The Alabama Association of Realtors’ monthly report for April of 2024 showed month-over-month declines in home sales across Alabama—down 6.8%—and a 2.2% decrease in the median price from March, but year-over-year figures for the month of April show improvements over the course of the year. Home sales across the state showed a 10.8% year-over-year improvement, with active listings up 27%, and a 13.3% increase in the median sales price.

Moreover, construction of new inventory has continued to build up, following the disruptions of the late winter months. According to Realtor.com’s Monthly Housing Market Trend Report, there has been a 30.6% year-over-year increase in real estate inventory nationwide. While this is 16.3% lower than 2019 levels, it still marks a high in post-pandemic real estate inventory.

Here in Huntsville, the Huntsville Area Association of Realtors (HAAR) weekly report, dated for May 17, reflects these trends that we see in the statewide and national scales. New listings for single-family homes are up 6.7%, while pending sales are up 8.1%, and inventory is up 23%.

Interestingly, townhouse/condo units remained flat in both new listings and pending sales, while inventory increased 4.8%.

While Alabama more generally, and Huntsville specifically, remain sellers’ markets, this increase in inventory is helping to balance out the economic equation.

In national news, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System issued a rare public statement after Chair Jerome Powell met with President Trump to discuss issues pertaining to “economic developments including for growth, employment, and inflation.”

The meeting comes after months of sustained criticism of Powell by Trump, over the Federal Reserve’s continued refusal to cut interest rates out of concerns with inflation. In a statement given at a conference on May 15, Powell noted that inflation “could be more volatile going forward than in the inter-crisis period of the 2010s,” and that, barring a recession, a return to near-zero long-term interest rates is very unlikely.

Donald Trump has repeatedly castigated Powell, in his own particular idiom, and has signaled a desire to fire him in the past. While a Federal judge recently upheld Trump’s firing of officials from the National Labor Relations Board, marking a potential precedent, Trump has been reluctant to go through with firing Powell for two reasons.

Firstly, as Chair, Powell is merely one of a dozen voting members of the Board of the Federal Reserve, and its spokesperson. Firing and replacing him would not actually result in an about-face for Federal Reserve policy. Trump would need to dismiss the lot, and that would bring about the second factor causing him to hesitate—firing the Board of the Federal Reserve and replacing them with those willing to cut interest rates on his say-so would mark an end to the apolitical Federal Reserve, and prove disastrous to the economy.

In 2021, Turkish President Recep Erdogan forced Turkey’s central bank to cut interest rates despite high inflation. This proceeded to utterly tank Turkey’s currency, the lira, and the whole affair is a textbook example of why an apolitical central bank is a critical safeguard to a nation’s prosperity.

As the American dollar is the world’s reserve currency, threatening the neutrality of the Federal Reserve becomes a global concern, and international investors in the bond market are not above using it as a stick to keep American economic turmoil to a dull roar.

The Board of the Federal Reserve reiterated their commitment to apolitical economic policy based around empirical market dating, stating:

“Chair Powell said that he and his colleagues on the FOMC will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices and will make those decisions based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis.”

The Huntsville Business Journal will continue to monitor developments in the market, nationally, statewide, and here at home.