King County Real Estate Market Update | November 2021

Hey Y’all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my King County Real Estate market update for November, 2021. As we start this update, quick reminder that the stats are from October, 2021 from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. We’re going to talk about the data in King County relatively quickly with a little bit of my context, and we’ll talk about a few communities specifically in this video. We’re gonna talk about Renton, Kent, Auburn and Maple Valley. So let’s talk about the stats, which is what I know a lot of you watch these videos for. And as we look at the stats in King County, a few things are jumping out to me. Number one, we’re seeing a decrease in listings, which is really not a surprise to me every single year. In the fall, historically, we see fewer listings coming on the market, but we’re already in a super tight inventory market.

We don’t have a lot of homes to sell. So when you look at the data, to me it’s, it’s gonna continue to exacerbate the problem that we’ve been experiencing. And that’s that there just are not enough houses. So 16.3% drop from last year, year over year. But we also saw almost 700 fewer houses come on the market in King County this month versus last month. But the pending sales and close sales continue to keep pace with last month pretty much. So what we’re seeing is we’re seeing more houses coming off the market, more closed sales, but fewer new listings. So we’re seeing that supply number get smaller and smaller. So in King County, at the end of last month, we had a half month supply across all of King County. And that’s not just Seattle Bellevue, the hot areas, it’s all of King County, and that’s a 54.5% drop from last year.

And last year we had 1.1 month supply, which is still not very much, and the market was super hot, but we’re heading into the middle of the fall and we’re going approaching the winner with even less inventory than we had last year. And it feels to me a lot like it did back in 2017 as we were heading into 2018, it was hard to imagine less inventory, less homes available because there’s so much fire demand. And right now we’re approaching that same territory, but we have even more buyer demand than we had back then. So I’m really thinking as we head into 2022, that we’re gonna see the market continue this hot streak, at least for the first part of the year. A few other stats that I know you’re probably interested in, number one, median sales price in King County is up 10.4% year over year at 8 28, 500 solid growth for the year. But the average, and I mentioned this and have mentioned this the last few months, it’s really standing out how different it is. The average 18%, yep, year over year and over a million dollars, 1.07, $7 million and some change. Now when there’s that big of a gap, the big reason is because

There are so many houses on the median scale, right, that are selling for less, dragging down the average. But when we look at this average, we’re seeing a lot of growth there. So to me, that just says Seattle is dragging this down and they really are less than 5% up year over year, whereas the rest of King County is growing at a faster rate, as we can see in the average. But that median number’s pulled down. So I think for King County, let’s use average as a better stat for this year, we’ve seen a lot of growth, close to 20% growth countywide. But the city of Seattle, which is a large part of King County, is really lagging behind the rest of King County. And I think there’s many reasons for that. I think part of that is people’s ideas of what they want changing.

And the other part of that is people not needing to be as close to the city, which is pushing people out farther to South King County, east, east side, which some people are moving over there because their jobs are relocating to Bellevue maybe. But a lot of people are willing to commute over the bridge now and live over on the east side because they can get bigger houses, things like that. Same thing if they go south. And the same thing if they go north to Snohomish County. Let’s transition to not only talking about all of King County now, but let’s highlight a few cities in King County. And every month I try to highlight different cities and some of you give me suggestions, which is great. it’s hard for me to talk about an entire county’s cities in each update, and I don’t want these updates to be 30, 40 minutes long because I think many of you wouldn’t watch them if they were, let’s be really honest.

So this month, rather than highlighting the east side, which just always blows my mind when I’m looking at the data because I’m seeing 30, 35, 40% growth year over year, I want to talk about it a lot. And I love the east side, I really do personally. But I think we need to talk about the south end today a little bit. I think we need to talk about Renton, who is up considerably year over year and the median sales price now $720,000 in Renton. We’re seeing houses selling super quickly, six days on market. We’re seeing home selling over asking price about 3.5%, a little lower actually than what we’re seeing across King County at 5%. And homes are selling super quick, as I mentioned, with not very much supply, half a month supply, which is keeping right in line with King County. So Renton is doing great. Renton is growing. I think Kent is also a place that’s growing 17.1% up year over year at six 15. So a little cheaper if you go a little bit farther south to Kent, Auburn is looking strong as well. 15.5% up year over year and 5 77, 500 median sales price. So even a little bit cheaper than Kent in Maple Valley is the most expensive of the four cities here today that we’re talking about 23.7% growth year over year in a 7 55 median sales price. And if we’re looking at the data here, we’re seeing that in this area. So it’s kind of, let’s call it South King County. It really is. maybe there’s places that are a little bit farther south, but in my own mind we’re talking about at least the central south part of King County, you know, across the board, two to 4% over asking price.

So a little less competitive than King County as a whole, but significantly less competitive than we’re talking about the east side of King County, where we’re seeing 8, 10, 12 plus percent over asking price a little bit easier to get into a house. Still lots of offers, but less people that can just throw 20, 30% out there. We’re also seeing super low inventory numbers 0.3 to 0.5 months of supply, which pretty much is whatever new homes come on the market that particular day. And we’re seeing houses sell relatively quickly, 10 to 15 days on market, and that’s an average. So some houses are selling quite a bit quicker, some are taking a little bit longer, but across the board, south King County is appreciating considerably faster than Seattle, as I mentioned. And really kind of in line with the average across King County. If we were talking about the east side, which we’re not in this video as much as I want to talk about it, we’re seeing almost double or even in some places more than double the growth.

As I mentioned earlier in the video, I think the prospects for King County heading into 2022 are strong and favorable. I really think we’re gonna see growth continue. I think we’re gonna see home prices continue to increase, which for buyers, I’m sorry, buyers, it’s not a good, it’s not good news and I appreciate that that’s not good news for you. But I think that we’re gonna continue to see home prices climbing into 2022, at least through the spring and early summer. And I think we’re gonna see that that competition is going to remain for sellers. I think you’re in another continued run here, a great opportunity to cash in on your equity sell, maybe buy and sell and trade some of the equity for a new home. reinvest some of it maybe or some people are just deciding to relocate and move out of the area.

And at this point, some of the other markets around the country are starting to slow down, but we’re still red hot. So you can take advantage of maybe selling in this red hot market and maybe even getting a price reduction in one of the places you’re thinking about moving. So for buyers and sellers, I think the message here is that the market’s going to continue to remain hot, at least from my perspective. And what I can see living and breathing this every single day, I don’t think it’s gonna last forever. There’s going to be another slowdown at some point that’s inevitable. Every single housing market has to have a little bit of a, a correction at some point. I don’t think that’s coming immediately. maybe sometime in the end of 2022, we might see things slow down a little bit. And the big thing I’m looking at is interest rates. Mortgage interest rates have increased a little bit according to Freddie Mac’s website. We’re looking at over 3% on average now. still Super, super low, but if we start seeing those interest rates creep up, the, if the Federal Reserve starts trying to taper a little bit and not support as much the economy or the mortgage rates, I think we might see prices start to stall out a little bit because people won’t be able to borrow and spend quite as freely. Thanks so much for watching My King County Real Estate market update for November, 2021. I trust that if you made it all the way to the end of this video that you got some value out of it. So a couple requests, if you’re a first time visitor, please subscribe to my channel so that you can see more updates like this on a monthly basis. And if you’re somebody who’s been following along for a little while and hasn’t said hi yet, please reach out and do so.