Housing Excess Looking Better–But Not As Good As It Seems

The excess supply of housing units is being worked off quickly.  Here's the picture for new single-family homes:
NewHomes

We've made a lot of progress towards a normal inventory of unsold homes.  At the rate we're going (and not making any forecasts about changes in new construction or home sales), we'll be down to a normal inventory of unsold new homes by May of next year.

However, it's not quite that good.  There are many excess existing homes on the market.  The overall vacancy rate is still very high.  It will be much longer for the total housing inventory to look decent.  Still, this is good news today.