King County Real Estate Market Update | June 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 June, 2022. In these updates, we typically jump right into the stats and that’s what we’re gonna do right now. We’re gonna look at the King County market stats from May, 2022. And if we look at the stats here, we saw what I expected to see, right? We saw an increase in new listings, which is customary in May, typically May, June, maybe even July or the months where you have the most listings in a given year. Now, if we look back at new listings over the past four or five years, we really didn’t have a ton more new listings. Last year was just a fairly small amount of new listings. In 2017 we had 3,495, which is a little bit less a little more than last year, but a little less in this year at 3,604 new listings residential in King County.

But in 2018, 4,028, 2019, 4,269, I skipped 2020 cuz it was kind of a weird May. And then last year we had 3,212 new listings. So just not a lot of new listings in King County. So this year looks like a bigger jump, but just putting it in perspective over the last four or five years, actually more normal or maybe even a little less than what we’ve been seeing here over the previous few years if we look at pending sales, we are down 13.8% in pending sales and 13.8% in closed sales days on market up one day from last month. and actually down three days on average from 2021, if we look at the prices pretty much flat million dollars in May and also in April. So King County’s still kind of hovering right at its all-time highs for median sales price down quite a bit though from the average.

So the average was close to 1.3 last month in April and we’re down to 1,246,463. But again, still up 15.3% year over year. So slightly down from the high last month, but still up quite a bit. Average percent over list price. Last month we were 12% over asking price in King County, on average 8.7% over asking price on average in May. So still a lot houses are still selling a lot over asking price, but not quite as high as last month and even down slightly 0.6% year over year. All that being said, inventory’s up 56.1% a ton. There’s a ton more homes for sale right now in King County than there were last month, but even more so than last year. Last year we had 1,349 houses this year, 2,106. So a ton more

Houses and that puts our supply number at 0.9 months of supply. Alright, so that’s 80% jump. Again, it sounds huge but historically speaking it’s still a really normal or even less than normal inventory market than we’re used to seeing. So again, the sky’s not falling, but it seems like we’re seeing more houses coming on the market and inventory numbers rising as we have more houses coming on the market than we have going. Pending for some brief perspective though on this inventory number, I did a little bit more homework here for you, so hopefully this gives a little bit more context. So we talked about the supply numbers being 0.9 months of supply and if we look back at last year, we had half a month, so it seemed just like crazy, right? Lots of increase. But in 2019 we had 2.3 months, right? I skipped 2020 cuz it’s a weird year.

But if we skip back to 20 19, 2 0.3 months of supply, 20 18, 1 0.4 months and in 20 17, 1 0.1 months of supply. So we still have less supply than we had almost every other year except for last year in May. But again, it just seems like a lot more than we had last year. And as far as homes for sale, right? I mentioned we had a huge jump year over year in homes for sale. But again, 2,106 houses per sale in King County heading into June in 2019, 4,687 more than double houses, right? That’s a lot of houses in 2018, 3,162, again considerably more. And in 2017 when King County, Seattle area hottest real estate market in the country, 2,439 homes per sale, right? So we had way more inventory than we have right now, but if we look back at last year, it just feels like we have so much more, but that’s why we’re still seeing a lot of houses selling over asking price.

But we’ve gotten so used to everything selling way over asking price right away that that’s just the expectation right now. But the market has shifted a little bit, but again, it’s still super, super hot. So I just want you to see that as we’re going through this video, if we look at the percentage over asking price in King County, I mentioned 8.7% over asking price, but down from 9.4% over asking price last year in 2019, right? We’re skipping 2020 again, 0.5% over asking price in May. And that’s when the market had slowed down a little bit. And I think that’s what people are thinking or fearing is that we’re gonna get to that point and maybe even more, right? But still over asking price even in a may where there was a lot more inventory, as I mentioned in 20 18, 4 0.6% over asking price in King County.

And in 2017 when we’re talking about this market, king County market, Seattle market, metro area being the hottest place in the whole country, 5.5% over asking price. So what we have been seeing is just this inventory problem keeps getting worse and there are fewer and fewer houses for all the buyers, right? More and more and more buyers, especially in King County. And even though it feels like we’re seeing more houses coming in the market, some are sitting, and I, I have one right now, I have a listing in Renton, everyone that we put on the market, it’s been on the market for I think 19 days. If I, if I remember correctly, and this is a a great listing, great house in Renton, but we priced it on the higher side of the value range instead of pricing it way, way below like people have been doing because not everything is selling over asking price anymore.

And not everything is selling like that. So some people have a little bit more risk tolerance and are willing to price at what their neighbors priced at and hope that their house, even with less competition still gets the same type of price. But if I tell you a little secret, when the market slows down a little bit, even where it is now, you’re not gonna see as much of this bump as you might see and you might potentially leave a lot of money on the table. So what happens this time of year and the reason we’re seeing price reductions, can you believe that price reductions, we’re seeing price reductions in King County, all right? And the reason we’re seeing those is because people are pricing their house at the higher end of the value range because they don’t wanna sell for a bunch less than their neighbors.

And in King County alone, 808 new listings in the last week since these stats came out and 354 price reductions and that’s okay, it’s okay. It’s almost better, right? Because buyers know what they can expect to pay. Now some houses, they’re still being super aggressive on the pricing and sometimes they’re getting a little bit more, sometimes they’re getting the asking price. So you have to ask yourself as you’re pricing your house now, am I willing to stomach getting asking price at 15% less than my neighbors did? Or do I want to price it on the higher side and hope I get one great buyer? And if I don’t bring that price down a little bit till we find the median and we’re, there’s actually more buyers, right? So there’s different approaches to pricing and there’s not one right way to do it. But I think as you start to get into the later part of the year as inventory climbs, you definitely don’t wanna be the one sell in your house for less than everybody else.

But what happens when the market’s hot is you have the house is selling for what one or two people are willing to pay, not what the average person’s willing to pay. And so that’s why you start to see more of these houses sitting a little bit longer. But again, it’s not a bad thing, it just means that they’re priced a little bit higher on the value side instead of on the low end hoping to try to cause some kind of crazy frenzy that might not be there at the moment. But even still 612 pending listings, right? Still not quite as many as the new listings, but lots of pending listings still 759 sold compared to the

808 new listings. So things are still moving in King County. I wouldn’t want you to freak out, right? I think the market has shifted a little bit. It’s not by any means soft or buyer’s market, but it has shifted a little bit to where it’s not quite as strong of a seller’s market. As we’re heading into the end of the spring and into the summer 2022. That’s going to conclude our King County real estate market update for June, 2022. A lot of these updates I will add a little bit more and talk about specific areas, but I think I was a little more long-winded in this video talking about why the markets where it’s at and sharing some of those thoughts. So I wanted to add that here instead of maybe highlighting a few of these different spots in King County. but there are definitely pockets where houses are starting to sit on the market a little bit longer. In, in other places they’re still selling super quick and over asking price, especially as you’re closer into the Seattle and Bellevue areas. but if you have questions about your situation buying or selling in King County and you want to connect, I’d love to have some time and just pour into your situation. So if that sounds like something that you could benefit from, I’m happy to be a resource for you.