Adjusted for population growth, I recall someone on a blog estimate that about 23,000 of today’s inventory would equal the peak of 19k in 1996.

I would be interested to know what inventory was in 1990 or thereabouts, when the market here in SD peaked and began it’s downward correction, and then compare that to when inventory peaked in 1996 to see what % change we had. Rich, do you happen to have those numbers?

I think we will eventually end up blowing that 19,000 number away. I wouldn’t be surprised to see 35k to 40k in the next few years. There are just too many people who I think are going to lose their homes when their loans adjust and when job losses occur due to fallout from the correction; we’ve just barely begun to see that. Phoenix, with a population slightly higher than San Diego, has gone over 37,000 of inventory. I believe they’ve had much more speculation than us, however. But have they had as much creative lending as we’ve had here? If they can get to 37k inventory, why not us?