Seattle Real Estate Market Update | February 2018

Wow! Seattle’s real estate market continues its upward climb, setting a new median sales price record in January.

In case you missed it, you can see my predictions for 2018 here.

 

[Video Transcript]

Hey, y’all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent here with Real Property Associates. This is my monthly market update for the month of February. I want to mix it up. I was talking with one of my business coaches. He told me, “Zach, these updates are great, but they get too far into the facts for them to be relevant for everyone.” So what I want to do is I want to change up the format. I’m still going to give you an update on the market, but I’m going to keep it high level, and I also want to incorporate stories into this a little bit as well so you can see what’s going on in my world as a real estate agent and also in the life of my clients. So I’m going to keep them practical and also add a little bit more of a personal touch to these on a monthly basis.

Now, I will still dive into the numbers a lot more heavily in quarterly updates, which I will link up below in these videos when applicable. So I’ll do my first quarterly update in April, and you’ll see them each quarter. So, without further ado, I’m going to dive in.

And this month’s story, I want to talk about some friends from college and also friends from church, my friends Ethan and Sierra. They bought their first house. Congratulations, guys, if you’re watching this. I’m really excited for you. They just got to move into their house a couple weeks ago after doing a rent-back to the sellers. Some of you when you bought your house had to do that as well in order to win a competitive situation.

In this case, we searched for a few months, and Ethan and Sierra are very precise people. So we looked and we thought, and when we actually made our offer, they came out really aggressive and we beat out 10 other offers and got their first house that they offered on. So really excited for them.

It’s fun to work with friends and family members. That’s always great. I love meeting clients online, which a lot of my clients come from there, and I also love working with referrals from friends, not only because I get to help them, but I also get to help you help them, essentially. So it’s really fun to really just continue to build relationships, which is really what I love about my job.

Now, let’s shift to the market a little bit. Seattle set a new median sales price record in the month of January, which is a first year at 743,500. This beats last June’s record high last year at 735. So we’re in January, and we’ve already eclipsed last year’s high. Last year, that happened in February, which was earlier than normal. So we’re already doing that again here this year but even faster.

And just from a practical standpoint, the last few weeks making offers with clients, I’m seeing 17, 20 offers, 14 on another one, 9 on another one. We’re really starting to see the competition level picking up again, which is really what drives the price up. So we’re here already. Buyers, the application here, if you’re thinking about buying a house or you know somebody that’s thinking about buying a house, this is the time to get started.

We’ve already started into that upshift for the year, and the longer you wait, the more you’re going to end up paying, but also, something to keep an eye on is the interest rates. So if you know somebody that’s thinking about buying, let them know. Interest rates, at least with the lenders I’ve been talking to, are expected to go up a little bit. They already have a little bit. So their purchasing power might go down, and prices are going to continue to climb. I’m very confident in that. So that’s the application for buyers.

Sellers, if you or somebody you know is thinking about making a move soon, this is prime time. Normally, you were hitting in April, May, and it’s going to be a good time to sell then, but we’ve started that already. So if you’re thinking about making a move, now is the time to start having those conversations to get the house ready to sell. It typically takes a couple months to go from getting the house ready to putting it on the market. So if you’re thinking about a April, May timeframe, well, it’s already February. We’re in mid-February right now, so it’s time to at least start having this conversation.

I want to be a resource for you. I want to be your real estate agent. If you have questions about the market or you want to talk a little bit more about buying or selling, feel free to reach out. If you know somebody that’s looking to make a move, I would love to help them and provide great service to them. Thank you so much for watching, and I will talk to you next month. Bye for now.