King County Real Estate Market Update | September 2021

We’ll start off here with the stats for King County and these are the single family houses. And if we look at new listings, we saw a 13.5% reduction in new listings. If we look back year over year from 2020 to 2021, I think a lot of that’s because of Covid. Last year we saw a lot more homes coming on the market at the end of the summer and even into the fall than we historically see, I think what we’re gonna continue to see here in 2021 is a reduction in new listings as we head towards the end of the year. A lot of that is because this spring and summer was a lot more normal this year than it was last year. If we’re looking month over month at the new listings, we did see a decrease in new listings, about 400 fewer new listings this month and there were in July we did see an uptick in pending sales as well. So I think when we look at it’s September, we’re gonna see quite a few closed sales. This month’s closed sales numbers were slightly down from last month and if we look at the year over year numbers just about 0.2% lower. So pretty much right on track with last year, if we think about last year it was still a hot market, right? We’re in the thick of the market heating up after Covid and Kickstarting 2021. So still a hot market last year. But we did see a decrease in days on market, 33.3%. So last year it was taking about 18 days to sell a house in King County this year, 12 days to sell a house in King County. The median sales price this year is up 14.3% year over year. So I think this is a little bit more of a realistic picture of what’s happened in the county.

Earlier in the year I was talking about numbers that were just crazy, like 20% more or close to that, right? And now I think we’re starting to see what the actual year over year numbers are more realistically with okay, this is what the numbers look like in August after people were actually selling and buying again. And that’s what they’re looking like this year. So I think we’re starting to see a little bit more normal numbers here, but still this is a lot. 14.3% increase in prices is huge and that that equates to more than a hundred thousand dollars higher prices in King County as a whole. And the average is similar. The average house in King County’s selling for 19.2% higher. So the median is right around that 15% number and we’re approaching 20% more on the average price percentage of list price. So this is how much can you expect to be paying as a buyer in King County over the asking price.

And on average it’s 5.5% above the asking price. This is the biggest change year over year and it’s the amount of homes on the market. So in King County as a whole, okay, that’s Seattle and Bellevue and a ton of other cities, 15,001 houses on the market. Last year we had 2,812 houses on the market. That’s 46.6% fewer homes on the market than there were available last year, which is a 53.8% reduction in inventory as far as month supply. So that’s taking into consideration the buyers and also the amount of homes. So we’re seeing 0.6 months of supply versus 1.3 months of supply at the same time last year. And for perspective, 1.3 months of supply is still low and there were still multiple offers and houses selling above Aspen price on average. But this year it’s been a lot hotter and it continues to be hot as we head into September.

Let’s shift our focus here to condos in King County. Real briefly, last year to set the stage we had a little bit of drama in the condo market and that’s because people weren’t necessarily looking to live in some of the high rise buildings in Seattle. And a lot of the condos in King County are in Seattle, a few are in Bellevue and the rest of the county has a pretty small percentage. So when we’re looking at this data, a lot of it is tied into what’s going on in the Seattle condo market specifically New listings are down 23.7% and I think a lot of that was last year people were freaking out and they were wanting to get their condo on the market cuz they thought maybe nobody was gonna wanna buy a condo again. But I think as we look through this, we’re gonna see that that’s not true.

But there was a pivot from condos to the single family, at least for the people that were living in condos and or when they were searching for houses last year. This year we’re seeing a little bit different scenario and that’s equated to 12.3% increase in pending sales for condos. A 15.9% increase in closed condo sales and it, we’ve even seen a reduction in days on market. So last year condos were taking on average 23 days to sell and this year we’re seeing a slight decrease to 21 days on market. So about 8.7% decrease in the days on market. The median sales price is up 13.8% for condos. So there was a decline last year and we’ve seen an increase again in condo prices. And the average condo is selling for 11.8% more than it was last year. So $571,816 on average in Seattle and King County as a whole.

But as I said earlier most of these are in Seattle and the percentage of list price received here, 1.8% above asking price on average for a condo in King County. The average condo for contrast sold for just under asking price last year in King County, 99.8% of the asking price. The amount of inventory that’s left at the end of the month is a huge indicator of the demand for condos in King County and how that’s changed. And again, most specifically in Seattle last year we had 2.7 months of inventory which almost made a buyer’ss market for condos in contrast to a seller’s market in the residential single family spear. But this year we’re back down to 1.1 months of inventory, which is a almost 60% decrease, 59.3% decrease in inventory. This has caused us to have a transition from this more buyer’s market in the condo world last year at this time, back to a seller’s market again.

Now it’s time for a few highlights here in King County and we’re not gonna be able to talk about everybody here. So I know some of you feel left out when you watch these videos and I don’t give a shout out to your city and I apologize right now because I can’t talk about every single city here in King County in these videos. So each month I do my best to talk about a few and point out noteworthy things, but I’m not gonna get everything. So if you’re not hearing regularly enough or you want to get more information or ask specific questions about your city, whether that’s Tuck Willa or Maple Valley or even Medina, whatever it is, if I don’t mention your city here in these videos and I will from time to time, but if I don’t mention it regularly enough and you have some questions you can feel free to ask me and reach out directly and I’m happy to provide that information for you. Many places in King County last month had median sales price increases of over 20% lots. And I’m not gonna be able to name every single one, but check out some of these numbers. Shoreline 21.2% up year over year. Kirkland, 29.2% up year over year. Redmond 24.2% up year over year. Samish 25.6% up year over year is aqua 37.2% up year over year. Nomi 24.5% up year over

Year. Buren 21.9% up year over year. South end Maple Valley, 20.8% up year over year. Auburn 21.2% up year over year. Black diamond, 26.7% up year over year. Milton Washington, shout out to you guys in Milton. 33.7% up year over year. Normandy Park, 31.7% up year over year. Sea Tac 32.1% up year over year Mercer Island, this is crazy. There must have been a couple huge sales in Mercer Island and there is quite a bit of consistency, but 69.4% jump in median sales. Price has to be an anomaly here. And I haven’t looked close enough at the stats to tell you for sure, but there must have been a few huge lakefront houses that sold on the island to get that big of a jump. But we saw a giant jump there in Mercer Island. Mercer Island would win for this month in Lake Forest Park, 20.5%, not shabby.

I think I probably named off almost everybody now in the 20% club. I did wanna shout out Des Moines here because I had a viewer that was giving me a hard time about not talking about Des Moines. So, and I know it’s not Desmoines, that’s what I want to call it in these videos. And I know a lot of people that don’t know the area would wouldn’t say that, but I can barely shout you out because you had 19.6% increase in median sales price, but close enough to the 20% club that I’m gonna give you a shout out here, Des Moines. So congrats. We’ve had a huge, huge year and I mentioned so many places here in King County that had huge jumps. I do wanna point out that Seattle’s jump and median sales price was 5.6%. 5.6%. And when people think of King County and they think of moving to the area, they think of Seattle.

And there are a ton of houses and people that live in Seattle, but we’re talking about the whole metro area and the growth as a whole has been huge in comparison to just the city of Seattle. Thank you so much for watching this month’s King County real estate market update. I hope that this information was valuable for you and I know that if you made it to the end of this video that you got some benefit from it. So my ask is that you would first of all subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already, so that you can see more videos like this. And if this content brought value to you, would you please consider sharing it with a friend also.