by Calculated Risk on 1/31/2022 09:50:00 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 28th, inventory was at 272 thousand (7-day average), compared to 367 thousand for the same week a year ago.  That is a decline of 25.9%.   A week ago, inventory was at 277 thousand, and was down 27.1% YoY.    So, the YoY percentage decline is now getting smaller (something to watch).

Inventory was down 1.9% from the previous week.

Compared to the same week in 2020, inventory is down 62.8% from 732 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 earlier this year.

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.