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Monday, December 19, 2022

Housing December 19th Weekly Update: Inventory Decreased 2.5% Week-over-week

by Calculated Risk on 12/19/2022 08:41:00 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: -13.5K 
2021: -13.1K
2020: -14.4K
2019: -18.1K

Altos reports inventory is down 2.5% week-over-week and down 9.6% from the peak on October 28th.

Altos Home Inventory Click on graph for larger image.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of December 16th, inventory was at 522 thousand (7-day average), compared to 535 thousand the prior week. 

Compared to the same week in 2021, inventory is up 60.2% from 326 thousand, and compared to the same week in 2020 inventory is up 15.0% from 454 thousand.  However, compared to 3 years ago (2019), inventory is down 35.0% from 804 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 35.0%).

Altos Home Inventory
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.