King County Real Estate Market Update | December 2022

Hey Y’all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates. And today we’re gonna talk about the King County real Estate market. And this is my King County real Estate market update for December, 2022.

Today we’re gonna look back at November, 2022’s data. We’re going to talk a little bit about some applications for you if you’re a buyer or seller or somebody that’s just curious about the market. And I’m gonna share just a few thoughts about what’s going on as we wrap up the year. But let’s start with going through the local market update here. And this is just data straight out of the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, which is our mls. And if we look at King County as a whole, new listings down from last month and down year over year, 16.4%, the pending sales down 40% year over year, also down from last month. Again, that part’s normal, but again, we’re tracking those trends. Closed sales down 47.6%. So there’s a way less buyer activity. And I’m gonna share these specific numbers. 2,405 sales in November last year, 2021, 1,260 in November, 2022.

So huge drop off in sales in King County days on market. 29 is the average, that’s three more days than last month and it’s a huge jump from 13 days on market last year, the median sales price, and I think this is whew, as we’re finishing the year out, up 0.6% year over year on the median sales price. So after all the craziness, after all the ups and downs, King County, the sales price, and in November 820’s we’re at 825k, we’ll see what December numbers look like, but we’re really nearing that flat line all across King County. So huge jump, huge drop, pretty much where we started off at the beginning of 2022, at least at this point, average sales price is down 0.2%. So again, pretty much the flat line at $1,049,060 and the percent of list price received last December, houses were selling for 5.4% over asking price on average in, in this month, 97.9% of list price.

So that’s a delta of 7.1%. Inventory of homes for sale up more than 200%, 244% increase over the last year. We were at 0.3 months of supply in December or heading into December in 2021. And now at 1.5 months of supply heading into December here this year, I will say we are down from last month. So we are at 1.8 months of supply last month and we’re now at 1.5 months of supply. And really what does that mean, right? As we’re looking at all of this data, I think the first question that I would have is how, what is, you know, how do I interpret all of this and I’ll share a few thoughts. The first thought is we’re seeing some of the normal seasonal corrections. So we’re seeing fewer listings the last few months, which is normal, but again, we’re comparing it with the previous year as well, the year over year numbers, which I really like for real estate.

And we’re seeing that those numbers are down even more than normal, alright? And that’s why we do the year over year comparisons. We’re seeing the supply numbers decline, right? New listings, fewer new listings, supply numbers declining, which is normal and also good, right? If we were seeing opposite, that would be concerning in my opinion. If we’re looking at the median sales price, again, some of those similar trends, but we’ve seen quite a big drop off. It’s been a while since I’ve seen, it’s been, at least since 2018 when I’ve seen numbers that are, when we look at the percentage change, negative or borderline positive. Okay? So that would be my second observation here. I think my third observation is that houses are selling below, asking price. Oh my gosh, we haven’t seen that in a few years. And that is a lot better for buyers.

It’s a way better environment for buyers, not competing, paying over asking price, essentially the silent auction effect. That’s not what’s going on right now. And if we look at the county as a whole, I went through the different cities and I always have a list here. My assistant’s very gracious and helps put this together every single month. But we’re looking at the data for each city and if we, if we go through this list, we have 14 cities that are negative and I’m gonna list them all off just because I think you would want to know. Bellevue was negative year over year. Redmond was negative. Woodenville negative. Kenmore negative is a quite negative, Duval negative, Buren negative Maple Valley negative Auburn negative. Gotta flip over the sheet here. Medina negative. There’s gotta be like one sale or two in Medina though, so we’ll just count that as eh, it’s just a month.

New Castle, negative SeaTac negative Skykomish negative. On a positive note, there were 21 cities that had median sales prices that were higher than the same time last year. And I’ll read those off too because, well, I think you might want to know Seattle was up, shoreline up, Kirkland up, Sam, Amish up, fall City up, Carnation up, snow, Kwame up, Kent, up Algona, I can’t, I gotta say I don’t even know where that is, but it’s very far away from Seattle. black Diamond up, Clyde Hill up, Covington up, Des Moines up, Enumclaw up Federal Way, it was down. I circled them. I don’t know why I just read them. Hunt’s Point, no Sales Lake, forest Park up Mercer Island, up, Milton up, Normandy Park up north, bend up, Pacific up and Tequila up and Yaro Point, no sales. There are not a lot of sales in a couple of these neighborhoods. But if we look back, almost all of these were up and some of them considerably earlier in the year, Bellevue was up, like we were talking about like 30% earlier in the year. People are paying so much over asking price. Redmond was the same way. Woodenville, I mean I could go through this list and now we’re seeing negative year over year numbers. So some of these areas that saw the biggest growth since 2020 when people were looking for different things and buying houses in some of these other areas, moving out of the city

What a year! Next month’s video will be more of the recap year over year, but every month is a recap year over year of where we were. And this is starting to trend towards what I talked about maybe a month, two months ago and started mentioning that we are gonna see negative year over year numbers and we’re already seeing them, but I think we’re heading towards that for a lot of, at least the early part of 2020 three’s updates. So this may be the last update that is somewhat positive for a little while, but we already know the story and the truth that the market has been adjusting, that houses are selling below, asking price that houses are sitting on the market. Buyers have negotiating power and the ability to add contingencies in their contract to protect themselves and their earnest money, and also to be able to negotiate some of the repair items as well.

So for buyers, this is a much better environment to be heading into. I do think 2023 is going to be the year of the buyer, but for sellers, houses are still selling, there’s still a lot of sales in King County and in the city, Seattle and Bellevue as well. So if you are thinking about doing something right, buying, selling, investing, talking about real estate in King County and you want to just chat about it, this is the time of year to reflect, right? A lot of people are planning for the year setting goals. I know I am. And if buying a house or selling is one of your goals here, heading into the new year and you want to connect, there’s no pressure after we connect to work together. But I’d love to be a resource for you and a sounding board if you’re up for it.