by Calculated Risk on 10/24/2022 08:15:00 AM

Active inventory increased again, hitting another 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: +5.7K (still increasing!)

2021: -0.8K

2020: -4.7K

2019: -7.0K

Inventory bottomed seasonally at the beginning of March 2022 and is now up 137% since then.  Altos reports inventory is up 1.0% week-over-week. 

Click on graph for larger image.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of October 21st, inventory was at 572 thousand (7-day average), compared to 566 thousand the prior week. 

Compared to the same week in 2021, inventory is up 35.3% from 423 thousand, and compared to the same week in 2020 inventory is up 4.0% from 559 thousand.  Compared to 3 years ago, inventory is down 38.4% from 929 thousand.

Here are the inventory milestones I’ve been 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 20, 2022, for Altos) ✅

3. Inventory up compared to 2020 (happened on October 7, 2022, for Altos) ✅

4. Inventory up compared to 2019 (currently down 38.4%).

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.

A key will be if inventory continues to increase in the Fall.

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.