My take on the Seattle real estate market , coming into the fall
There’s been a meaningful shift in the market in the last few months, and I’ve gotten a lot of questions about what it means both from clients and from friends and acquaintances. Here’s my take.
The Northwest MLS released their stats for August earlier this week, which are the source for this Seattle Times story (I recommend scrolling straight down to the interactive graphic and the charts in the middle of the article, which are the really good stuff).
Basically, the number of listings remained virtually the same from August of 2017 to August of this year, but pending and closed transactions were both down by roughly 20%, and as a result of several months of this we now have 1.67 months’ worth of inventory on hand for houses and townhomes— roughly where we were in 2014 before the trend of constantly declining inventory began, but still a long way away from the 6 months of inventory that would constitute a balanced market.
The year-over-year median price for houses and townhomes was $760k last month, up 4.1% from $730k last August (as opposed to the ~15% that the median home price has generally increased by the same measurement for most of the last few years) but down 8.5% from this year’s peak of $830k in June. This is due to lower buyer demand, as reflected in the decreasing number of pending and closed transactions — and since the near-ubiquity of multiple-offer situations (i.e., houses receiving more than one offer and selling for more than list price) led to the average home selling for 5–10% over its asking price, the fact that multiple offers have recently become the exception rather than the rule probably accounts for a large part of that month-over-month decrease.
An analogy that I’ve used a lot recently is that on a scale of 1–10, where 1 is a total buyer’s market and 10 is a total seller’s market, we’ve been an 11 for the last 3–4 years — and we’re probably around an 8 right now. The sky isn’t falling; we’re just starting to move towards a more balanced housing market.
As far as level of competition goes, it’s a better time to be looking for a house now than it has been at any point in the last four years; and if you’re selling your house, it’s more important than ever that you price it appropriately for the price you actually want, since significant escalation above list price has shifted from the norm to the exception over the course of the summer.
That’s the short version. Feel free to text/email/message me with questions/critiques/etc or if you want to talk further.
