April ’10 – Reiling’s Real Estate Market Report – Greater Seattle / Bellevue / King County Area

Our Greater Seattle residential real estate market is jumping! But perhaps just temporarily until the tax credits expire – they only apply to transactions signed by April 30 and closed by June 30. Then we’ll see if the economy has picked up enough to keep things going.

The number of Closed Sales for both single family homes and condominiums in March was up over 50% above February’s number, and also over 50% above last March’s numbers. Prices continued to look solid, and have now spent a whole year at essentially the same stable price level. Inventory for single family homes is somewhat lower than a year ago, but condo inventory has moved a bit higher.     

Buying clearly has been stimulated by the Federal Homebuyer Tax Credits, and we should expect to see that effect continue through June, when all eligible transactions have to have been closed.     

As might be expected, Months Supply for both houses and condos got worked down sharply from February’s high levels – to under 6 months for houses but still almost 9 months for condos.       

Here’s the charts for the current stats through March:  

      
         
           Click for Residential Market Charts                Click for Condominium Market Charts  

The Fall-Out Ratio of Pending vs Closed sales continues to drop, reflecting the banks and lenders continuing to make progress on responding to short-sale offers. The new HAFA regulations which went into effect on April 5 should help this even more. HAFA is the federal Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program, and you can read more about it in the Short Sale section of our blog post series titled My Mortgage is Underwater. Now What Do I Do?