Gloom and Doom Housing Reports? Not in Snohomish County, WA!
by Belinda Walker, Edmonds REALTOR®
Edmonds WA Real Estate
No doubt you've heard the latest "gloom and doom" housing reports of this past week. Prices down 3.2% nationally, June 2006 to June 2007. Existing home sales down 0.2% last month (is 0.2% even significant?). Inventories at a 16 year high of 9.6 months supply.
What you didn't hear was that Seattle was the #1 market nationally in prices, UP 7.9% year over year! Or, that Portland Oregon was third. Only 5 of the major metropolitan areas were up and we had two of them right here in the Northwest.
Those existing home sales numbers this week? Yes, nationally they were down 0.2%, but only the Midwest actually fell. The south was flat at 0.0% change, and the northeast and west were up. Again, the West was the strongest, up 1.8%.
Here are the numbers in Snohomish County for July:
Active listings (as of month's end):
July 2007 6,408
July 2006 4,071
% increase = 57%
Closed sales:
July 2007 1,261
July 2006 1,519
% decrease = 16%
Median selling price (based on year to date sales):
July 2007 $350,000
July 2006 $319,000
% increase = 10%
(compare this to the decrease of 3.2% nationally released 8/28/07)
Inventory (active listings/closed sales):
July 2007 5.1 months
July 2006 2.7 months
% increase = 89%
(compare this to the national figure of 9.6 months released 8/27/07)
(6 months is widely considered a "healthy market")
Average time on market:
July 2007 62 days
July 2006 42 days
As you can see, although homes are taking longer to sell on average, our local market is much stronger than what you may be hearing in the national news! I hope this information will assist you in keeping up with the local current market conditions.
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