King County Real Estate Market Update | July 2024

Posted July 12, 2024

Hey y’all. Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my King County real estate market update for July, 2020 fourth.

What’s up, king County? I hope you all had a great 4th of July and a great holiday. I got to climb Mount Rainier, which is really exciting. And now getting back into the swing of things here and looking at the May and the June stats from King County. And a big, big thing I’m noticing is that we are seeing more inventory building on the market. There are more houses available, and it’s fulfilling what we were talking about. And that is that things tend to slow down, the prices tend to compress, or you have less pressure on the prices as the inventory rises. Let’s look though at the data here. So in June we saw 2,639 listings, which is a jump of 13.7% from last year. So more listings, right, have been coming on. That’s been a huge theme this year. More houses coming on the market. We saw more pending sales as well, 10.9% more pending sales this year versus last year.

We also saw a drop though month over month. So in May we saw more listings. We had 3,150 listings. It was more than 500 more listings that came on the market. And we also saw just about the same amount of pending sales in May. So we’re seeing the amount of listings slowing, right? So we saw a big jump in May, June is still more than last year, but not as much as May. And we saw that closed sales last month. 1,952 dropped off to 1,661. So we saw a drop off there in the closed sales. And interestingly, it was a drop off from last year too. 9.1% drop off from last year as far as the closed sales are concerned. Now, days on market is still really, really low. 14 days on average in King County, 16 last month. So that number has been dropping.

But the prices, right? The prices in King County last month, 1,020,000 9 95. So over a million dollars was the median sales price. 1,000,288, almost 1.3 million was the average across King County last month. Both of those shrunk in June. So 9 75 was the median sales price in June, and 1,000,261 was the average. So either way, we’re still seeing growth, right? Year over year is a great metric too. 4.4% year over year, 7.8% year over year for the average sales price in King County. Houses are more expensive. So interest rates have stayed higher, but houses have been increasing in the values across King County, asking price percentages, you think you’re like, how much do I have to pay? Is the price transparent? It’s becoming more transparent. So 3.2% over asking price in May 2.2 in June. I think a big piece, we talked about that at the very beginning, is the amount of houses available.

So we have 31% more houses available this year versus last year. So there’s way more houses on the market. We’re seeing way more activity too, but we’re seeing that that supply number is increasing. So 1.8 months of supply last month in May, two months ago, excuse me, and then last month in June, 2.1 months of supply as we headed into July. It’s pretty typical though, right around the month of 4th of July and the week of 4th of July to see things slow down a little bit. Right before 4th of July, right after 4th of July, people are typically traveling. I was traveling even. So as we’re looking at the supply numbers, what we’re seeing is more houses available, which means there’s less pressure on the prices for the existing houses. You have less competition. And competition is what drives the prices up. It’s not interest rates, it’s not how nice the houses are.

It’s not how great the economy is. It is how many buyers are trying to buy the same house. And if you have fewer houses available and more buyers and they’re fighting over what’s available, that’s where you’re seeing people removing contingencies and offering over asking price. Nobody would want to pay over asking price unless they had to. And nobody even wants to pay a asking price unless they had to. And so here in King County, we’re starting to see more supply, and I typically see in between one and a half to two months of supply, it’s pretty much you get what you see, right? Or you see what you get, you pay what the asking price is typically or really close to it, and you maybe are removing some contingencies, but there’s a lot less competition, more transparency around the pricing. When it’s lower than that, that’s where you start to see people bidding up the prices.

And when it gets higher, it gets above that. When we get into that two and a half to three months of inventory or houses available, that’s where you’re seeing houses going well below asking price and more negotiation houses sitting on the market for a while. So we’re on that teeter totter where it’s almost balancing out. It’s not a balanced market, it’s still a seller’s market, but buyers at least kind of know what they’re signing up for when they make an offer, and they may be able to get a house for asking price versus competing a ton. So I do think things have slowed down a little bit since the spring, and I’ve shared that in the last few videos here, but it’s still a good time to be a buyer in King County. I think the biggest reason is because you have more opportunities right now to consider different houses, right?

There’s more houses available, and you also don’t have as much of the competition going on. Sellers, you’re going to be getting most likely what you’re asking, or maybe a little less, but I wouldn’t be in this situation. This isn’t where you’re trying to price low and hope for multiple offers and crazy scenarios like that. This is where your tactics should be shifting to pricing at market value and being pumped. If you get market value within a week or two, that would be where I’d be aiming on a pricing strategy versus, Hey, let’s shoot really low and try to get multiple offers. Still, when maybe that’s not the world that we’re in right now. I think for a seller, it’s important that you’re talking to someone who’s in tune with what’s going on, and also able to help guide with the pricing strategy. That’s a huge part of the sales process. So if you’ve got a lot of value out of this video, you made it to the end, please give this video a thumbs up and consider sharing it with somebody else who may be able to benefit from it. And as always, if there’s some way that I can bring value to your situation as a buyer or a seller here in King County, I’d love to be a resource for you.