by Calculated Risk on 7/28/2014 05:53:00 PM

Here is another weekly update on housing inventory ...

SPECIAL NOTE from Ben at Housing Tracker:

I'm seeing higher than expected inventories in Dallas, Orlando and Tampa that do not appear to be accurate representations of reality. Data for those cities may be more suspect than data for other locales. National home inventory will also be skewed higher as a result. As always, consider this realtime data a rough and dirty estimate and use at your own risk.

There is a clear seasonal pattern for inventory, with the low point for inventory in late December or early January, and then usually peaking in mid-to-late summer.

The Realtor (NAR) data is monthly and released with a lag (the most recent data released was for June and indicated inventory was up 6.5% year-over-year).  

Fortunately Ben at Housing Tracker (Department of Numbers) has provided me some weekly inventory data, for 54 metro areas, for the last several years.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the Housing Tracker reported weekly inventory for the 54 metro areas for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

In 2011 and 2012, inventory only increased slightly early in the year and then declined significantly through the end of each year.

In 2013 (Blue), inventory increased for most of the year before declining seasonally during the holidays.  

Inventory in 2014 (Red) is now 15.6% above the same week in 2013. (Note: There might be an issue with the Housing Tracker data over the last couple of weeks - Ben is checking - but inventory is still up significantly).

Inventory is also about 2.4% above the same week in 2012.  According to several of the house price indexes, house prices bottomed in early 2012, and low inventories were a key reason for the subsequent price increases.  Now that inventory is back above 2012 levels, I expect house price increases to slow (and possibly decline in some areas).

Note: One of the key questions for 2014 will be: How much will inventory increase?  My guess was inventory would be up 10% to 15% year-over-year at the end of 2014 based on the NAR report.  Right now it looks like inventory might increase more than I expected.