Inventory Levels Suggest Housing Market is Far from a Bottom

There are undoubtedly a bunch of contrarians tying to find a bottom in the housing market, but I don't see any evidence that a rebound is anywhere in sight. The key metric here is home inventories. Without a drawdown in the inventory of unsold homes, prices will not stabilize, let alone begin rising again.

The July report from the National Association of Realtors shows single family home inventories jumping more than 2% year-over-year to nearly 4 million units. Not surprisingly, sales for the month dipped to a five-year low and prices fell 0.6% from last year.

Including condos, inventories soared 5.1% to a record 4.59 million units, putting total inventory at a 9.6 month supply. It's going to take a long, long time to work through that much supply, so don't expect the housing market to stabilize anytime soon.