| Current Market Statistics | |
|
The links below provide a graphical summary of Real Estate Market Statistics for the Seattle/Bellevue/King County area over the most recent 3+ years, for single-family homes and for condominiums. You can see clearly in the thumbnails and in the main charts the big jump in closed sales, which says that buyers really got busy signing contracts in February.
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 a little over 8 months for condos.
Here’s the charts for the current stats through April: (Required disclaimer: Statistics and graphs not compiled, reviewed or verified by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service)   Click for Residential Market Charts Click for Condominium Market Charts I mis-stated in the April newsletter that the Fall-Out Ratio of Pending vs Closed sales continued to drop – my apologies. It clearly rose sharply in February, and continues to run high. It appears that this is due to a combination of slower closing times caused by new federal rules on financing and appraisals, and the number of new short sales pushed into the pipeline by tax credit incentives. A contributing factor may be increased interest in short sales due to the new HAFA regulations which went into effect on April 5 – these regulation force improvement in Bank responsiveness to short-sale offers, and should make short sales more attractive to regular buyers. 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?
Until now, short sales have been mostly of interest only to investors and first-time buyers who were willing to wait an unconscionably long time to hear whether or not the bank would accept their offer. A side effect of the delay and uncertainty was that agents had to push the listing prices down further and further to entice someone into finally making an offer – thus hurting the neighborhood prices even more. We are expecting that the new HAFA regulations will help, and short sale prices should start moving back up over the next few months to just slightly under market instead of way under.
If you have questions on any of this, or just want to swap ideas on a particular subject, please give me a call. Best Regards, Chuck Reiling(206) 850-3507 |
|
A blog about homes, real estate and local interest stuff in Greater Seattle, Bellevue and the Eastside
