Seattle Housing Market Watch 10/17/23

Hey y’all. Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my Seattle Real Estate Housing market update for October 17th, 2023.

Well, it’s been an exciting last couple of weeks for loan officers and the mortgage market. A couple weeks ago, we were seeing that rates for 30 year fixed mortgages were hovering around 7.7%. We were at 7.722 weeks ago when we recorded this video today, mortgage News daily survey showing us 7.92%. Mortgage rates and rates have really trended up for most of the year. And if we look at the week over week change or two week change, in this case, we’re seeing a 0.2% uptick. And what had happened over the past few weeks is they’d actually started to go down and then they’ve been climbing up again and we’re edging towards 8%. A lot of places are offering eight or more percent right now for 30 year fixed rates, but the survey average, at least as of 10 17, is at 7.92%.

We all know that the mortgage rates have had a big impact or effect on the housing market in the Seattle area and higher price markets and really everywhere across the us. But as we continue to see these rates climbing, what’s interesting is housing prices haven’t really changed much over the past year, and we talked about that in the most recent Seattle real estate market update in the King County and Snohomish County real estate market updates. If you haven’t seen those yet, make sure that you go check those out on the channel and subscribe so that you can see those on a regular basis. In this video though, we’re looking at how changes are happening week over week, more towards inventory and supply versus pricing and that specific type of data. So if you want to see more of the prices and the numbers, that’s where you’re going to see those things.

And here we’re looking at numbers that are specifically tailored towards the inventory, increase in inventory, decrease in inventory. Now let’s transition over to some of the stats here. And we’re looking at data from the past week in King and Snohomish County for single family residential homes. And we’re going to be looking back two weeks because we didn’t film a video last week for the market watches. So just bear in mind that the data that we’re comparing with is two weeks old, not one week, which is normal in our videos, and that it was the end of the month. So some of the numbers, specifically the pendings and the sold listings will be a little bit higher than normal. But if we’re looking at the new listings here, we saw 407 new listings in King Snohomish County over the past week. That is down from the beginning slash end of the month timeframe that we filmed the last video in at 5 0 1, we saw 4 67, we saw a decline in price reductions. We have 351 over the past week as opposed to 382. A couple weeks back. Contingent purchases have remained relatively stable here. We had 21 over the past week in King in Snohomish County versus 20 a couple weeks back. And last week, I believe it was 25 when I took a quick peak. But for people that are looking to sell before they buy, there are opportunities right now. And I think I mentioned that my house was under contract contingent on a buyer selling their home, and currently they’re pending on that sale. So we’re moving forward. Our tentative closing date is Halloween, so hopefully we can continue moving forward here all the way to the finish line.

Things are looking good. So far. The expired listings, we had 45 versus 73. Pretty normal to see the larger number at the end of the month again, so not too much to say there, but the pending listings down 628 versus 698 at the end of the month, and the sold listings 504 down quite a bit from the 5 97 at the end of the month. Again, end of the month usually is when we see the most. But what I’ll point out is that we had more sold listings than we did new listings again, so that just means that we’re seeing inventory going down. We also saw a significantly larger number of pending listings. So those are, again, listings that were already pending inspection or feasibility, something like that, and they got closer to being sold or brand new pendings. Typically, the large majority of those are new pending sales.

And as we’re looking at the stats, we’re just seeing that more things are coming off the market than going on the market, which has been our story off and on all year. And that’s a big reason why prices, I mentioned that at the beginning haven’t changed as much as maybe some would’ve thought. Now we’re well below the highs of the spring of 2022 in Seattle, Bellevue, and really all of the surrounding region, and that’s something we’ve been following. But as far as the current market and what’s going on right now, we’re seeing higher interest rates. We’re seeing significantly fewer listings, and we’re also seeing fewer buyers. But so far, the buyers and the sellers have remained relatively similar. So we haven’t seen a big uptick in inventory or a massive decline, but right now we find ourselves in a, I would say, a seller’s market. Still, there’s not a lot of negotiating power for buyers. There is some, but I think the biggest advantage for buyers is just transparency. Right now in 2021 and 2022, at least at the beginning of the year, there was a lot of upward pressure on prices. So people were making an offer, but then they were paying just ridiculous amounts over the asking price. You’re essentially just throwing a dart and hoping that your dart is better than somebody else’s. And right now, yes, homes are selling for more than asking price on some occasions, and there is more competition, but overall, homes are selling a lot closer to the asking price, and it’s a lot more clear for buyers what they’re going to be paying, whether it’s just a little bit over asking price, or maybe if it’s sat on the market, a little bit of negotiating room downwards. And for sellers, yeah, everybody wants their house to sell with multiple offers and sell really quickly. But sellers in general, if your house is priced where it should be with the market, you’re going to be selling your house relatively quickly and for pretty close to the asking price.

Thanks so much for watching this week’s Seattle Housing Market Watch. If you’ve got some value out of this video, I would love it if you gave it a thumbs up if you haven’t subscribed to the channel yet. I’d love to continue to bring valuable content to you. And if you know somebody who might be able to benefit from this video, please share it with them.