by Calculated Risk on 1/24/2022 10:25:00 AM

Tracking existing home inventory is very important in 2022.

Inventory usually declines in the winter, and this is a new record low for this series.

Click on graph for larger image in graph gallery.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of January 21st, inventory was at 277 thousand (7-day average), compared to 380 thousand for the same week a year ago.  That is a decline of 27.1%.   A week ago, inventory was at 284 thousand, and was down 28.6% YoY.    So, the YoY decline was less this week than last week (something to watch).

Inventory was down 2.4% from the previous week.

Compared to the same week in 2020, inventory is down 62.4% from 736 thousand.

Last year, seasonally, inventory bottomed in April 2021 - very late - usually inventory bottoms in January or February. An early key in 2022 will be to watch if inventory bottoms in January or February this year.

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.