by Calculated Risk on 5/02/2022 08:41:00 AM

Tracking existing home inventory is very important in 2022.

Inventory usually declines in the winter, and then increases in the spring. Inventory bottomed seasonally at the beginning of March 2022 and is now up 21.2% since then.

Click on graph for larger image in graph gallery.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of April 29th, inventory was at 292 thousand (7-day average), compared to 275 thousand the prior week. Inventory was up 6.2% from the previous week.

Last year inventory bottomed seasonally in April 2021 - very late in the year. This year, by this measure, inventory bottomed seasonally at the beginning of March.

Inventory is still very low. Compared to the same week in 2021, inventory is down 4.9% from 307 thousand, but compared to the same week in 2020, and inventory is down 60.4% from 738 thousand.

Here are the inventory milestones I’m watching for with the Altos data:

1. The seasonal bottom (already happened on March 4th for Altos)✅

2. Inventory up year-over-year (likely very soon)

3. Inventory up compared to two years ago (currently down 60% according to Altos)

4. Inventory back to 1999 levels (currently down 67%).

For the second milestone, 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%
3/25/2022	-19.0%
4/1/2022	-17.6%
4/8/2022	-14.8%
4/15/2022	-13.1%
4/22/2022	-11.2%
4/29/2022	-4.9%

Here is a graph of the year-over-year change in the Altos data.

The blue trend line is from the beginning of the year, and the red trend line is over the last 8 weeks.

Currently it appears inventory will be up year-over-year soon.

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.