King County Real Estate Market Update | November 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 November, 2022.

All right, we’re gonna look at the stats from last month, so October, 2022. Stats from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. And we’re gonna jump right into the data here. I think we’re seeing some of the normal trends that we see for this time of year, and I think we’re seeing some things that are a little bit different. So I’m gonna point those out here as we go down the list. But new listings last month in King County, 1,966 new listings, which is down from last month and also down from last year, 15.5% down from last year pending sales down from last year, 36.1% down, uh, 1,584 listings pending close sales also down considerably from last year. Last year we had 2,666 closings, um, this last month, 1,509. So 43.4% drop there in closed sales in King County, days on market, 26 days on market instead of 14 last year.

So pretty big jump there, but what’s not changing as much as we would think. The price, median sales price last year in King County, 826,645 and this month, $906,000. Median sales price up 9.6% year over year, all right, up year over year and also up from last month. So King County’s median sales price last month was higher than it was September average sales price is also up 3.8%. The average sales price in King County was $1,117,455 in October. A couple things that I have been talking about here over the past few months, the percent of list price received versus the original list price. So the original list price, 95.9% of the original asking price in King County, the inventory of homes down. So we’re gonna see that trend here over the next few months unless something completely different happens.

Inventory is down month over month, but also up year over year. So more than a hundred percent more listings. So last year, 1,404 this year, 3,332 listings. So considerably larger number this year versus last year. Last year would’ve been a hyper low amount of supply this year. Probably more of a normal amount of supply, but considerably higher. And then months of supply. Talking about supply again here, 1.8 months of supply, which is down from last month, but up 200% month, year over year, which is what we were just talking about there with the big jump in the amount of homes for sale. So again, as we finish out the year here in King County, I suspect that we’re gonna see these supply numbers continue to dwindle. What happens during the holidays is that you just have fewer houses coming on the market.

So if you’re somebody that says, Hey, you know, I want to sell my house and I want it to sell a little bit quicker and I want to have some more or less, I would say less competition from other listings. That’s really where, what’s going to happen during the holidays. So if your house is on the market right now and it’s not selling super quickly, that’s where you’re gonna start to see houses selling that are sitting, especially if you’re a little bit flexible on the price. And this is also when buyers start to think about making a purchase. Statistically, this is kind of the people that are the most on top of their New Year’s resolutions, they start to think, I wanna buy a house in 2023, right? I wanna buy a house in the spring. And they start to look back and reverse engineer those things.

So there’s a new crop of home buyers that’s gonna be entering the market here soon, I would think so. I think that’s gonna also start to put some pressure on this inventory, but I don’t suspect we’ll see big price jumps or anything like that as we finish out the year, but I do think that we’ll see prices remain similar to where they’re at. And that inventory’s gonna continue to tighten here. Let’s highlight a few places here in King County as we’re wrapping up the month. And I think what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna highlight a few of the places on the east side where houses were selling for so much, right? And right now I think there’s opportunities and the opportunities right now in the King County market are more pronounced, specifically on the east side here of the lake.

So before we jump over to the east side and look at some of those houses though, I want to just point out that Seattle’s up 9% year over year. Out of all the places Seattle has been the most consistent. It didn’t grow as much or expand as much during the pandemic and the, you know, kind of outflow of that, but Seattle itself has been a lot more stable  than some of the cities here on the east side. So I’m gonna just point out a few things here. Bellevue, median sales price, um, down 7.5% year over here. So behind the King County average and medians here, Kirkland down 2.6% year over year. Shoreline down 3.6% year over year. Redmond is down 6.9% year over year. Kenmore is also down 3.3%, Duval down 5.8%. If we jump over to the south end, maple Valley’s down 6.8% year over year.

Lake Forest Park down 11% year over year. New Castle down 5%. Milton, good old Milton, down 3.7%. Norman D Park down 34.7%. Not a ton of sales there. So again, um, just based on what’s sold, Skykomish down 2%, tuck Willa down 19%. Um, Yaro point, again, similar kind of deal, not a ton of sales, but down 13.2%. Um, don’t put too much stock in that one, but as I’m looking at these numbers, right, there are certainly places that are pulling these numbers up. Um, and that’s why we have a median sales price increase of 9.6% and an average increase of 3.8. But there are plenty of places, and again, more heavily loaded there on the east side, near Bellevue warehouses are actually selling for less than they were last year. So, again, opportunities. I suspect that when we see interest rates decrease again, that these are gonna be some of those areas again that are gonna be the hottest.

So if those are markets that you’re wanting to get into and you can afford the increased payments in the, in the short term, and when I say short term, I’m not meaning like a couple months, I’m meaning like you might have this interest rate for six months to a year, year and a half, but if you can take a little bit higher interest rate here in the short term, I think you’re gonna be able to get a discount on the price. And then when rates dropped back down, that’s when historically we see that the economy picks back up and the housing market, uh, takes off running. And I think our housing market, of all the markets we’ve seen, the volatility, it goes up a lot when it’s hot and it comes down quicker when it’s not as hot. But I think we’re also gonna be one of those housing markets on the front again when things shift.

So, um, again, if you’re looking at one of those areas, specifically the East side, Redmond, Samammish is still up year over year technically, so I didn’t add them, but they really should be in there. but Kirkland, Kenmore, any of those places, you’re gonna have opportunities right now. So I would take advantage of them if you’re serious about living in those communities. Um, and it’s time for you to plant some roots. So again, king County market update here for November, 2022. And we’re gonna, we’re gonna have one more of these updates before the end of the year, but if you want to talk about some goals and planning, if you are somebody who’s maybe not sure what you should do, um, happy to chat with you. I don’t certainly think that everybody should be buying a house normally, and I definitely don’t think that’s the case right now. So if you wanna have somebody to just bounce ideas off of, brainstorm and consider whether maybe it’s time for you to jump in, feel free to reach out.