Home Depot Faces Softer Spring Housing Market as Listings Rise

A 12.9% jump in new listings could soon show up at Home Depot in the form of more paint, lumber, garden, appliance and project-order traffic. As more homes hit the market, associates should expect a busier mix of moving-related questions, repair jobs and last-minute refresh purchases, especially on weekends.

Realtor.com said the week ending April 18 brought the clearest sign yet that spring housing was loosening for buyers. New listings rose 12.9% from a year earlier, active inventory climbed 4.8%, and year-to-date inventory was running 7% above 2025 levels. The median listing price fell 1.7% year over year, marking the 14th straight week of outright price declines. Homes were taking 51 days to sell on average, just one day longer than the same week last year.

That shift matters on the store floor because a less constrained housing market usually brings more project-driven traffic, not just more shoppers. A fresh listing can trigger staging fixes before a sale, then turn into post-closing work for the buyer, from patching walls and replacing flooring to ordering appliances and refreshing a yard. Department leads in paint, lumber, flooring, appliances and garden should be watching for more specific questions from customers who are under a deadline, not just browsing.

The picture was shaky earlier in the month. For the week ending April 4, Realtor.com said new listings fell 10.0% year over year as Easter timing and a renewed mortgage-rate shock kept sellers on the sidelines. That holiday distortion helped swing the weekly numbers, which means the latest rebound should be read as part of a choppy spring rather than a clean break. Even so, Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel said, “Looking through the holiday noise, the underlying trend points to a market where sellers are gradually reengaging, a welcome sign for buyers and a good omen for market liquidity moving forward this spring.”

Home Depot has already been planning around a housing market that is not fully healed. The company said fiscal 2025 sales were $164.7 billion and comparable sales rose 0.3% for the year, but it also said results reflected ongoing consumer uncertainty and pressure in housing. In its preliminary fiscal 2026 outlook, Home Depot assumed the home improvement market could range from minus 1% to plus 1%, signaling that management expects a gradual recovery rather than a sudden snapback.

Mortgage rates are part of that setup. Freddie Mac said the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.46% on April 2 and 6.23% on April 23. That drop does not solve affordability, but it can nudge sidelined buyers back into the market, and when that happens, Home Depot’s front-end and specialty departments usually feel it first: more pro checkout traffic, more delivery questions, and more weekend pressure on the associates who turn housing churn into sales.