King County Real Estate Market Update | May 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 May, 2022. In these videos, if you’re new, we jump right into the stats and these are a little bit more of a high level update, so be sure to subscribe to the channel if you wanna see these updates on a regular basis. But if you want to see a little bit more in depth dive, we do that on the Seattle Bellevue Real estate market updates. All right, so King County median sales price last month, $1 million. Average sales price in King County is $1,288,959, almost 1.3 million, 23.1% jump year over year in King County on the average in 19.1% on the median new listings in King County down slightly year over year, pending sales down also slightly year over year, about 10.9% closed sales in King County, also down 14.2%, but days on market down 36.4%.

So we’re still seeing those numbers shrinking. And the, the real, the real story here is we’re seeing home prices continue to rise in King County homes are selling over asking price 12% over asking price on average, which is 2.4% more even than last year, which was crazy. Hot inventory of homes on the market is up marginally 5.8%. Last year we had 1,509 houses on the market. Now we have 1,596, so it’s not like a giant jump. Uh, but that did bump our supply numbers up from 0.6 to 0.7 months inventory. And if you’re new to these updates, what that means is that we have a couple weeks of houses on the market for all the buyers. So there’s not much of a backlog, which means we find ourselves in what’s called a seller’s market, where sellers have a lot of that negotiating power, which is why you’re seeing prices climbing, people paying over, asking price.

Now I wanna highlight condos a little bit here in this update as well. So we’re gonna do a special feature. Hey, we’re talking about condos today. I don’t always do that in these updates. If you’re new, as we look at the condos, we’re actually gonna focus in on year to date. So I’m not gonna focus on April, I’m gonna focus on year to date. So year to date, we’ve seen 8.6% fewer condos come on the market. We’ve also seen less condo sales year to date, 8.7. So pretty much about the same amount, less inventory, less sales, which makes sense. But we’ve seen the days on market shrink. So last year, condos were on the market about 31 days. Now 19, and I have some thoughts about this. We saw the median sales price jump 14.6% in King County for condos, um, from four 50 up from last year at 4 52, 500 15,500. So we’re seeing prices climbing on condos again, which is a good sign for condo owners. We saw the average jump up 13.5% year over year. We we’re so far seeing $623,000 on average for the year, and an

Average of 6% over asking price for the year. So far on condos in King County last month, 7.4% over asking price. And I think what’s happening here on condos specifically is condos are more affordable, number one, I think that’s one reason why people are considering condos right now in King County. And then number two, condos are more centrally located. And I think traffic’s picking up, again, people are thinking about being closer to the city as covid is not over, right? It’s never gonna be over. But the, some of the fears and concerns and constraints are, um, pulling back, even in the Seattle area, some places never experienced much of a change, but here we did. And so I think there’s this maybe revitalization happening closer to the city. It’s a little bit more affordable and condos are more affordable. So I think that’s kind of what’s going on here in King County.

But overall, as I’m looking at the numbers, I think people are like, well, sometimes, you know, these numbers are from last month and you know, now we’re already into the new month. And I’ll just tell you this, I think number one concern of people right now is the market’s going to tank and there’s a lot of fear right now, okay? And I don’t have a crystal ball, I won’t pretend, right? But nobody else does either. So as we’re looking at the stats, as of today, five 10 when I’m recording this video, new listings 690 for the week pending 750. So we’re not seeing like a whole bunch of inventory building up. I know interest rates are up a little bit, but they’re historically normal. They’re still actually historically low, but they’re a lot higher than what we’ve experienced recently. So for those new buyers out there who have only heard and talked to friends that have purchased with two and a half to three and a half to 4% interest rates, that’s great, but that’s not the normal.

So historically we’ve seen rates more in the sixes, right? So we’re still lower than the normal. And if we look at any kind of data over the past, we would see that. I remember, I’ve, I’ve heard so many stories of people that are a little bit over. I bought with 8%, I bought with 10%, I bought with 12%. Are we gonna get up to those high of rates? I, I don’t know, but I think six percent’s possible this year. That’s what I’ve been hearing from some. If we get up to that point, things might slow down a little bit. Right now the market’s still moving even with rates in the five and a half percent range. So, um, I just wanna put that out there for anybody that’s thinking about buying that rates are, yeah, they’re higher, but they’re not. They’re not high by any means, but you know, in the future, maybe they’ll get low again.

And that’s what happens. The government’s playing with all of this, right? And whenever there’s a recession, they drop rates and when the market’s doing well, they raise rates. So if anything, this is a sign that the market’s doing well then anything else. But I want to talk about and highlight the south end in this video today, because I always try to pick a place to highlight, right? So if you live on the south end, you’re probably more interested in this part of it than if you’re out on the east side or the north part of King County. Um, but today we’re gonna talk about a few of the south end areas. So we’ll talk about Buren here. Buren, 13.4%, jump year over year, 722,500. Median sales price, a little bit less than the average, right? And you’re gonna see this trend as we go through these. Kent, $775,000 median sales price up 29.7%. Maple Valley, 894,000 9 75, median sales price up 23.6%. Maple Valley, you guys are killing it. Almost $900,000. Median sales price. Auburn 695,000, 20.3% up. You’re seeing the trend here, right? A lot up over the year. Black Diamond, 823,886. Woo. A few more that aren’t quite as eyeball popping. Des Moines 617,500, actually down 1% year over year. Federal way, 659,000. And we’ll turn the page here. We got a few more to highlight. Normandy Park, always a little bit more expensive and it looks like maybe we had a few really big sales last month. 1,296,350, that’s up 50%. So again, I think there’s a few outliers here. Sea Tac 10%, 10.9%, up $610,000. And Tuck Willa 600, 4,000 250, 24 0.6% up.

So talking about the south end a little bit here, just briefly, it’s a little easier to get a house. It’s a little less expensive. We talk about King County as a whole. The East side and Bellevue specifically pull up those numbers. The north end pulls up those numbers, but the south end, it’s a little bit more affordable. You can get a little bit more house for your money. So if you’re thinking, you know what, I wanna live in King County, but I don’t want to pay a million or a million and a half, 2 million, you’re probably gonna want to focus your attention on the South end. Thanks so much for watching this month’s King County Real Estate Market update. I hope that it was helpful and valuable for you. If it was, please consider subscribing to this channel to see more of these updates. And if you know somebody who can benefit from seeing this video, please consider sharing it with them.