As housing demands hold steady and home prices soar, Houston home sales were up compared to this time last year. 

The Houston Association of Realtors (HAR) released its weekly residential real estate activity snapshot report for the week ending April 19 (week 15) and the number of new listings, pending listings, closings and showings continue to show an upward trend compared to the same week in 2020. 

The data may still reflect distortions because Houston real estate suffered a brief pause in the early days of the pandemic. 

New listings increased for the fourth consecutive week (up 15.4%), with Realtors entering 2,820 properties into the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) compared to 2,444 for the same week last year. 

The number of pending listings increased for its seventh consecutive week (up 36.1%), with a total of 2,880 listings that went under contract. That’s compared to the 2,116 pending listings during the same week of 2020. 

Trending off-market listings remained consistent, despite skewed market data. A total of 847 homes went from active to off-market listings compared to 1,255 during the same week last year, a decrease of 32.5%. 

Despite the deepening inventory shortage, home closings soared during week 15 of 2021, with closed sales totaling 2,186 compared to 1,538 closings the same week last year (up 42.1%). 

Property showings experienced a sharp increase of 60.9% compared to this time last year. During week 15 of 2021, there were 50,558 showings compared to 31,430 last year. There were also 3,705 open houses held both virtually and in person.

HAR.com listing views increased 4.5% when compared to last year, from 13,429,678 listing views during week 12 of 2020 to 14,036,914 listing views during the same week this year.