King County Real Estate Market Update | December 2020

Hey Y’all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my second ever King County market update. And this is a spinoff of my Seattle Real Estate market update. So if you haven’t seen those, make sure you check those out as well on the YouTube channel. Now, in this update, I’m gonna be more focused specifically on stats and trends, and I won’t go into as much storytelling or detail, but I do want to re recap the King County stats here. And if you’d like what you’re seeing, you can see a little bit more of my perspective in those Seattle market updates in these King County market updates. We’re gonna talk a little bit more about the stats, be a little bit more tactical, these will be a little bit shorter but I hope they’re helpful. Nonetheless, king County’s real estate market as a whole lot like the Seattle real estate market has been crazy.

Been a really weird year, just like 2020 has been a weird year. and some of the things that I’m seeing are not what I normally see, but I think there are some similar trends. new listings, we had a considerably larger number of new listings this month than we did. in 2019. November, about 29.3% more houses came on the market this November than last November. the pending sales were up 19.1%, so we saw a lot more listings come on the market and we also saw considerably larger number of houses sell. and, and close sales we’re also up considerably 15.9% a days on market. Were right around 19 and for perspective last November we were at 35 days on market, an average. So about 45.7% decrease in those days on market. And this is countywide. And if you’re newer to the Seattle area, king County has cities like Seattle, Bellevue, shoreline, Kirkland, Redmond, Izak, and extends even farther south.

But those are just a few of the cities in King County. And median sales price, we’re up 12.5% year over year at 731,500. The average sales price in King County, and I think largely driven mainly by the east side prices, which are tend to be a little bit higher than Seattle and some of the west side parts of King County. $914,078. that’s up 14.2% year over year. And overall houses are selling about 2% above the asking price, whereas last year you were able to get just a slight discount. And when I say slight, I mean 0.7% discount on the asking price inventory of homes for sale, about 39.5% decrease in the amount of homes for sale. And that equated to about 0.7 months of supply which is again about a 46.2% decrease. So what we saw, we saw fewer houses on the market. We also saw an increase in buyer demand this year

Over year. So overall the county is continuing to see growth in price very, very rapidly. And we haven’t seen price growth like this for a few years since maybe back in the beginning of 2018. We’ve saw a little bit more modest growth after a correction end of 2018, beginning of 2019. So interestingly, in the middle of a pandemic, we’re seeing the housing market continue to tick up. condos in King County a little bit different. we saw similar increases in inventory actually about 46.5% more condos, so a lot more condos coming on the market. But pending sales, close sales, similar to previous years in King County, days on market, 25 days on market. So condos typically take a little bit longer to sell than the single family houses. the median sales price in king County for condos up 7.1% year over year.

And the average sales price, wow, 24.4% increase year over year. But interestingly the percentage of list price is actually just below asking price countywide and the inventory has been climbing. We’ve seen about 35.3% more houses come on the market than we did last year, and we’ve also seen that houses are sitting a little bit longer. we’re looking at 2.1 months of inventory for condos. So we’re, we’re below 1% for single family houses. We’re actually above two months for the condos and the market’s a little bit different for condos. I think countywide, we’re probably seeing Seattle’s numbers skewing this a little bit. there have been a lot of people trying to move out of downtown Seattle where some of the more expensive condos are and putting their houses on the market mainly because of C O V I D and some of the ramifications, but also I think also some of the political tensions in downtown Seattle and things like that.

So there have definitely been people trying to move out of their nice condos in Seattle, Belltown, south Lake Union areas, and trying to move out into either one of the outlying neighborhoods in Seattle or even out of the city altogether. not necessarily outta King County though as we’re seeing King County’s numbers are still looking really good overall, but I think we’re seeing a little bit of a skew here from Seattle. Overall trends, though countywide markets looking good and at all time highs price-wise low supply, we’re seeing more listings than normal this time of year, but I think that’s mainly because of COVID 19 and some of the adjustments to that. And we’re seeing a similar trend of things starting to wind down as we head towards the end of the year. So we are seeing the seasonal slowdown that we normally see.

you know, listings are down from what we saw come on the market last month and I think we’ll see even fewer when we look back at December’s numbers. I bet that December’s gonna be pretty slow given that we’re in another lockdown and we’re also heading into the last couple weeks of the year and the holidays overall. King County as a whole is looking good. I’m not thinking we’re gonna see a lot of new houses coming on the market over these next few weeks. I think that we’re gonna start to see a little bit more activity with listings at least heading into January. So I expect a little bit of a pause in the market here as we wrap up the year. Now, there’s still gonna be houses selling and things like that. I just think we’re not gonna see as much coming on the market and that we’re gonna see a lot more of that coming on in the new year. Thanks so much for watching my second ever King County real estate market update.

I hope that these stats and a little bit of context is helpful for you. And if you’re thinking about buying a house in King County or one of the surrounding areas, maybe Snohomish County, I’d love to be a resource for you.