by Calculated Risk on 10/10/2022 08:45:00 AM

Inventory is now above the levels for the same week in 2020 (milestone 3 below).

Active inventory increased for the 4th consecutive week, increasing slightly last week, and hitting a new peak for the year.  Here are the same week inventory changes for the last four years (usually inventory is declining at this time of year):

2022: +0.1K

2021: -2.2K

2020: -7.7K

2019: -8.4K

Inventory bottomed seasonally at the beginning of March 2022 and is now up 133% since then.  Altos reports inventory is up 31.8% year-over-year. 

Click on graph for larger image.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of October 7th, inventory was at 561 thousand (7-day average), compared to 561 thousand the prior week. 

Compared to the same week in 2021, inventory is up 31.8% from 426 thousand, and compared to the same week in 2020 inventory is up 1.1% from 555 thousand.  Compared to 3 years ago, inventory is down 40.7% from 947 thousand.

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

1. The seasonal bottom (happened on March 4, 2022, for Altos) ✅

2. Inventory up year-over-year (happened on May 13, 2022, for Altos) ✅

3. Inventory up compared to two years ago (happened on October 9, 2022, for Altos) ✅

4. Inventory up compared to 2019 (currently down 40.7%).

Here is a graph of the inventory change vs 2021 (milestone 2 above), 2020 (milestone 3) 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.  Inventory is now up compared to the same week in 2020!

A key will be if inventory increases in the Fall this year.  

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.