by Calculated Risk on 11/28/2022 08:57:00 AM

Active inventory decreased slightly.  Here are the same week inventory changes for the last four years (usually inventory declines seasonally through the Winter):

2022: -4.8K (smaller than usual decrease in inventory)

2021: -9.9K

2020: -15.1K

2019: -18.4K

Altos reports inventory is down 0.8% week-over-week and down 2.3% from the peak on October 28th.

Click on graph for larger image.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of November 25th, inventory was at 564 thousand (7-day average), compared to 569 thousand the prior week. 

Compared to the same week in 2021, inventory is up 50.3% from 375 thousand, and compared to the same week in 2020 inventory is up 12.9% from 499 thousand.  However, compared to 3 years ago (2019), inventory is down 34.4% from 859 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 34.4%).

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 declines slower than usual during the winter months.

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.