National Housing Scene

Looks like a big supply/demand imbalance. There are 230,000 newly built empty housing units for sale. Then there's 3.29 million owner occupied's for sale. On top of that there are 3.5 million empty units for sale that have been taken off the market for unspecified reasons of which 1.7 are now bank owned (This is the shadow inventory via the foreclosure process). So there are 7 million units of supply out there out of a total of 112 million units and with apartment vacancy rates at 11%, rents declining and now with so many buyers upside down (21.4% according to Zillow) and strategic defaults gaining in popularity (see WSJ article) it's tough to build a case for an inflationary housing market in the near term. Then again there's always prayer and hope.