by Calculated Risk on 12/05/2022 09:03:00 AM

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

2022: -14.4K (somewhat smaller than the usual seasonal decrease in inventory)

2021: -24.5K

2020: -18.3K

2019: -24.9K

Altos reports inventory is down 2.6% week-over-week and down 4.8% from the peak on October 28th.

Click on graph for larger image.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of December 2nd, inventory was at 549 thousand (7-day average), compared to 564 thousand the prior week. 

Compared to the same week in 2021, inventory is up 56.7% from 350 thousand, and compared to the same week in 2020 inventory is up 14.2% from 481 thousand.  However, compared to 3 years ago (2019), inventory is down 34.1% from 834 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 34.1%).

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.