by Calculated Risk on 10/11/2021 10:32:00 AM

Tracking existing home inventory will be very important this year.

Click on graph for larger image in graph gallery.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of October 8th, inventory was at 426 thousand (7 day average), compared to 555 thousand for the same week a year ago.  That is a decline of 23.3%.

Compared to the same week in 2019, inventory is down 55% from 947 thousand.  A week ago, inventory was at 428 thousand, and was down 23.9% YoY.   

Seasonally, inventory bottomed in April (usually inventory bottoms in January or February). Inventory was about 39% above the record low in early April.

Now inventory may have peaked for the year in early September.   Five weeks ago inventory was at 437 thousand (the peak for the year so far), so inventory is currently off about 2.6% from the peak for the year.

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.  

Altos Research has also seen a significant pickup in price decreases - now well above the level of a year ago - but still below a normal rate for October.