From 10 Months of Inventory to 4: What 19 Years of MAAR Data Tell Us About Today's Market
Every buyer who calls Groome & Co. Realtors worried about "waiting for prices to crash," and every seller who calls us worried about "missing 2021," is really asking the same question: how does today compare to what's come before?
It's a question our team is uniquely equipped to answer — because many of our seasoned Groome & Co. Realtors, including our own brokers, were active, licensed agents working Memphis deals through every chapter of this story. They didn't read about the 2008 crash in a headline; they were writing offers on short sales in Frayser and watching listings pile up in Cordova. They didn't hear about the recovery secondhand; they watched the bank-sale percentage finally start dropping, deal by deal, client by client. That lived experience — not just a spreadsheet — is what lets Groome & Co. Realtors advise clients with real perspective instead of guesswork, in any kind of market.
To put some numbers behind that perspective, we pulled the actual MAAR sales reports — not estimates, not national headlines, but Shelby/Fayette/Tipton county data — spanning eight snapshots from August 2007 through August 2026. The story they tell is more interesting than "boom" or "bust." It's a fall into the deepest hole in the market's modern history, a long and occasionally uneven climb back out, a decade of steady tightening, and now a real question about where things head next.
Eight Snapshots, 19 Years
August 2007: 13,387 active listings, 2,054 monthly sales, 6.5 months of supply
January 2009: 10,306 active listings, 968 monthly sales, 10.6 months of supply, 7.07 sellers per buyer
December 2011: 7,194 active listings, 898 monthly sales, 8.0 months of supply, 5.22 sellers per buyer
January 2013: 6,070 active listings, 1,259 monthly sales, 4.8 months of supply, 4.04 sellers per buyer
December 2015: 5,793 active listings, 1,367 monthly sales, 4.2 months of supply, 4.10 sellers per buyer
December 2016: 4,715 active listings, 1,487 monthly sales, 3.2 months of supply, 2.99 sellers per buyer
December 2019: 3,682 active listings, 1,617 monthly sales, 2.3 months of supply, 3.26 sellers per buyer
August 2026: 5,056 active listings, 1,254 monthly sales, 4.0 months of supply, 3.48 sellers per buyer
Two ways to read "sellers vs. buyers" here, and both tell the same story. Months of supply (active listings divided by that month's closed sales) is the classic absorption-rate measure. Listings per pending buyer (active listings divided by homes already under contract) is a sharper snapshot of who's actually competing for whom, right now.
The Crash No One at Groome & Co. Who Lived Through It Forgets
August 2007 already looks soft in hindsight — 13,387 homes on the market, the highest inventory point in this entire dataset — but sales were still holding at over 2,000 a month. Memphis hadn't cracked yet. Agents who are with Groome & Co. Realtors today were out there showing houses in a market that still felt, on the surface, fairly normal.
By January 2009, it wasn't normal anymore. Sales had collapsed to 968 units — less than half of August 2007's pace — while listings, though down from their peak, were still sitting at 10,306. That combination produced 10.6 months of supply and roughly 7 sellers for every buyer under contract, the worst imbalance in our dataset. More than half of everything that did sell that month (515 of 968 units, 53%) was a bank or REO sale. Foreclosure filings in Frayser and Raleigh alone topped 300 and 260 respectively in just the first half of 2008. This is the market our veteran agents and brokers cut their teeth negotiating — short sales, REO closings, appraisal gaps, buyers who'd disappear overnight when a bank pulled financing. It's not theoretical for us.
That's what a genuine housing crash looks like in the data: not just more listings, but demand falling off a cliff at the same time.
The Long, Uneven Climb Back
December 2011 still wasn't healthy — 8.0 months of supply, a 5.22-to-1 seller surplus — but the direction had changed. Listings had fallen from over 9,000 to 7,194. Foreclosure actions, while still elevated, were no longer accelerating.
January 2013 is where the recovery becomes undeniable, at least at first glance. Sales jumped 46% year-over-year (1,259 vs. 862 in January 2012) — the single steepest jump anywhere in this dataset — while inventory kept draining, down to 6,070. Bank sales were still 25% of the market, but non-bank sales more than doubled year-over-year, which is the real tell: buyers were coming back on their own, not just mopping up foreclosures.
But the recovery wasn't a straight line. By December 2015, listings had actually crept back up to 5,793 and the seller-surplus ratio (4.10 to 1) was essentially flat versus January 2013 (4.04 to 1) — a genuine plateau, not continued improvement. Bank sales were still 12.4% of the market that December, a reminder that the distressed-inventory hangover took years, not months, to fully clear. It's the kind of pause that can rattle an inexperienced eye into thinking the recovery stalled out. Groome & Co. Realtors who'd already lived through 2009 knew better — they'd seen enough cycles to read a plateau as a pause, not a reversal.
They were right. By December 2016, the real acceleration kicked in: listings fell sharply to 4,715, bank sales dropped to just 7.9% of the market, and year-to-date sales were up 10% on genuinely organic demand. The tightening continued almost without interruption from there, bottoming at a remarkably lean 3,682 listings and just 2.3 months of supply by December 2019 — the tightest, most seller-favorable market in our entire 19-year dataset, tighter even than what we're seeing today.
Where We Are Now
August 2026: 5,056 active listings, 1,254 monthly sales, 4.0 months of supply, and roughly 3.5 sellers for every buyer already under contract. That's a real seller-side edge, but it's nowhere near crisis territory — every measure here shows less seller surplus than the entire 2007–2013 stretch. It's also, notably, looser than the ultra-tight conditions of December 2019, which reframes the real story: the past two years have marked a genuine reversal of the decade-long tightening trend that ran from 2011 all the way through 2019.
Inventory has been climbing steadily since bottoming around 4,000 units in late 2024 and early 2025, up to a 5,192 peak in July 2026 before easing slightly. Meanwhile sales are down 6.6% year-over-year and 8% month-over-month even as prices keep rising (median up 5.9%, average up 11.3% year-over-year). That's an unusual pairing — falling volume, rising price — and it's the opposite pattern from what preceded the 2008 crash, where falling volume eventually dragged prices down with it. Worth watching, not worth panicking over. Bank sales ticked up 42.7% year-to-date, but they're still just 1.3% of the market — a rounding error next to 2009's 53%.
This is exactly the kind of nuance that's easy to miss if you haven't watched a full cycle play out. It's second nature to the Groome & Co. Realtors who have.
The Takeaway
If you're a buyer hoping for 2009-style leverage, the math says it isn't here — you'd need roughly double today's inventory-to-sales ratio to get there, and that kind of imbalance has historically required a demand collapse, not just a supply increase.
If you're a seller worried this looks like the start of something ugly, the closest comparisons in 19 years of data are the recovery years — a market drifting back toward balance after an unusually tight stretch, not a market in decline.
And if the last two decades teach anything, it's that recoveries plateau, tight markets loosen, and reading the difference between a pause and a reversal takes more than one data point — it takes having watched it happen before. That's exactly what Groome & Co. Realtors bring to every client conversation: not just this table, but the team who lived every row of it.
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Sources: Memphis Area Association of REALTORS® (MAAR) Home Sales Reports, August 2007–August 2026, Shelby/Fayette/Tipton counties. Nothing here is investment advice — every market and every property is different, and Groome & Co. Realtors is always happy to run the numbers for your specific situation.