King County Real Estate Market Update | August 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 August, 2021. As we jump into this update, we are looking at stats from July, 2021. These stats were just published on the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, so I’m getting ’em to you fresh as we go through this update. Quick reminder, and maybe an fyi if this is your first time, I don’t spend as much time trying to explain the data and these updates. I go through the stats and I’ll talk a little bit about the east side. in this video I try to highlight different parts of King County in each of these videos. so everybody feels included. If you want some more in-depth commentary on the Seattle Bellevue region in general, I have a Seattle real Estate market update that I publish monthly as well.

And if you want to see some more information about Snohomish County, I also publish that on the channel. So please consider subscribing if you’re new and we’ll jump into update. Now as we look at the King County data, a quick hot take as that we’re seeing a slight decline in seller and buyer activity, but the market’s still remaining super hot. If we look year over year, which is what I do in this update, typically we’re going to see a 3.3% decline in listings year over year. We’re gonna see a 3.6% decline in pending sales. So pretty much the same amount of listings per pending sales, we’re seeing an increase 10.1% in closed sales. So we’re seeing even more closed sales than we did last year. The days on market, year over year, 20 days on market in 2020 and then 10 days in July, 2021. So we saw 50% decrease there.

The median sales price in King County was 8 75 last month, which is the same as May, 2021. And that is the record in King County. So we’re kind of right at that record. High price still and that’s a 19.9% increase from last year at the same time. So almost 20% growth in King County as a whole in the median sales price. Pretty remarkable. The average sales price in King County is up 26.8%. That’s a lot if we look at percentage of asking price. So this is if somebody put their house on the market, how much they expected to receive above asking price, and they on average got 7% above asking price last month, which is slightly down from when we look at May and April’s numbers where we’re hovering around nine and a half to 10%. So down a little bit, not quite as competitive, but still who doesn’t want to get 7% above the asking price on the sale of their house?

If we look at inventory numbers, we’re seeing a 37.3% decline year over year, but we are seeing more homes available in King County. So months of supplies at 0.7 months, I know shocking. Really amazing if we compare that number with the 0.4 we were seeing earlier in the year though, we have seen an increase in inventory. So I think that’s why we’re not seeing quite as high of escalations above the asking price and that’s just because there’s a few more houses and a few more buyers able to buy different houses. So a, a large part of the jump in purchase price and media and sales price is that competition. And so the more houses there are in the market, the fewer houses are going to get those large bumps above the asking price, it pivots from every house practically getting multiple offers to the better of the crop, the best houses.

And we’re starting to see that shift a little bit, but the majority of houses are still experiencing this multiple offer scenario. Some months I highlight condos some months I don’t. In this video I’m not going to talk much about the condo market in King County, but I will give you a few stats here. The first one being that we are seeing an increase in pending sales. So last year to this year we’re seeing a 23% increase in pending sales, which is really good for the condo market. Last year we saw condo sales decrease. We saw values going down specifically in the city of Seattle, which is where a majority of the condos are, aside from Bellevue. And so it’s nice to see that those numbers are starting to decline. We’re also seeing a decrease of 20.8% in days on market. So things are picking up and we’re also seeing an increase in median sales price 7.1% up and the average sales price up 4.7%.

So we’re seeing the condo market picking up again, which is a really good sign. It’s still a little less competitive, 2.3% above asking on average than the residential market. But at the same time, we’re actually seeing some competition. We’re seeing houses selling quicker. So I think that’s a really good sign for the King County condo market. Now it’s transitioned to some highlights of King County as a whole. I’ve got all the stats for every city in King County in front of me. I wanna point out a few things that were notable and then highlight the east side over by Bellevue. So Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond areas is we continue in this update and I won’t highlight the same areas every time. So if you want to see your area or your city in King County highlighted, please comment down below and let me know where you’re at and where you want me to highlight.

And I’ll work on highlighting that in future videos. If we look at highest sales prices in King County, we’re still looking at Clyde Hill and Medina. I don’t think that’s going to change. Mercer Islands ranking number three at just over 2 million median sales price and Bellevue’s getting closer. Bellevue’s up at 1.639 million and again coming in at number four. So prices in King County specifically over on the east side are the highest. And if you’re not in one of those super exclusive neighborhoods, Bellevue and Mercer Island are gonna be one of those places where you’re still gonna have a really expensive house but not in the three and four millions. Now if we zoom in here on the Bellevue and East side market, we’ve got Bellevue, 36% up year over year, 36.6% up. We’ve got Kirkland 24.5% up year over year. Redmond 38.2%. If we look at some Amish, 42.4% up year over year and really close to Bellevue in media and sales price 1.566 million.

Yeah, wooden bells up 36.3%. Kenmores up 32% is a quas up 36.2% and we’re seeing massive, massive growth in Bellevue and right around Bellevue. And the percentage above asking price is gonna be right around 10% in most of these places. Bellevue was at 11.1% above asking price. And Sam Amish 13.1% over asking and both Bellevue and Sam Amish were right there at 0.4 months of inventory, which is super low and Duval actually was the lowest down at 0.3 months of inventory and average days on market in King County as a whole. We talked about that earlier in the video or right around that 10 days on market and most of the east side is right around the 10 days are just under. But overall the east side is pacing the growth in King County. We’re seeing almost double what the county’s growth rate is, oh as a whole on the east side.

So if you are looking for a place where home prices are appreciating super, super fast, that’s been over in Bellevue. Redmond, Kirkland is aqua areas over on the east side and some Amish. I think a big part of this is because the houses over on the east side in general are a little bit newer, they’re nicer, they’re bigger, and a lot of the east side is a little bit more spread out. So some of the people that have been in Seattle and have been wanting more space or a bigger house or a bigger yard, they’re not gonna find that in Seattle, but they can find that over on the east side and get a lot of the things that they might want in a better work from home situation, a little bit more space to enjoy if they’re stuck at home. Again, I just think that people’s desires and needs have shifted over the past year and a half and that’s been a big catalyst for growth over on the east side.

Previously Seattle was really keeping up and almost setting the trend as almost a third of the sales in King County happen in Seattle every single month because it’s a huge part of the county, but a lot of the east side is starting to catch up and surpass Seattle as far as desirability. So a lot of great things about the east side. I don’t wanna spend too much time glowing about it. I’d probably live there if I didn’t live in Edmonds, which isn’t even in King County. we’re right on the border, but I really do love the east side as well. So maybe someday, maybe someday I’ll

Live over there. I used to live in Bellevue, which was really fun and I do miss it. So we’ll see. Maybe one of these days we’ll get back over there. Thanks so much for watching my King County real Estate market update for August, 2021. Like I said, it’s a little bit more of a quick hitter, a little less of the commentary and a little bit more of the bullet points. If you want to get some more commentary on the housing market in general in the Seattle Bellevue areas, please check out my channel. Consider subscribing and watch the Seattle Real Estate market update.