by Calculated Risk on 3/21/2022 09:36:00 AM

Tracking existing home inventory is very important in 2022.

Inventory usually declines in the winter, and then increases in the spring.  It appears that inventory bottomed seasonally at the beginning of March.

Click on graph for larger image in graph gallery.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of March 18th, inventory was at 248 thousand (7-day average), compared to 316 thousand for the same week a year ago.  That is a decline of 21.7%. 

 A week ago, inventory was at 249 thousand, and was also down 21.7% YoY.    

Inventory was down 0.4% from the previous week, and UP 2.7% from the seasonal low at the beginning of March.

Compared to the same week in 2020, inventory is down 66.4% from 738 thousand.

Last year inventory bottomed seasonally in April 2021 - very late in the year. This year it appears inventory bottomed seasonally at the beginning of March (we need a few more weeks of increasing inventory to confirm this).

And here is a table of the year-over-year change by week since the beginning of the year. 

Week Ending	YoY Change
12/31/2021	-30.0%
1/7/2022	-26.0%
1/14/2022	-28.6%
1/21/2022	-27.1%
1/28/2022	-25.9%
2/4/2022	-27.9%
2/11/2022	-27.5%
2/18/2022	-25.8%
2/25/2022	-24.9%
3/4/2022	-24.2%
3/11/2022	-21.7%
3/18/2022	-21.7%

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.