King County Real Estate Market Update | June 2021

Hey y’all. Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is your King County real Estate market update for June, 2021. In this update, we are going to talk about King County Market stats from May, 2021. We are going to highlight some of the top numbers across the county and we are also going to highlight the South end as some of you have been requesting. So if you’ve been requesting South End commentary, please blow up the comments down below and let me know your thoughts. I’m not gonna spend the whole update there, but I do want to bring you a little bit of love here today. All right, let’s go through the county stats here as a whole and then we’ll bring it a little bit closer. And as we look at new listings last month in King County we saw a 21.1% increase in new listings, which is good to see as we’ve been starving for homes to sell, which is ironic because we have quite a bit more homes on the market now than last year.

I do wanna add before we get too far, that we’re still looking at stats in a really hot housing market and we’re comparing to last year in May when people were still staying at home and not putting their houses on the market because of the uncertainty surrounding the Covid 19 virus, et cetera. So this point last year, we’re still in that little bit of a dip that we had. It wasn’t very long lasting, but we did have a little bit of a dip. So just keep that in mind as we keep talking about the stats here, that these numbers and percentages are a little bit inflated, but really not that substantially inflated as prices didn’t drop too dramatically. As we look at pending sales, we saw a huge jump. Again, this one’s probably related to the depressed numbers last year, 38.5% jump in pending sales, closed sales up 63.7% year over year as you could probably expect with all of the competition and the speed of things, we’re seeing 38.9% drop in days on market 18 last year, 11 this year, which gives us, with all the competition prices continuing to skyrocket.

So last month, median sales price in King County was $875,000. Last year the median sales price was $679,950, which is a whopping 28.7% increase year over year in the median sales price, the average sales price is up 36.9%. Crazy, crazy percentage of list price. And this is a big reason why prices keep climbing is because for months now in a row, we’ve seen almost 10% increases in the purchase price over the asking price. So last month in May homes were selling an average 9.5% above the asking price. So what happens if you have almost a year now, I mean maybe seven, eight months in a row where houses are selling 10% above asking price? Well, housing prices jump up really, really fast and in some markets as we’ll talk about a little later, homes are selling way more than 10% above asking price. So like 15, 20% above asking price.

And what what’s happening now is that we’re just having fewer and fewer houses available. So there’s about half a month of homes available, which means there are two weeks of available homes for all the buyers in the month. So we have a ton of buyers, we don’t have enough houses to sell. And even though we have a lot of listings coming on the market a lot more than last year and pretty much normal numbers, there’s just so many buyers that have been pent up and waiting to buy that we haven’t been able to satisfy that demand yet. So until that changes or homes get become unaffordable or interest rates maybe skyrocket or change dramatically in affordability shifts, I don’t have an answer for when and how the market’s gonna go back or cool down at all because currently there are plenty of buyers that have the means financially to compete for these different houses.

I mean, even last week I think I had like three cash offers on the listing and the cash offers didn’t win. So if you’re somebody that’s think about buying, you don’t have to have cash to win these situations. But if you think about it and you’re trying to buy a house and you have to think of in terms of winning it’s just, it’s competition and it’s driving the prices up. So let’s transition and talk about some of the, we’re gonna say high points, but some of the highlights of the King County stats. So if we focus in on specific cities, Bellevue took number one in highest median sales price at 1.6 million. So if you wanna live in Bellevue, Washington, 1.6 million up 54.2% year over year. So you’re just over a million dollars median sales price last year in Bellevue and now you’re looking at 1.6.

So maybe some people moved from Seattle. if we look over at Redmond and Sam Amish though, I mean we’re really close to Bellevue. Redmond was 1.441 million, and Sam Amish was 1.44 million. So again, east side and as we look at King County’s prices, the east side was substantially higher in the price than you’re gonna see in West King County, but most of King County is actually on the east side and the south end. So most of Snohomish County, aside from Seattle and Shoreline is over on the west side. As we look at some of these other stats, the average percent of list price, okay, this is the amount of the asking price that sellers received. Number one was Redmond at 15.6% above the asking price. So Amish was number two at 13.3% above asking price. And then Bellevue and Duval were right in there at 12.8 and 12.7% above the asking price.

So again, all on the east side Seattle over on the west side was at 7.7% and Shoreline was 11.2%. So still really competitive in the west side markets, but you’re gonna see a lot more competition over on the east side. If we look at months of supply, a few cities jump out here, Redmond, Sam Amish and Snow Quie are in a three-way tie for the least amount of inventory at 0.2 months, less than one week of houses available. So pretty much every house that comes on the market goes very fast, which translates over to the average days on market. So in Snow Qual and in some Amish, we have four days on market on average, and we have five in Redmond. So that lack of supply translates directly to the average days on market and it consequently translates to super, super high amounts above asking price, which with Redmond and Sam Amish both kind of leading the push there.

So there’s a desire to live there, but hardly any houses coming on the market, people aren’t really trying to sell. I think part of it’s because usually those houses are more forever type houses, they’re bigger, they’re nicer, you might live there and not need to move and buy another house. Whereas if you’re looking over on the west side, there are a lot more starter type of houses maybe built in the forties, fifties that you would then upgrade and buy something different a little bit bigger. So again, it’s a generalization, but a lot of the houses that are driving the prices up on the east side are gonna be just bigger. Like you’re gonna buy a 4,000 square foot house in Redmond, there’s a lot more of those and there are 4,000 square foot houses in Shoreline. So I think part of that is the types of houses that you’re buying over there.

and that’s just one of the factors. but I think today in this video I wanna highlight the South end in King County because some of you that follow this channel, were requesting a little bit more info and just my thoughts on the south end. I don’t get to Maple Valley and Kent and Auburn super often. I occasionally help a friend or a family member that wants to move down south that specifically wants to work with me and doesn’t want to work with somebody else. if you’re watching this video and you’re, you are somebody who wants to buy on the south end, I’m probably not the best person to help you, but I have a couple agents that I consistently refer people to that are on the south end or an even farther down the south sound like Tacoma and et cetera.

So if you need a great referral to an agent, I’m happy to provide that, but I’m probably not the person for that. Regardless. I do have the stats here and I do want to talk about it really quick. and highlight this out then here really quickly for you all that subscribe to the channel. So we’re gonna highlight Buren Kent, maple Valley in Auburn. So we’re just gonna get a little bit farther than the Seattle Bellevue suburbs. Okay? So Buren is considerably more affordable and all the south end is considerably more affordable than the places that we’re just talking about. So a lot of the east side kind of near Bellevue and the west side, we’re talking about lot higher prices, but you get down to the south end and you have a little bit more affordability and a little bit longer commute too. So Buren 6 50, 600, $50,000 median sales price Kent was $620,000 up 27.3% year over year.

So a large jump in the median sales price there. Maple Valley 729,950. So huge, huge jump, 26.5% as well. And then if we look at Auburn $585,000 median sales price up 33.3%. So huge jumps. Still the market’s super super hot in these areas, but prices are not quite as hot. So when I have clients that I’m working with who are just frustrated with the competition in the Seattle Bellevue Metro and they want to go a little bit farther out and get a little bit bigger nicer home or maybe they can’t afford to be closer to the city anyway, that’s when we start looking in on the south end. And you know, you get down to the average percent of list price. I mean you’re still competitive, 9% above asking price in Buren Kent, 8.9% Maple Valley, 8.1%, Auburn 7.7%. So I mean we’re still talking about it a lot over the asking price.

If we look at months of supply, Buren 0.6 months, Kent 0.4 months, maple Valley 0.4 months and Auburn 0.4 months. and homes are still selling quickly if I look at average days on market. So really I think the big difference is affordability because if you’re looking at buying a $600,000 house and you’re paying 10% above asking price, cool, that’s 60 grand. If you’re buying a million and a half dollar house and you’re putting 10% above asking price, that’s another 150 grand. So that’s a substantially larger amount amount. So if that’s your budget in order to compete your, you’re, you might be having to offer 20, 25% over asking price. Unless you’ve got $300,000 to play the game,

You don’t win. So if you’re looking on the south end and you put a hundred per a hundred thousand over asking price, you’re probably gonna end up getting a house. Whereas if you’re doing that in the Bellevue area, it’s not gonna happen. So I think the biggest difference between the markets in the south end, on the south end of King County and the central and northern parts of King County is really just the, the prices. And if you are wanting more house in a better chance now it’s again, it’s super competitive, but if you’re willing to be as aggressive as a buyer is in Central King County or North King County, then you’re gonna have a lot of opportunity. and I’ve seen that with some of my clients that then we shift down to the south end and they’re able to to win those offer situations that they weren’t able to win on the north side.

So those are my thoughts on the south end. I hope for those of you who live on the south end of King County and subscribe to my channel. had a little bit of fun hearing about your local market here in this King County update. I’ll highlight different sections of King County I think on a monthly basis going forward just so we can spice it up a little bit. I do help people in most parts of King County, the South end, I just don’t get to as often. So again, if you are somebody on the south end and you don’t know a great agent, I’m happy to make that intro. Thanks so much for watching my King County real estate market update for May, 2021. I hope that this video was valuable for you and that you got something to take away from it. And in fact, I know if you made it all the way to the end here that you got some value out of this video.

So a couple favors I have to ask of you. Number one, if you are interested in just staying up to date on things happening in King County or Snohomish County or Seattle in general, I would really appreciate it if you would subscribe to my channel. I do have other updates. I have a Snohomish County update and a Seattle update, which is kind of the flagship, so to speak, update that I started making. Mainly because people search Seattle when they’re moving to the area and if you are looking to make a purchase, and I mentioned earlier more the central north part of King County, the Seattle Bellevue areas and suburbs there, I’d really, really love to be a resource for you.