| Real Estate Market Overview | |
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Residential real estate market prices in our Greater Seattle & Eastside area have been running at a stable level for over 22 months now, jiggling up and down in a range of $380,000 +/-4%. The two highest points were June '09 and July '10 at just under $400,000, and the two lowest were March '09 and March '10 in the $365,000 range.
This kind of statistical variation even on a base of 1,200 to 1,400 sales a month for all of King County makes me a little suspicious of the charts I see now and then of the sales activity in much smaller areas - those often purport to show what's hot and what's not, but the consistency from month to month may be a little questionable.
We continue to see normal seasonal patterns progressing, although we did have a blip back up in reported sales volume for October, compared to September - more than can be explained by just the one less working day in September. One data point does not make a trend, so we'll wait and see what November's data looks like.
The condominium market is continuing to look weaker than the single family home market, with a slip below what had been the stable market price range since early '09. And condominium Months Supply is still rising when it should be starting its seasonal drop, further underlining the apparent weakness in that market.
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| Current Market Statistics | |
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The links below provide a graphical summary of Real Estate Market Statistics for the Seattle/Bellevue/King County area over the most recent 2 1/2+ years, for single-family homes and for condominiums. Here's the charts for the current stats through October: (Required disclaimer: Statistics and graphs not compiled, reviewed or verified by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service)
  Monthly sales rates (number of transactions) are still significantly lower than at the same time last year, even with the little counter-seasonal bump up this month. The number of new listings coming on the market continues to slow, as is seasonally expected. The Months Supply inventory number has dropped off a bit again, hopefully breaking what was becoming a worrisome trend upward, and we are now back in the 4 to 8 Months Supply range where neither Buyers nor Sellers have to compete with each other, and prices tend to stay stable. The Fall-Out Ratio remains high, probably indicating a fair number of short sale offers still waiting on lender acceptance.
The condominium sales rate also continues significantly below both a year ago and two years ago, and now the median price has slipped further from the stable range we've been in for the past 16 months, and the Months Supply rating has pushed up further, above 12 months, and we seem to be more clearly seeing the effects of the pricing pressure you'd expect in a Buyers market.
The uptick in October residential sales notwithstanding, it will be interesting to see whether there was an 'Election Effect' pause in October purchase decisions, which would show up in November closed sales numbers. Stay tuned :-)
By the way, all of our newsletter articles are posted on our Greater Seattle Homes blog. So if you want to go back and check a previous one again, just click here.
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