King County Real Estate Market Update | November 2020

Hey Y’all, McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates. And today I want to do the first of hopefully many King County real estate market updates. And in this update, we’re gonna focus on the stats from October, 2020 in King County. Before we jump into this, if you’re not familiar with King County or you’re new to the area, king County is going to have places like Bellevue, iswas, some Amish, Redmond, Kirkland, and if you come up to North End, Seattle on the West side, shoreline even down to Kent. So King County is a huge county and I by no means captured all of it, but King County is one of the counties that I service and I want to provide some value here with the stats from King County. So King County’s real estate market, and I typically focus on Seattle real estate market if you’ve followed me or follow my channel.

But King County itself has been extremely hot even hotter than Seattle in a lot of ways. The new listings on the market last month, 2,944 new listings, so a lot more listings coming on in King County. But Seattle’s market is about one third of the King County real estate market in King County that equated to a 34% increase year over year. And as we look at the pending sales, they were keeping right up with the new listings, 2,818 pending sales, which is also a 30.8% increase. And closed sales, again, keeping right in line 2,882 closed sales in the county, which is good for a 26.5% increase. And this just shows how much activity there is right now in the housing market. And normally for the fall, we’re not seeing this type of activity, we’re not seeing this many new listings, we’re not seeing this many new houses coming on the market for perspective.

If we look back to last year, we had about 2,278 close sales in comparison. so significantly more activity right now in the market than we’re used to seeing. And the days on market for the county, 18 days on market, which is down significantly from 31 days on market countywide. And the city of Seattle is generally pretty hot and so is Bellevue, Kirkland, some of the closer in suburbs of Seattle. But as we head farther out, we’re seeing that competition continue to intensify, which is bringing some of these numbers down. in as far as days on market, as we look over the median sales price countywide up 11.9% at 750,000. And the average sales price in King County is $909,000, and we’re looking at a 12.4% increase. The average house is selling above, asking price, not too much, but just above the asking price.

And the amount of homes for sale right now is about one month of supply, which is extremely low. It’s similar numbers to what we were seeing back in 2015, 16 and 17 when the market was really hot. If we jump down to looking at the condo market in King County, we’re seeing a lot more activity, just like we’re talking about in the residential market. We’re seeing a 40.6% increase in new listings. We’re seeing a 45.1% increase in pending sales. We’re seeing a 47.7% increase in close sales, and we’re also seeing those days on market down down 38.9%. Now, really quick on condos, I did a video a couple months back, maybe it was a month back at this point on the Seattle condo situation and how the condo market in the city of Seattle has actually taken a turn for the worst. and that’s mainly because of the shutdowns in the city, lack of business activity and also some of the Occupy Seattle movement.

I’m sure that’s had an impact. Again, it’s hard to say how long people will be working from home and wanting to be out of the city, but what I do know is the downtown Seattle market has seen a decline, whereas the rest of the county we’re seeing these extremely hot numbers. The average condo, the median sales price in King County, 458,000, and the average sales price is $648,813. The average condo is selling for right around the asking price and the supply number. So we’re talking about residential around one month. In the condo market, we’re seeing about 2.7 months of supply. I think that’s a big part of why we’re seeing this average percentage of list price right around the asking price versus above the asking price. It’s because there is more supply in the condo market. So things are still selling relatively quickly, 22 days on market, but you’re not seeing the price escalations like you see in the residential space.

Overall, I think a lot of the same drivers that we’re seeing in Seattle, we’re seeing in the surrounding suburbs here in King County. The big driver is going to be the decreased interest rates and that extra affordability that people have. And as we’re seeing more and more buyers in the market, we’re seeing some of the listings that we would’ve seen maybe in the springtime coming on the market here in the fall. So a really hot fall season so far, the weather’s cooling off, but the real estate market’s not now. It could slow down a little bit as we finish out the year, but at least so far, the Seattle housing market and the King County housing market continues to remain hot. Thanks so much for watching my very first King County real estate market.

I hope you got some value out of this video and it’s a little different from the Seattle real estate markets that I’ve been doing, and I plan to focus more specifically on stats here, a little shorter video, a little bit more of a quick hitter. but if you have questions about your situation, you’re thinking about buying a house in King County or Snohomish County, I’d love to be a resource for you. And hey, if you got some value out of this video and you want to see other videos like this, please subscribe to my channel.