Hi all - how are housing inventory levels tracked? Is this data readily available from the Census, NAR, etc.? If not, is there an easy way to calculate it from publicly available data? Thank you.
P.S. I am looking for information on inventory units, as well as the average number of months for the inventory to be absorbed.
NAR is the way to go. You have to buy their report to get it, though.
I was also looking at the homebuilding statistics on Hanley Wood. http://www.hwmarketintelligence.com/homebuilding/homebuilding.asp I see their estimations for months-of-inventory, but was curious how it was calculated. Are there any sites that present data on inventory levels on a transparent fashion, without having to pay for them?
keep in mind inventory is bs I knew a home builder in maui who had 12 units to sell… only 1 was listed at a time. Happens just like that all over the place. Whatever number the realtors tell you is a lie unless you multiply it by 6.23pie
Check out www.calculatedrisk.blogspot.com It’s a pretty well respected blog about the Real Estate and the Economy in general. You can find good summarized data there about the housing inventory numbers,new constructions and trends etc.
Census Bureau also has a Housing Vacancies and Homeownership Report.
numi, I work with these statistics a lot. A company like Hanley Woods PROBABLY hires it out to a third party. And often these stats have formulas involved with them that try to adjust up/down for trends. In a lot of cases, they’ve probably got 18-25-year-olds they’re paying 30-35k per year calling places all over the nation, collecting–half-heartedly–information, and having their managers make inferences of the population based on the samples. It’s definitely not an exact science. Then again, they could just pull up stats from the MLS, although that’d be freakin’ tough given that there are probably like 10,000 MLSs.
Oh yeah, let me add that the inexact nature of real estate makes the market incredibly inefficient, which is why less intelligent people can make big bucks in this industry. If you have access to the information (contacts, paid, happenstance, knowledge, etc.) then you have a huge advantage.
If you have Bloomberg, you can go to ECO US, find the latest home sales figure. Right click, go to CN, and look at the original table for “months supply”. No? You can see which agency publishes this report, I guess, and look up the calcularition methodology on their website.
Hi all - thanks for the suggestions. Also, the information that I’m looking for is for national level and metro levels. Is the data from the National Association of Realtors and Census Bureau reliable for inventory level tracking? Existing inventory: http://www.realtor.org/Research.nsf/Pages/EHSdata New home inventory: http://www.census.gov/const/www/newressalesindex.html I notice there’s a plethora of other sources that track this data as well, but my objective is to find a source that’s (1) reputable and respected within the industry, (2) low-cost, and (3) accessible via the web. Any other thoughts, please let me know. Thanks!
Numi, the sources you cite are the ones most often used by the sell-side. I think you’re on the right track.
Thanks for the feedback, tobias. Also, can you or anyone else recommend some tickers where I would be able to turn up good information on homebuilding and remodeling activity? I’m definitely looking primarily for stuff on the residential side, and my goal is to find some industry reports that will help me stay up to date on the broader housing market. I figure that knowing some of the key players in this space will enable me to track this stuff better through First Call.
Also, are there any good free industry newsletters that you guys can recommend? kkent, tobias, and anyone else who covers the residential real estate space? thanks guys…
I just saw a “leading” indicator I’d never heard of before… Architecture Billings Index! http://www.aia.org/press2_template.cfm?pagename=release_ABI_Mar_042308 What do you hope to gain by studying the housing cycles?
We are looking at potentially acquiring a company that makes products whose end markets depend on homebuilding and remodeling activity, so part of my diligence is to figure out the relationship between the company’s sales and the housing cycles.
If you’re looking for builder tickers, you can start with TOL, CTX, LEN, DHI, KBH…more distressed names are BZH, HOV, SPF and especially Tousa, who filed last year.
kkent Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > numi, I work with these statistics a lot. A > company like Hanley Woods PROBABLY hires it out to > a third party. And often these stats have formulas > involved with them that try to adjust up/down for > trends. In a lot of cases, they’ve probably got > 18-25-year-olds they’re paying 30-35k per year > calling places all over the nation, > collecting–half-heartedly–information, and > having their managers make inferences of the > population based on the samples. It’s definitely > not an exact science. > > Then again, they could just pull up stats from the > MLS, although that’d be freakin’ tough given that > there are probably like 10,000 MLSs. kkent, can you elaborate as to why these inventory figures might be spurious? i only recently started looking at real estate so i’d appreciate your feedback. thanks. Randall – thanks for the suggestions. Someone else gave me similar advice so I’ll definitely look at those tickers. My inclination is to look primarily at industry reports that cover the bigger names; would I be missing out on a lot of I didn’t spend much time looking at the distressed names? Keep in mind that my goal is to have an understanding of the industry as a whole (as opposed to any particular public company), and my thought is that as long as the industry reports pertaining to the non-distressed names still give a balanced perspective of the overall residential market, then I’ll just stick to reading those (less work for me to do)
The tickers Randall gave are the ones you want. Looking at those names will give you the perspective you need (you can ignore the distressed guys).