King County Real Estate Market Update | August 2023

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, 2023.

Well, as we head into the second part of the summer here, we’re starting to see things slowing down in the real estate market, which I have to say is pretty normal for this time of year and across King County. I’m seeing this slowing down effect, but also really encouraging signs as we compare this year over last year. So let’s jump into some of the data here for King County and I’ll show you some of those things that I’m looking at that are encouraging to me as we talk about the housing market moving forward. First off, interest rates are hovering almost 2% above where they were at the same time last year. I mentioned in my uh, Seattle Real Estate Market Watch videos last week that we were seeing interest rates on average according to mortgage news daily at 7.1%. This week’s survey, as of yesterday, was at 7.06, so right about that same number.

But last year interest rates according to their survey, were at 5.05%, so 2% less. But as we look at the data, we’re seeing that housing prices are pretty much the same median sales price in King County after all the ups and then all the downs have come back up to being right where they were at last July. So 900,000 was the median sales price in King County this last July. Same thing in 2022. So things are kind of back to where they were not quite the all-time highs because, well, July wasn’t the all-time high, but not too far off. As we’re looking at listings, we’re seeing a similar trend to earlier in the year, considerably fewer listings, 29.3% fewer listings in King County versus the same time last year. To give you an actual number here though, last year we had over 3000 new listings in July and this year, 2,132, so 900, about 900 fewer new listings.

So that’s a substantial number of houses pending. Sales are down as well, but only about 5.2%. So there’s been a greater drop off in the listings than there has been in pending sales. About a hundred fewer pending sales versus 900 fewer listings closed, sales down 300 for the month. Um, but again, still way fewer than the 900 number there. So that gives us about 16.6% drop off in closed sales. So overall there is more activity than there are listings coming on, at least over the past month. Days on market. It says, and this is, this is interesting, you know, 46.2% more days on market is the average. Uh, we, I’ve looked at the actual median numbers as well, and those numbers are in that seven days on market. It’s, the median is actually quite a bit lower than the average here, but the average days jump from 13 to 19, so it’s not as substantial as those percentages sound.

Speaking of medians in averages, if we’re looking at average amount above asking price, things are selling over asking price. Last year they were just barely, uh, it looks like 0.3% above asking price this year, 1.1% above asking price. So houses are still selling above the asking price here in July, which again would say that there’s competition for most of the listings, at least more than there aren’t, which is a good sign. And I think a lot of that has to do with inventory. And we’ve been talking about this for most of 2023, and that is we’re in a lower inventory environment and I’d say a lot lower than some thought. Some I think thought we would just see a bunch of houses for sale and we would see a bunch of price cuts. And although we’re not getting the highest numbers that maybe we’ve seen ever in the Seattle area, we’re not too far off.

And a lot of that is because there hasn’t been room for prices to keep going down when there hasn’t been enough houses available for even all the buyers with higher interest rates. So looking at inventory of homes for sale down 39.2%, and I gave you a number, I’m gonna give you another number, 1300, about 1300 fewer homes available in King County than there were at the same time last year. That’s a large dropoff. There’s a large dropoff in that. As we were talking about buyers, there hasn’t been that big of a dropoff in the buyers that puts our total supply number, which is some combination here of our, you know, amount of new listings and our sales and buyers. And as we’re looking at this, we’re seeing an 11.1% decrease in the supply over the same time last year. So 1.6 months in for July and heading into August, August, I would bet we’ll be similar.

Normally we see those inventory numbers ballooning as we head into the fall, and we’re really not seeing that right now. So we’re still seeing a lot of pressure on the houses that are available. Yes, there are fewer showings on listings, there are more people on vacation. All of those things are true. But as we’re heading into the fall, we’re going to start off with a lower inventory environment maybe than we would in some other years, which I think was going to put more pressure on inventory as we head into the later fall and into the winter. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we head into the winter and even into early 2024 with a really low inventory environment, higher prices least year over year. And depending on where interest rates are, we might be seeing some more buyers coming into the market. So, um, I hope this information’s valuable for you as you consider kind what the housing market’s looking like in King County. I know some of you are watching this as homeowners, some are watching this as renters just kind of considering what’s going on in the housing market. Some of you are looking to buy houses and want to know, Hey, is this a good time to buy? How’s the market? What, you know, what should I be looking out for? So if you have more questions and you want to talk about how this data applies, not just in general but to your specific situation, I’d love to be a resource for you.