King County Real Estate Market Update | July 2022

Hey y’all. Zack McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates in this is my King County real estate market update for July, 2022. I hope everybody had a great 4th of July. We are now officially into the summer weather here in King County, and I think everybody’s loving it. At least I’m loving the warmth and the sunshine. As I’m thinking about the market though, I’m not thinking that we’re seeing any kind of a warming up going on. I think things have been slowing down here over the past few months, and I’ve talked about that in previous updates. So if you haven’t subscribed yet and you want to hear about the King County Real Estate market update on a regular basis, please go ahead and pause and hit that subscribe button and then we’ll continue on. All right, so in this video, if you’re new, we typically go through the stats fairly quickly, talk about a few areas in King County and highlight them, and then talk about some applications.

So this video’s a little bit more of a quick hit versus the Seattle real Estate market update, which is more generic for the Seattle Bellevue Metro area. And we dive into a little bit more of the numbers and I add a lot more commentary. So that would be another video to check out. But in this video, we’re gonna just go through King County stats here. And as we’re looking at the stats in King County, we saw about 7.2% increase in new listings. We also saw a decrease of 34.4% pending sales, which means we saw the supply number or the inventory of homes for sale increase dramatically. So we saw about 107% more new houses right on the market. If we’re looking at the end of the month, we see 3,301 houses on the market compared to last year at the same time, 1,593. Now last year was record lows, right?

So it’s not like we’re, oh my gosh, we have so many houses on the market, but we have a lot more in comparison. And we also have about 50% more on the market than we did last month. So it is a big jump, but I would say that we’re just hitting a more normal market here as we’re in the summer. 1.5 months of supply is a big jump from last year when we’re looking at 0.6 months. But perspective wise, there’s a lot more houses available, which is great for buyers, and I think it’s more healthy for the market, right? You don’t have everybody fighting over the same three houses. Maybe there’s 10 houses for everybody to go after. So there’s definitely more houses on the market, which is a good thing in King County if as we look at close sales, we saw a 28.2% decline.

And I think we’re gonna see that same thing as we’re looking at fewer pending sales. It usually leads to fewer closed sales as well. So I think we can safely predict that in King County next month we’re gonna see fewer closings as well. but houses still in general in King County and a heavy amount of these houses are in Seattle and Bellevue where it’s still a little bit more hot, but we’re seeing about 10 days is the average on market. But I think there’s still a lot of houses right now that are starting to sit on the market, and that’s not abnormal when you see the market adjusting, right? Trying to find what the price actually is for the house. And I think for sellers, it’s better to have the price be coming down than to sell your house for less than it’s worth, right?

So I think we’re seeing some houses seeing price reductions, A large amount of price reductions last month in King County, almost as many as there were new listings. So just a lot of house, they’re having price reductions fairly quickly in the process to help speed up the sales. But again, it’s just trying to find what people are willing to pay. And I think right now people aren’t willing to pay that multiple offer inflated price. And we’re seeing even last month houses on average selling over asking price 3.5% over asking price last year, 8.4% King County wide, right? But still S is selling over asking price on average. So there’s certainly some pulling that average up, some pulling that average down. But if somebody does a price reduction, I think this is important. This percentage is derived from what the current list price is, not from what the list price was.

So if somebody has dropped their price a couple times and then it sells at asking price or even a little bit over, that’s going to pull this average down. So I think we need to take all of that into consideration, especially in a shifting market, that when we’re seeing price reductions and we’re seeing this percentage going down, we’re probably actually seeing a bigger drop in the competition than what maybe the data’s showing us. So I think what we’re seeing is that houses are still selling for quite a bit more than they were last year. So nine 30 median sales price in King County last month, which is 7.5% more than the median sales price was last year. At the same time, if we’re looking back at earlier in the year when we were over a million dollars median sales price, we’re definitely going to want to say, okay, yeah, right?

Markets adjusted a little bit. If we’re looking at year over year data, we can confidently say houses are selling for a lot more than they were last year, right? Which is a good thing. So if you’re selling now versus then, you might not have the multiple offers in the craziness, but you’re probably still getting more money than you would’ve gotten last June, but maybe not as much as your neighbors sold for in March. So I think as a seller, you need to be realistic about where the market is and what you can get for your house and listen to the market. If people aren’t interested in paying the same price, that’s okay. That’s just the reality of the timing of when you’re trying to sell. And for a buyer, I guess that’s a good thing, right? Because you have a little bit more transparency, a little less competition, and you have the opportunity to purchase maybe a little bit less than the neighbors paid previously. Now again, you’re still paying quite a bit more than you would’ve paid last year, but you might be able to get a little bit better price this year. I think interest rates have gone up a lot this year, and

I think that’s the big thing that’s caused a lot of fear. I think the stock market’s caused a lot of fear as well, as far as well as the news. Let’s be honest, I think buyers aren’t running out to purchase houses with FOMO like they were last year, and I think there’s a lot more realism in the market. But if we look at pricing, and I think instead of talking about maybe a specific part of King County, I just wanna read off a few of these cities and how much houses have gone up in value over the last year, right? And this is value that’s gone. They still have, right? They didn’t lose this. Now these prices are lower than they might have been earlier in the year, but as far as the percentage increase, I think this is important. So I’m gonna read off a few of these.

Some of you will be like, Hey, you didn’t say my city. I don’t have time for all of them, but I’m gonna read some just so you can get an idea. So Seattle’s up 9% year over year from last June to this June, Bellevue’s up 13.3%. Redmond, 11.8%, Sam Amish, 19.8%, again, year over year, right? We have Woodenville 31.8% up year over year is Aqua 16.3% up year over year. Buren 11.3% up Maple Valley, 13.5% up tent, 24.8% up. Let’s read a few more of these here on the back. Lake Forest Park, 25.9% up Mercer Island, 18.4% up North Bend, 11.6% up year over year. Now these are all places where we’re seeing price reductions, right? And houses starting to sit on the market a little bit, but they’re still selling for a lot more than they did last year. So I think that perspective is hopefully helpful for you if you’re a seller.

And yeah, it might be a bummer that your neighbors sold for a little bit more earlier in the year or that you don’t have that same competition. But I do want you to be encouraged that your house still has a lot more value than it did the year before. And I think you can still capitalize on that and cash in on that equity that you’ve built up for however long it’s been that you’ve owned your house. I think buyers, there are opportunities coming if you’re looking to buy a house in King County, I think you have a window of opportunity here over the next six to 12 months where you’ll be able to purchase a house without as much of this competition and also at a little bit better price than what some people were paying three, four months ago. Now for the people that bought three, four months ago in the long run, I don’t think you’re gonna really mind at all and bat an eye about this because housing prices always go up and down. We’ve seen this in 2018 to 19. We saw this in 2008 to 12. We saw this lots of other times, right, in the housing market. But I think we’re entering into a season where as a buyer you might have an opportunity to get a little bit better of a deal and then you’re gonna ride it out with everybody else and as the market goes up and everybody

Else is gonna also benefit from that too. So as a buyer, opportunities, I think less competition. Yes, rates are higher, but if you’re serious about buying a house, I think in the long run probably be able to get a better price and then ultimately a better interest rate, hopefully as those rates adjust as well. Thanks so much for watching this Month’s King County Real Estate Market update. If you made it all the way to the end, I know that you got some value out of this. So again, if you haven’t subscribed yet, please go ahead and hit that subscribe button. And if you got a lot of value out of this, please go ahead and give it a thumbs up.