King County Real Estate Market Update | February 2022

Hey y’all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates and this is my King County Real Estate market update for February, 2022. As we jump into this update, quick reminder, we’re looking at stats from January, 2022 and we’re going to talk about some of the data. This is a quick hit type of update, a little bit shorter than the Seattle Bellevue updates that I do. Quick plug for those. If you haven’t subscribed to the channel or seen those, please do so right now. All right, back to the King County update here. As we go through this update, we’re going to talk about the stats First. We’re going to talk about a few cities in King County. I try to feature some cities in each video. I cannot feature all of King County every single time at least city by city, but I’ll try to talk about some different cities here in this update and then also talk about some applications for buyers and sellers in King County.

Let’s jump into the stats here and right away I’m seeing what I was expecting to see as we started 2022 and that is a decrease in new listings. So last year we had quite a few listings, a little bit abnormal really for the amount of listings in January. but this year down about 20% from last year, year over year. Same thing with pending sales down 20.9% and close sales down 28.8%. And it makes sense that these numbers are similar because everything is selling and the market’s still moving along really, really quickly. so it makes sense that all these are relatively close to each other. I will say close sales are significantly down from December, but if we look back at December, all the close sales in December are from November or at least most of them and most of the closed sales in January were actually listed in December.

So there were quite a bit fewer houses on the market in December. So it makes sense that January would have fewer closings. And as we’re looking at the amount of new listings in January, we’re seeing quite a bit more in January than we did in December. So that’s good, especially for a market that’s starved for houses to sell and buy, right? But when we look at the supply numbers, that’s the amount of houses. based on the amount of desire for those houses, we only have 0.2 months of supply. We pretty much have one week of houses and that means that every time houses come on the market, they’re gone. So everything is selling super, super quick across King County. And if we look at the amount of houses for sale, there’s only 496 houses all across King County for sale. As we wrapped up January and last year we still had very few houses, we still had low inventory 0.5 months. So super low supply still, right? A healthy market’s probably in that three to four months of supply where it’s a little bit more balanced. But we had 1,183 houses countywide coming into February. So we had a significant drop off, 58.1% in the amount of homes on the market, which is why the supply keeps gettingTighter and tighter. So if you look at the numbers 0.5 to 0.2 months of supply, it seems like it’s not that big of a difference. And if we were talking about, you know, 3.5 to three months of supply, it wouldn’t be, but right now we’re halfing that number and actually going below that. So it’s just super, super competitive out there right now across King County. And what that’s doing to prices is it’s continuing to push prices up. So the average house is selling 6.4% above asking price in King County, that’s a 4% jump from last year. So last year in January we’re seeing 2.3% above asking price. And if you were to talk to me last year at this same time, you can even go back and see these updates from then. I would why I would’ve said that it’s a lot easier to buy a house then than it is now.

And the biggest difference is because there were more houses available for the buyers. Now if we look at the sales prices, we’ve seen a little bit of a slowdown here as far as some of the numbers I’ve been saying. We’re seeing a 6.3% jump in the median sales price. 12% jump in average sales price. And I’ve mentioned previously a lot of that is because Seattle itself is pulling these numbers down. So median sales price in Seattle in January, 2022 was 7 75, which is right in line with the median for King County, but it’s down 0.6% year over year. So Seattle’s median sales price is not continuing to push like everywhere else. So across King County we’re seeing more like 10 to 20% in some places even more. But in Seattle itself, Seattle’s pulling that average down and that’s why when we look at the median, the median’s a little bit smaller of a jump, but the average is significantly more.

The average sales price, $1,021,388 versus a median of 779,950. So big difference there and also a big difference in the percentage above last year. Now let’s highlight a few cities in King County and this time we’re gonna focus a little bit farther south and east. So we’re gonna look over at is Aqua First and is Aqua, last month’s median sales price was $1,488,500 for single family residential homes and that’s a 54.9% jump year over year. That’s shocking, shocking Fall City. also on the east side, $1,057,925, a 58.5% jump year over year median sales price Carnation $810,000 6.6% jump year over year Duval $800,000 median sales price, 11.2% jump year over year. Snow qual me $1,180,000, a 32% jump yearOver year and North Bend $1,093,958. And that’s good for an 18.9% jump year over year. If you look at some of the other numbers here, we had 8.7% above asking price on average in North Bend, we have eight days on market as the average and we have 0.2 months of supply. So right in line with the rest of King County, but a little bit more competitive as I mentioned in North Bend than overall. Looking back at Snoqualmie houses we’re selling on average 9% above asking price six days on market in 0.1 months of supply. So even less homes on the market based on the numbers here in King County, Duval, 10.8% above asking price on average, which is a pretty big jump last year 8.6% jump year over year. Duval’s got 0.2 months of supply and also a 15 days on market average. So a little bit higher than Snoqualmie, but right in line with the average in King County of 17 days, Carnation 8.2% above asking price for the average house in Carnation 0.3 months of supply and 18 days on market.

So again, kind of right in line with King County, we’re looking at Fall City. Fall city, the average house last month sold just below asking price. interestingly enough, 98.6% about 0.4 months of supply and 51 days on market and there’s just not as many houses selling in Fall City as there are in some of these other places. So the numbers are going to bounce around a little bit more. That makes sense. but if we look at is AWA tons and tons of houses selling in is aqua every month and we had an 8.3% jump above asking price on the average house 0.1 months of supply. So really, really, really low inventory. And 27 days on average for the houses in is aqua. And again, that’s an average. So there’s some houses that are pulling that average up but the majority of them are selling quite a bit quicker.

So the King County housing market continues to be extremely competitive and prices continue to climb in King County. So if you are somebody who’s thinking about buying or selling, you’re even just, you’re a homeowner and you want to stay on top of the market, I hope these updates are valuable for you in some way. And I think for buyers, if I was somebody thinking about buying a house in King County, I’d really want to get started with that process earlier in the year. I’d want to get my pre-approval done, I’d want to talk to a few real estate agents, I’d want to figure out who I want to walk with me through this process. And I would take action on that earlier because I think number one, you’re gonna get the benefit of seeing when inventory starts to come back on the market. I think the normal spring pump of new listings isGoing to to start happening here in the next month, two months and we’ll see more and more houses on the market. And last summer it slowed down, even though we talked about huge numbers and all these updates, the summer was a lot easier to buy a house and it historically is end of summer, beginning of fall. While people are on vacations, there’s just people taking breaks, taking pauses in their home search. And it gives buyers an opportunity maybe to get into a house that you’re like, what, why didn’t that one get like 20 offers? Why did it only get two? So I think getting started earlier puts you in a position to buy a great house if you find one now, but also take advantage of those little pockets where maybe there’s a little bit less competition. And I think for a seller in King County this year, you are starting to come up on the best time of the year to sell.

And I think typically the spring is the hot time to sell. You’ve got the most amount of competition, you still don’t have a ton of inventory. We’re talking about two months of supply. So if I’m somebody in King County thinking about selling my house this year, probably trying to get my house on the market somewhere between April and June, and it’s not that the rest of the year is a bad time to sell because last year the people that sold in the fall and even early winter got just as much jump over asking price as the people in the spring. But typically the people in the spring start to set the new records or the set the new expectations for any given year. So if you can get your house on the market earlier, you can capitalize on that frenzy as we head into the hottest time of the year to sell your house. Thanks so much for watching My King County Real Estate market update for February, 2022. Again, I hope you got a lot of value out of this video. And if you did, please go ahead and give this video a thumbs up. I’d love your engagement down below in the comments as well. So please feel free to comment. I will comment back and if you have any questions about your situation and your thinking about selling or buying house in King County, Washington, I’d love to be a resource for you.