Seattle Real Estate Market Update | August 2018

Housing inventory continues to rise in and around Seattle. Homes are taking longer than one week to sell and overpriced homes are not selling. Many are concerned that this is the peak of the Seattle real estate market. For this year, yes. But is the Seattle real estate market headed for a housing crash or bubble burst? I’m not convinced.

 

[Video transcript of August 2018 Seattle Real Estate Market Update]

 

Hey! I’m Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates. And I want to start this update off by saying, we’re not at the top of the market. I’m gonna say it again, we’re not at the top of the market.

There’s been, and again this is my opinion, but there’s been a lot of conversation in the media recently and it’s interesting how the media puts it. Then they’re gonna put it similar to like I would, right? You’re going to qualify everything, because you don’t want to be able to look back and say, “Oh! They were wrong!”

But what they’re saying is, it seems like the market’s slowing down, which it is. And does every time this year. Granted, it’s started a little bit earlier, but you have this new inventory come on. They want to get clicks, right? So you’re getting all these clicks and then I read these articles and they’re all saying, well you know it’s probably just gonna be a short-term … After talking with experts we actually think it’s gonna start to go back up again and we’re not gonna see any kind of a crash.

So, a lot of these articles, if all you do is read the heading, you go, ahhh! And then you click it and you read it and you go, yeah there’s more housing inventory, there’s more … There’s really not a lot less buyers in the market, but there’s more inventory, so you have less competition. Which means the prices aren’t shooting up. And the prices are either kinda staying flat or even going down a little. And we’ll talk about this a little bit more later on in the update, but I just kinda want to put that out there.

I don’t think this is the top of the market, which is partly why maybe we’re seeing some more listings is because people are concerned about that. So you read the news, you go, oh my gosh! This is the top. I gotta list now! Now we have more homes on the market, right?

So we’ll start off with a story now. We’ll transition to that, because if you’re new to this, that’s how I start off every one of these updates. I don’t normally talk at the beginning.

The story this month is, some buyers that I met about six months ago or so, they were across the street from my house looking at the house across the street for sale. They showed up in this cool car and they were looking around. I was like, “Hey!” They were out of flyers so I was like, “Hey! Do you guys know how much this house is going, for sale?” And they were asking me because I was about to go walk with my family.

And I was like, “Well, I do. You want to see it?”

And, “Yeah, sure, let’s go on.”

So we showed the house, talk about it. Turns out they’ve made countless offers, lost out. Were a little bit bummed about their situation and thinking maybe they weren’t even going to be able to buy a house.

So, a couple months later. At that point they had an agent, I think, they were working with. They call me a couple months later and said, “Hey Zach, we want to talk. We want to potentially work together.” So we meet up, talk, come up with a strategy.

And again, another while goes on. A little bit of time. And we don’t jump into making offers on things that they don’t like, but they’re methodical. And I think they took a great approach to this process. We weren’t making offers on everything that maybe could be a good thing. We were doing our due diligence.

There was one offer they made in a situation, not on one of my listings and I had another agent help them out, but the first offer that we got to make together was a little over three weeks now, ago. We got the house. There was some competition.

I did an offer review about this recently and we can link it up here, below the video. But, a little over … It was like 25? A little over $25,000 above asking price. Really competitive terms and they got the house!

So a couple days ago, they closed. Last week they closed on the house, super excited. We had to do a rent back. So in all of this, there are still homes that are selling over the asking price, you just have … It has to be the good ones. The other ones aren’t selling. And I think in this story it really does exemplify that fact that there are still homes that are selling quickly. And when we talk about the stats, you’ll see that. But, not every house is jumping off the shelf. Just the good ones.

So now we’ll talk about the stats. Some of you are here for that. And as far as median sales price goes, we’re actually up in the city of Seattle almost 8% from the same time last year. You didn’t hear 12 or 13, right? And I don’t think that’s something to be worried about.

The rest of the year, I think we are gonna see … At the beginning, you do your predictions and I think right now, we’re gonna see a little bit more gradual growth. And typically the end of the year, we see a little bit of a trail off. So, stay tuned, but I think we’re going to be seeing numbers closer to this rather than that 12, 13. But when you average it together for the whole year, here watch this.

Over the last 12 months, when you average them together, since last July we’re up 13.6%. On an average. So if you put all the numbers together.

Now back to the monthly. Shoreline is up 8.7%, Edmonds 5.9 as a whole, and then Lynnwood, almost 14%. So we’re still up quite a bit, but the trends have gone a little bit down. And I want to share a couple of reasons I think why.

So, first of all, we’ve seen a lot more homes come for sale. And looking at the numbers, from the same time last year, almost 57% more homes for sale. Shoreline’s up 58%, Edmonds 23%, and Lynnwood almost 80%. So there are a lot more homes for sale all of a sudden.

Part of that, I think, is that fear that I mentioned. Like, oh maybe we’re at the top! I gotta list my house now. Whereas maybe they would’ve waited until September, October. Waited a little bit longer. Now they’re just getting it on now.

So my thought here is that as the rest of the year progresses, what we’re going to see is a slow downtick in the inventory. And the inventory, I think, is another interesting number to look at. So when we talk about months of supply inventory, right?

There’s a pendulum. If it’s a seller’s market, you have lower inventory. Typically the seller has negotiating power. In a buyers market, there’s more inventory and the buyer has more negotiating power. And in this situation, where we’ve seen as more inventory. So there’s about 60% more inventory in Seattle than the same time last year, 64% more in Shoreline, and a little less in Edmonds; more like 14%. And then another 60% in Lynnwood.

So a lot more inventory, but it’s not that dramatic. It sounds dramatic, but you only have maximum of 2.3 months in Shoreline. And Edmonds and Seattle are 1.6 months, which is still really low. And so that’s why we’re still seeing multiple offers, competitive situations. I’ve had a few offers in the last couple of weeks where we still had multiple offers. But then, also some where, just the asking price or even negotiating down a little bit.

So not every house is getting multiple offers and having … and selling really quick. But, to put it into perspective, two months of inventory is still really low. And our market is still a really hot real estate market.

But again, it does matter, is your house one of those awesome ones where you’re going to get multiple offers? Or is it on a busy road? Or is it, maybe the locations not amazing? Those houses aren’t selling as quickly. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

So to sum this all up, I don’t think we’re at the top of the market. I do think the rest of the year, we’re going to see a little bit more inventory come on. Maybe staying in this same ballpark. And then, as we head into the next year … These are predictions. I think as we head into next year, again, we’re gonna start to see inventory levels typically go down in the late fall, early winter. We’re gonna see those numbers start to get back down. And then we might start to see the pendulum swing in the other direction, where we start to see more competition. And we might look back on this and go, oh it was just a blip on the radar.

So those are my thoughts right now. Again, time will tell, but that’s what I think. So thanks for watching. Again, if you have real estate needs, or questions, or want to talk about the market, I’d love to be a resource for you. If you want, you can just comment down below. I’d love to engage with you in that way as well.

And again, thanks for watching. Bye for now!