by Calculated Risk on 7/11/2022 10:15:00 AM

Inventory is increasing rapidly.  Inventory bottomed seasonally at the beginning of March 2022 and is now up 104% since then.  More than double!

Altos reports inventory is up 31.7% year-over-year and is now 12.3% above the peak last year.

Click on graph for larger image.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of July 8th, inventory was at 491 thousand (7-day average), compared to 476 thousand the prior week. 

Inventory is usually flat - or declines slightly - over the 4th of July weekend.  This year inventory was up 3.2% from the previous week.  Inventory is increasing much faster than normal for this time of year (both in percentage terms and in total inventory added).

Inventory is still historically low. Compared to the same week in 2021, inventory is up 31.7% from 373 thousand, however compared to the same week in 2020 inventory is down 25.0% from 654 thousand.  Compared to 3 years ago, inventory is down 48.9% from 961 thousand.

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

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

2. Inventory up year-over-year (happened on May 13th for Altos) ✅

3. Inventory up compared to two years ago (currently down 25.0% according to Altos)

4. Inventory up compared to 2019 (currently down 48.9%).

Here is a graph of the inventory change vs 2021, 2020 (milestone 3 above) and 2019 (milestone 4).

The blue line is the year-over-year data, the red line is compared to two years ago, and dashed purple is compared to 2019.

Two years ago (in 2020) inventory was declining all year, so the two-year comparison will get easier all year.  

Based on the recent increases in inventory, my current estimate is inventory will be up compared to 2020 in late August of this year (in the next couple of months), and back to 2019 levels at the beginning of 2023.

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.