by Calculated Risk on 1/10/2022 10:09:00 AM

Tracking existing home inventory is very important in 2022.

Inventory usually declines sharply over the holidays, 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 7th, inventory was at 292 thousand (7-day average), compared to 397 thousand for the same week a year ago.  That is a decline of 26.0%.  Inventory was down 0.5% from the previous week.

Compared to the same week in 2019, inventory is down 60.4% from 738 thousand.  A week ago, inventory was at 294 thousand, and was down 30.0% YoY.   

Seasonally, inventory bottomed in April 2021 - very late - usually inventory bottoms in January or February. The YoY decline this week was smaller than last week, and that might be a sign that inventory will bottom seasonally in January or February this year.

Inventory peaked last year in early September, when inventory was at 437 thousand, so inventory is currently off about 33.2% from the peak for 2021.  

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.