by Calculated Risk on 1/03/2022 10:14:00 AM

Tracking existing home inventory is very important in 2022.

Inventory usually declines sharply over the holidays, and this is a new record low for this series.

Click on graph for larger image in graph gallery.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of December 31st, inventory was at 294 thousand (7-day average), compared to 420 thousand for the same week a year ago.  That is a decline of 30.0%.  Inventory is down 5.4% from last week.

Compared to the same week in 2019, inventory is down 61.5% from 764 thousand.  A week ago, inventory was at 310 thousand, and was down 29.0% YoY.   

Seasonally, inventory bottomed in April (usually inventory bottoms in January or February). Inventory last week was about 4.2% below the previous record low set-in early April 2021.

Inventory peaked for the year in early September, when inventory was at 437 thousand (the peak for the year), so inventory is currently off about 32.8% from the peak for 2021.  

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.