Greater Seattle Real Estate Trends for October, 2016
The supply of Seattle single family homes for sale, an indicator for where home values may be going, rose above one month for the first time in seven months. This mirrors a bit of a feeling that I’ve been getting while working with buyers and monitoring the various searches I have setup for myself and clientele.
Lately, I’ve been seeing more “price reduced” listings pop up in my searches, and though there are certainly still multiple offer situations abound, things feel just a bit less frenzied.
That being said, it’s also interesting to point out that this uptick in supply mirrors the same time last year, when the supply of homes also ticked above one month for the first time in seven months.
So what happened next? At this time last year, the supply of homes for sale then plummeted to the lowest post-recession supply I have tracked - .55 months at the beginning of this year. Sellers took the holiday months off while buyers remained persistent.
The aforementioned drop in supply to .55 months also helped usher in a significant increase in selling prices. Seattle’s median selling price of single family homes jumped 8.7% over the two months from last December to this past February; the bulk of the closed sales in February would have been the result of buyer’s entering a purchase contract with sellers in January when supply was at its lowest.
Whether this year continues to mirror last year is yet to be seen, but it is interesting to see some of the extremely similar correlations that have transpired thus far.
Looking at home values and sales volumes, Seattle’s median selling price of single family homes fell from $615,000 in August to $605,000 in September, which is similar to the drop from August to September of last year. Year over year, September’s median selling price rose exactly 10% compared to last year, while the volume of closed sales rose 8.6%.
King County wide, the median selling price of single family homes fell from $550,000 in August to $538,000 in September, which was also a similar reduction compared to August and September of 2015. Year over year, September’s median selling price rose 9.7% compared to last year while the volume of closed sales rose 6.5%.
