The number of houses for sale hit a four-year high in November, according to a new analysis from the real estate website Redfin. They increased 0.5% compared with October and were up 12.1% compared with a year earlier.

“For all the talk of America’s housing shortage, one would think that’s great news,” the company said in a statement. “But the story is nuanced.”

What You Need To Know

  • The number of houses for sale hit a four-year high in November, according to a new analysis from the real estate website Redfin

  • They increased 0.5% compared with October and were up 12.1% compared with a year earlier

  • More than half of all home listings are sitting on the market for two months or longer

  • Many buyers see houses as overpriced; the national median home price in November was $429,971

Redfin said more than half of all home listings are sitting on the market for two months or longer because many potential buyers see them as overpriced. In November, U.S. home prices were up 5.4% compared with a year earlier, selling for a median of $429,971, according to the site.

Florida and Texas have the largest inventories of unsold homes. In Miami, 63.8% of listings were on the market at least 60 days. Austin, Texas; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; San Antonio; and Orlando, Florida, rounded out the top five.

Redfin attributed Florida’s stale housing inventory to a building boom, as well as increasing homeowners’ association fees, high insurance costs and destructive natural disasters that are keeping buyers away.

Providence, Rhode Island, had the lowest share of listings that lingered on the market for at least two months. Milwaukee; Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; Warren, Michigan; and San Jose, California, rounded out the top five.

Only three of the country’s top 50 metropolitan areas saw two-month-old home listings decrease in November compared with a year earlier: Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco.