There’s always something to howl about.

Shimmers of the shadow: Is your local REO inventory going up?

Strictly anecdotal — and I would be delighted to be wrong about this.

First, the inventory of the homes I track for investors has been rising slowly but steadily since mid-October. Not an obscene increase, but sales are way up as prices have wallowed in more or less the same place since last March or April. A lot of investors are calling “bottom!” with their cold, hard-to-come-by cash — and yet available inventory is going up, not down. And prices? In December, way down.

Then consider this: I have an REO negotiation going on in a condo community where the quantity of the one floorplan my buyers are interested in jumped 50% in two weeks, from 13 to 20 units just like that, all of them priced right or within shooting-down distance.

It seems to be getting easier and easier to get just the right deal for buyers. Even in overbuilt Phoenix, last summer and early fall played like a seller’s market, but by now it feels to me as though the table is swiftly turning.

And all of that leads me to wonder if we’re finally seeing the much-hypothesized, much-denied shadow inventory.

Am I seeing my own shadow, or is there something going on?