Why is inventory not climbing faster?

[Geode]

I have been following inventory in King and Pierce for a few months expecting each day to be a new high, but inventory seems to have peaked, even declined a bit in the last few weeks. Anyone have any theories why this seems to be the case? Will inventory pick up again?

[jon]

According to housingtracker.net, inventory is falling in a lot of bubble markets, including Riverside, Miami, LA, and so on.

Prices are still falling there, except at the high end in some areas. The high end may be benefiting from the increased limits on conforming loans, and people in that market may be seeing the light at the end of the ARM resetting tunnel in just a couple of months. The lower end is still clearing out inventory, but once sales recover the months of supply will drop sharply.

Its going to take a while before the banks have their balance sheets ready to start funding developers again, so inventory will continue to drop. Once prices go below replacement cost of a new house, only people in distress will be willing to sell, and unemployement remains at a reasonable level.

[ira s]

Inventory is not dropping here. They do an end of the month "flushing" which lowers inventory, but it's over 12,000 now and grows daily. It'll continue to grow until the next end of the month flushing, where you can expect a drop of somewhere in he neighborhood of 500-1000.

[mukoh]

King and Snoho have dropped, but nothing major about .4% -.5%.

IMHO the drops are due to sellers actually realizing is that it is not a good time to sell. As well as builders scaling down new construction starts, and renting out a bit of their standing inventory.

[The Tim]

Geode, I have to say I think you're misinterpreting the available data if you think inventory is actually declining right now. As of this morning, it's up around 8% from this day last month, and SFHs have been building on the market in King County at an average rate of 42 houses per day over the last week, up from 38 per day the same week in April.

There was a glitch with the source that I use for the displayed inventory on the site, which was discussed in detail on . Also, you may not be aware that if you click on the inventory numbers in the sidebar, you are taken to an hourly log that shows three separate sources of inventory. The third column is the number I display on the sidebar since it is most often the closest to the NWMLS reported end-of-month figure, but it does occasionally fluctuate in unpredictable ways, leading to incorrect data.

[Geode]

Thanks Tim,
It was that nasty purge that threw me. Im still watching the inventory rise. I wish my stocks were climbing on the same scale. Thank you for all your hard work and the time you put in to collect data and answer questions.