For the first time since April of 2015, the region has crossed four months of inventory on the market.

There are a couple of different ways to calculate this measure, called the absorption rate. If we use a rolling 30 days, that is a measure of the last 30 days against the number of homes on the market, we have an ‘abs rate’ of 4.03, or just over 4 months worth of homes on the market (Single Family).

Here are the number of sales vs the active homes since Jan 2013.

If we calculate the absorption rate on a monthly basis, that is using the number of homes sold on a monthly basis, our current abs rate is 4.91, or just under 5 months of homes on the market.

This isn’t quite fair to the month of October, though, as we still have two business days of closings ahead of us. Extrapolating out from the 639 closings we’ve had, we need to sell 145 homes to stay under 4 months. We will know by Wednesday or Thursday of this coming week if we hit this target.

However, by either measure we are above four months right now. The last time we had four months of homes on the market was April 2015, with 4 exactly. Interestingly, looking back from there to Jan 2013, in this measure of time April was the previous low point…we can then say that April 2015 was the turning point in our market for inventory. Having hit this point again, is October 2023 the turning point back to a buyer’s market?