cold War,” Starmer told workers and journalists at a navy shipyard in Scotland. A new era of threats Like other NATO members, the U.K. has been reassessing its defense spending since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.The government announced military plans in response to a strategic defense review commissioned by Starmer and led by George Robertson, a former U.K. defense secretary and NATO secretary general. It’s the first such review since 2021, and lands in a world shaken and transformed by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and by the re-election of President Donald Trump last year.Months after Britain’s last major defense review was published in 2021, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson said with confidence that the era of “fighting big tank battles on European landmass” are over. Three months later, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.Starmer’s center-left Labour Party government says it will accept all 62 recommendations made in the review, aiming to help the U.K. confront growing threats on land, air sea and in cyberspace. Submarines and weapons The measures include increasing production of submarines and weapons and “learning the lessons of Ukraine,” which has rapidly developed its drone technology to counter Moscow’s forces and even hit targets deep inside Russia.The government said the U.K, will also establish a cyber command to counter “daily” Russia-linked attacks on Britain’s defenses.Monday’s announcements include building “up to 12” nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines under the AUKUS partnership with Australia and the United States. The government also says it will invest 15 billion pounds in Britain’s nuclear arsenal, which consists of missiles carried on a handful of submarines. Details of those plans are likely to be kept secret.The government will also increase conventional Britain’s weapons stockpiles with up to 7,000 U.K.-built long-range weapons.Starmer said rearming would create a “defense dividend” of thousands of well-paid manufacturing jobsa contrast to the post-Cold War “peace dividend” that saw Western nations channel money away from defense into other areas. Deterring Russia comes at a cost Defense Secretary John Healey said the changes would send “a message to Moscow,” and transform the country’s military following decades of retrenchment, though he said he does not expect the number of soldierscurrently at a two-century lowto rise until the early 2030s.Healey said plans for defense spending to hit 2.5% of national income by 2027 a year are “on track” and that there’s “no doubt” it will hit 3% before 2034.Starmer said the 3% goal is an “ambition,” rather than a firm promise, and it’s unclear where the cash-strapped Treasury will find the money. The government has already, contentiously, cut international aid spending to reach the 2.5% target.Starmer said he wouldn’t make a firm pledge until he knew “precisely where the money is coming from.”Even 3% falls short of what some leaders in NATO think is needed to deter Russia from future attacks on its neighbors. NATO chief Mark Rutte says leaders of the 32 member countries will debate a commitment to spend at least 3.5% of GDP on defense when they meet in the Netherlands this month. Bolstering Europe’s defenses It’s also a message to Trump that Europe is heeding his demand for NATO members to spend more on their own defense.European countries, led by the U.K. and France, have scrambled to coordinate their defense posture as Trump transforms American foreign policy, seemingly sidelining Europe as he looks to end the war in Ukraine. Trump has long questioned the value of NATO and complained that the U.S. provides security to European countries that don’t pull their weight.Starmer said his government would make “Britain’s biggest contribution to NATO since its creation.”“We will never fight alone,” he said. “Our defense policy will always be NATO-first.”James Cartlidge, defense spokesman for the main opposition Conservative Party, welcomed more money for defense but was skeptical of the government’s 3% pledge.“All of Labour’s strategic defence review promises will be taken with a pinch of salt unless they can show there will actually be enough money to pay for them,” he said. Jill Lawless and Pan Pylas, Associated Press
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