by Calculated Risk on 10/03/2022 08:49:00 AM

Active inventory increased for the 3rd consecutive week, increasing 0.8% 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: +4.3K

2021: -4.6K

2020: -4.9K

2019: -7.7K

Inventory bottomed seasonally at the beginning of March 2022 and is now up 133% since then.  Altos reports inventory is up 31.1% year-over-year. 

Click on graph for larger image.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of September 30th, inventory was at 561 thousand (7-day average), compared to 557 thousand the prior week. 

Compared to the same week in 2021, inventory is up 31.1% from 428 thousand, and compared to the same week in 2020 inventory is down only 0.3% from 563 thousand.  Compared to 3 years ago, inventory is down 41.3% from 963 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 0.3% according to Altos)

4. Inventory up compared to 2019 (currently down 41.3%).

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.  Based on the recent changes in inventory, my current estimate is inventory will be up next week compared to 2020!

A key will be if inventory increases in the Fall this year.  Inventory was up in September.

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.