King County Real Estate Market Update | July 2023

Hey all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my King County Real Estate market update for July, 2023.

All right, King County just set a new median sales price record and average sales price record for the month of June. It is not the all time high that happened earlier in the year, uh, in 2022, but we did just hit the new record for June in 2023. And I mentioned this earlier in the year that I thought we were gonna start to see year over year gains. This one just so happens to be the record because, well, things started to slow down last year as we hit the summer, but we have a new record price. King County’s median sales price. Last month was 935,000 and the average was 1,173,150, and that was only 0.2% higher than last year, but it’s still a record, so we’re going to count it all right. Now, when we look at percentage of list price received, we saw houses selling for 1.7% above asking price in King County, which is down slightly from 2% above asking price last month.

And I think a lot of that is that we’re starting to see a little bit more supply in the market. So the housing inventory has been creeping up up slightly from last month. It’s normal for things to change in the summertime and see more inventory. And the trick is it’s not nearly as much as it normally is. So last year we saw 3,438 houses. I’m gonna tell you the number cuz it sounds more dramatic this way. This month we saw 2,207 houses. So year over year, 35.8% fewer houses listed in the month of June than we saw last year, and new listings were down 34.5%. So that makes sense. The inventory is considerably down because there aren’t as many listings. The pending sales stayed about the same as last year, 1.6% down, so still quite a few sales. So we didn’t see as much of an inventory buildup as we did at the same time last year.

And then again is when people started to kind of panic with interest rates going up, prices at all time highs. Closed sales in King County were down 28.9%. So again, kind of similar to the lack of listings, right? So those things have been in tandem this year. We haven’t seen a massive flood of buyers and we also haven’t seen a massive flood of listings. Everything’s just kind of slowed down and we’re seeing things start to sell quicker. Last year, houses sold in King County, 10 days on average this year, 16 days on average, which is down from 20 last month. So things are starting to sell quicker, but we are seeing houses taking a few weeks on average to sell in King County. And we talked about this, the supply number, and I think this is where I wanna land this video, is that we saw supply increase from last month up to 1.5%, but it’s down from last year.

Last year’s supply in June, 2022 was actually higher than this year’s supply in June, 2023. And that’s a big reason that I think we’re seeing some of the competition in the market. And I will say, and I’m gonna add this because I think things are shifting a little bit. Again, I wouldn’t say that we’re shifting into any type of buyer’s market, but we are seeing enough inventory where I think over the next few months we might see less of the multiple offer situations and the competition again, we’ll see, I’m no profit, I don’t know what the future holds, but just seeing some of the changes in the data, but also experiencing with buyers and with sellers houses maybe sitting a little bit or buyers maybe not having as much competition, it’s I think going to affect the rest of the summer for sure. And we always talk about in the northwest about how people are traveling during the summer.

We have a very small weather window of 80, 75 to 80 degree days. And so that’s when people are trying to take weekend vacations or weeklong vacations. A lot of people save their local vacations for the summertime because that’s when weather’s the best. So there are a lot of different factors at play here. I think that’s one of them. I think we have more supply coming on the market, so things are I think going to slow down a tiny bit. And also we have interest rates increasing. Interest rates have now hit the highest point they were at since November. We’re in the low sevens again. And so with the higher prices that we saw, and I mentioned this in the last video, we’ve seen almost 10% increase in King County prices since the beginning of the year. And we’ve also seen interest rates increase now well over a half percent.

I think it puts a lot of pressure on the affordability index for buyers in King County. What this means for sellers is right now you’re going to get a really good price for your house, most likely, very similar to what you would’ve got last year, not quite the all time high, but pretty close at the same time. You’re gonna have a little bit more competition than you would’ve had last year. I think there’s a little less fear and uncertainty because we’ve lived through the higher interest rate environment for a year. But at the same time, I think that if you are listing your house in July and August and September even, I think it’s not going to be as hot as it was this spring, but I think prices are still gonna be above where they were at the same time last year. So if you’re thinking about selling, I think you are not making a bad decision.

I think you’re gonna get a good price for your house. But if you don’t have a plan of where you’re going to go and you’re trying to figure out, well, is this the peak of the market? I don’t think it’s the peak of the market. I think if you were to wait till next year, you may get a little bit more for your house. But if you’re relocating or you’re downsizing and you have the ability to make a move, or maybe you’re even upsizing like me, I just moved into King County from Snohomish County, uh, across from Edmonds into Shoreline. I just bought a house. So I think if you are thinking about making a move and you don’t mind either taking on a larger interest rate for the short term if you’re a buyer or if you are going to be moving outta the area, I don’t think you are in a bad place to be selling right now. Thanks so much for watching this month’s King County Real Estate market update. I know you got a lot of value out of this video if you’re still watching it here at the end. So please subscribe to the channel if you haven’t. And if you have questions about buying or selling in King County, please don’t hesitate to reach out.