Forget Location, Look at Inventory

I continue to believe the housing market will do well. Why? These two graphs sum it up.

The x-axis is the number of months of supply of houses today. The y-axis on the left is next month’s house price change and on the right is the next 12 months house price change.

As you can see there is a incredibly strong negative correlation between inventory and price changes. The lower the inventory, the bigger the positive price change.

As you can see, we are near the lowest inventory on record. This suggests very high price appreciation over the next 12 months.

House Price Inflation

My thought has been for months that housing would be fine. In fact, I expected that price rises would accelerate given the lack of inventory for sale and low rates. Whelp, here we go. Here’s the FHFA price index updated through July.

Prices are up 6.2% year over year and accelerating. Inventory is low everywhere still and I expect this to continue.