Frightening Inventory Level

The Complete Collapse of Supply

Here is an interesting number to start our Tuesday:  306

I live and work in Wake County, North Carolina.  It is a large county with more than 1.1 million residents.  This morning, just for kicks and grins, I looked up how many homes are actively For Sale through our local MLS, in the entire county.  Of course this is a point-in-time figure, and it will change from day to day, and even from hour to hour.

Let me qualify this.  I looked up the number of re-sale homes, under a million dollars.  I wanted a true active figure, so it does not include any Coming Soon properties.  And I excluded properties with current Contingent or Pending contracts.  I also excluded new construction.  But this number does include all property types:  Detached, Attached, Condo, and even Manufactured.

Let me say, I have absolutely no idea what this number is on a regular basis.  No doubt it's seasonal.  But for mid-March, 306 seems frighteningly low to me.

We've all been discussing low inventory for a few years now.  But after the posts Multiple Over Madness and Four Hours or Four Days, I really wanted to get a handle on the current situation.  Sure, there are any number of ways to dissect the statistics.  But I think this one number pretty much captures the situation.

Update, 7:07 PM, Tuesday, 16 March 2021

As weekend sales are finalized and properties go under contract, our figure drops even further:

288

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