The spring market may be bringing a little of the hoped for increase in available homes for sale.  April data from Realtor.com indicated the inventory of homes listed on the nationwide site increased by 4.12 percent in April to 1.75 million and list prices were up 2.64 percent. 

Despite the increase from March to April, the nationwide inventory was down from a year earlier in all but 11 of the 146 local markets the website monitors and 36 of the markets had a decrease in inventories of 20 percent or more.  Nationwide the inventory was 13.54 percent lower than a year ago.

Houses were on the market nationwide for an average of 81 days, an improvement of 11 percent from a year earlier.  Thus while more homes are entering the market, they are not contributing long term to inventories.   

The number of markets with declining list prices are decreasing with only 37 that had lower list prices in April 2013 than in April 2012.  Median list prices increased in 109 markets and the national median list price was $194,900.  

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