Seattle Real Estate Market Update | January 2018

Posted January 9, 2018

Here’s my latest Seattle real estate market update and 2017 Q4 recap. I even had a brief visitor mid-video 🙂

You can see my predictions for 2018 here.

[Video Transcript of January 2018 Seattle Real Estate Market Update]

Hey all. Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates. Happy 2018. I hope you had a great holiday season and I want to dive in to December 2017 stats and then get into a little bit of a quarter four update and then kind of prime the pump for my market recap for 2017 and predictions for 2018 which I’ll be talking about here in another video, well, shortly.

So. December 2017 stats, here I’ll read these off so we are getting all the numbers right. Seattle, the median sales price in Seattle in December was $705,000, that’s 12.4% higher than the same time last year. Shoreline, 622,475, that’s up 19.7%. Edmonds, 525, that’s up 11.7% and then Lynnwood, 517,050 and that’s 22.4% up over the same time last year. Days on market, we’re looking at nine in Seattle in the month of December. Shoreline was eight days on market. Edmonds, 12 days on market, and Lynnwood, 11 days on market.

Let’s talk about the supply here a little bit. Supply, this is the lowest we’ve seen. It’s seasonally low in the months of November and December, specifically, but 2017’s December is the lowest we’ve seen in a while. Seattle, half a month, 0.5 months, Shoreline 0.5 months, Edmonds 0.6 months, and Lynnwood 0.4 months.

Essentially what this means is there’s just really nothing to buy. There’s way more buyers in this market, and I’ve been talking about this for over a year now on these market updates, there’s just not very much available. Right now, there’s even less than that not very much. So, if that’s the right picture for you.

Let’s say you’re trying to buy a house in Edmonds. Well, there might be like two new listings, or three new listings in a week. Or, in Seattle, Seattle’s a little bit bigger, but you get the picture. There’s just not a lot available, supply is really low.

And then, the percentage of list price, this is a fun one. For the month of December, in the city of Seattle, 2.5% over asking. The City of Shoreline, 1.2% over asking. City of Edmonds, 100, pretty much 100%, so just asking price, and then Lynnwood, we’re just over 1% over the asking price.

The month of December, what I saw … What I saw in October and November was a little bit of a slowdown, seasonal slowdown. In December, the same thing, inventory was tight, but a few of my buyers that were making offers in December rather than November were seeing multiple offers again, competing buyers. One of them, there were ten offers in Bothell, so I do think that as we head into, and this is an application for you buyers, the next few months, I think you’re still going to have a chance to get a house before the prices really start to escalate in 2018.

Last year, year over year we were at 13.7% increase in the median sales price in the city of Seattle, and Shoreline was up almost 20%. Edmonds and Lynnwood were closer to 10, but just something to think about. If you’re a buyer, in April, May, June, that’s when you’re going to see the highest prices. So, if you can, and you’re able to, buy now rather than in the spring, you’ll still have competition, but you won’t have prices reaching those peaks yet. Just something to note as a buyer.

Quarter four update. I think this is important to talk about. I’ll try to breeze through some of these stats rather than reading off every single one. I was in the middle of filming, thank you very much, and now I’m not.

So, quarter four update. City of Seattle, 716,00. Let me cheat with the numbers here, 16.5% increase over quarter four last year. Shoreline, 22.6% increase, we’re at 570. Edmonds, 560 and then Lynnwood 475. Days on market, we’re still right at those same numbers we’ve been talking about. Seattle 8 days, Shoreline 9, Lynnwood 12, excuse me, and Edmonds 11. Supply is been really low in Q4, which is normal, but again we’re talking about really low, we’re talking about less than a month’s supply. Percentage over asking price, Seattle, Shoreline, Edmonds, Lynnwood, all selling over the asking price, Seattle being at 103.2 and Shoreline being at 102.2 as those average percentage over list price.

What we saw with quarter four is still a really solid showing for the stats. We were still seeing multiple offers as I was explaining there with the percentage over asking price. We’re still seeing homes selling relatively quickly, but what we were seeing, what I noticed with my own clients, is that there were less multiple offer situations, if that makes sense. So, people were able to get a house for the asking price, some of my clients even got homes for below the asking price.

And on the listing side, if you weren’t in Seattle, some of my listings that were north of the city took a little bit longer to sell, sold for either at the asking price or a little bit below the asking price. So, I think we’ll see as we get into quarter one here that that’s going to start to shift. If you’re a seller, last year February, so that would have been sales in January, set the new median sales price record in the city of Seattle, if you can believe that.

Now, it happened month after month, after month, all the way until June, but February was higher than the previous year’s high, in 2016. So, just something to note. I think if you’re considering listing your house in the near future, and you would like to do that sooner rather than later, I think this is going to be a good time for you. You’re kind of entering into those primetime months, as buyers are past the holidays now and they’re starting to think okay, my goal for 2018 is to buy a house, and they start to do that.

Thanks for watching, I’m going to be recording my predictions for 2018 and recapping 2017 here in a sec. I’ll be including that video link here in the description, so please check that one out. And then, if you have questions, or you’re thinking about buying or selling a house here in 2018, I’d love to be a resource for you. I’ve got my contact info below, you can always leave a comment as well.

Again, thanks so much for your attention, I value it highly. Thanks for being part of my community here on YouTube, and have a great 2018. Bye for now.