by Calculated Risk on 4/08/2024 08:12:00 AM

Altos reports that active single-family inventory was down 0.9% week-over-week. Inventory bottomed in mid-February this year, as opposed to mid-April in 2023, and inventory is now up 3.8% from the February bottom.

Note: the decline this week was due to the Easter holiday, and seasonally, inventory usually increases following Easter.

Click on graph for larger image.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of April 5th, inventory was at 513 thousand (7-day average), compared to 517 thousand the prior week.   

Inventory is still far below pre-pandemic levels. 

The second graph shows the seasonal pattern for active single-family inventory since 2015.

The red line is for 2024.  The black line is for 2019.  Note that inventory is up almost double from the record low for the same week in 2022, but still well below normal levels.

Inventory was up 24.6% compared to the same week in 2023 (last week it was up 26.0%), and down 38.7% compared to the same week in 2019 (last week it was down 37.9%). 

Back in June 2023, inventory was down almost 54% compared to 2019, so the gap to more normal inventory levels is slowly closing.

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.