Seattle Housing Market Watch 10/3/23

Hey y’all. Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my Seattle Housing Market update for October 3rd, 2023.

Well, we successfully avoided a government shutdown or at least delayed it, but mortgage rates are having a little bit of fun on US. Home loans reach 7.72% on average for a 30 year fixed rate. According to Mortgage News Daily’s survey as of ten three last week we were looking at 7.5% rates. Rates have continued to climb here and I don’t know, we might be approaching 8. I think we’re heading in that direction at least for the time being, and that’s putting a lot of pressure on home buyers as you can expect with their financing. Now, a small change in rate isn’t super dramatic, but as we’ve seen, especially year over year, we’ve had a massive increase in rates. More than 2% in the mortgage rates, and prices have been hovering in a similar place to where they were at the same time last year, and we’ll see that in our Seattle market update videos here next week.

But for now, let’s zero in on some of the week over week data. And as a reminder, we’re looking at King County and Snohomish County Residential sales over the past week to get a good overview of what’s happening in the Seattle area. Now, new listings, we talked about how that number was going to start declining, and we saw that 501 listings this past week versus 539 last week back on the market. We saw 68 houses coming back on the market. Now these listings would likely be canceled listings that came back on the market, we had 132 of those, or they would be expired listings. We had 73 expired listings versus 22 the previous week. Most likely from the end of the month, that might’ve been the deadline, but those listings coming back on the market would be well back on the market listings, price reductions.

We saw 382 price reductions slightly down from 3 93 last week, but still seeing a lot of price reductions in the housing inventory contingent purchases. There was a nice little jump here, 20 versus 11 last week and 10 the previous week with contingent purchases. It’s a very small percentage of the overall sales happening, but I think it’s encouraging for potentially somebody who needs to sell their house before they buy their next one, that there are opportunities out there. And I would encourage that my house is now under contract, yay, but it’s also under contract contingent on the sale of somebody else’s house. So if you are a seller and your house hasn’t been selling yet, that might be coming down the pipeline. And if you are somebody who is looking to upgrade your house, but maybe you don’t have the financial flexibility or you don’t want to take the risk of having a couple of different mortgages at the same time like I did, there is an opportunity out there right now I think for a contingent purchase if a house has been on the market maybe two, three weeks at this point.

Now, a couple other things as we wrap up this update. I think the sold listings picked up at the end of the month, 597 sold listings. We had 5 22 the previous week, now it was the end of the month, so I expect to see those numbers increasing. I think the pending listings have remained relatively consistent. We had 698 pending listings versus 706 the week before. And again, these are listings that were either pending inspection that now are pending or they were maybe contingent. Now they’re pending or they were active, and that’s the majority of them now going pending. And the pending listings are still well ahead of the new listings, and that’s the kicker. We’re continuing to see the inventory shrinking or the amount of houses per buyer shrinking, and that’s putting more pressure on the housing inventory that’s out there. Now, are there a ton of buyers looking right now?

Well, compared to what I would consider normal, no. But there are also equally, or even more so fewer houses coming on the market, and that’s continuing to put pressure on the existing housing inventory. So if you are a buyer or somebody thinking about buying, I would encourage it. I mean, if it was me, I would be looking to start with my home search sooner rather than later, especially if I’m a first time buyer because there will be opportunities. The keyword here is opportunities. I think there will be opportunities for buyers to maybe get a deal with a massive price reduction or maybe having a contingent option if you already own a house or maybe even having a seller help pay for some of your loan costs or some type of a mortgage rate. Buydown seen that. We saw that a lot last year, and I think we’re starting to enter into a territory where that might be a possibility.

Again, it didn’t last long in 2022. It was a small window, and I think that window is starting to open up again for buyers. So if you would like to take advantage of that opportunity and maybe even lower prices, I would say that I would be looking at that right now versus waiting until rates start to come down next year. If that ends up being the case, I think a lot of people, including myself, think that will be the case. When that happens. Rates will be better, but there will likely be more competition for the houses that are out there. So I would just say opportunity is the word for buyers. Sellers, you know what? Your house is still not that much below where the previous highs were. I think if you need to move and it makes sense, I would get your house sold.

I’m selling mine right now, even though I could hold onto it as a rental and potentially sell it for more in the future because I want to have the liquidity. I don’t want to keep it as a rental. So if that’s not your plan and you don’t want to become an accidental landlord, I made a video about that a few weeks ago, then I would encourage that it’s still okay to get your house on the market now, and you’re not too far off from the highs from earlier this year. Thanks so much for watching this week’s Seattle Housing Market Watch. If this video was helpful for you, please consider subscribing to the channel. And of course, if there’s any way that I can benefit you as a real estate agent, I’d love to connect.