Seattle Real Estate Market Update | June 2019
Video Summary
Here are my latest thoughts on the Seattle Real Estate Market: Seattle home prices have rebounded considerably since January, although still down slightly from where they were at the same time last year. This is simultaneously encouraging for homeowners and possibly discouraging for would-be homebuyers hoping for the market to become more affordable. Where is the Seattle housing market headed for the remainder of 2019 and beyond?
Relevant links
- Last month’s market update – Seattle Real Estate Market Update May 2019
Video Transcript
Hey, y’all. Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates and this is my June 2019 Seattle real estate market update. Now, in each of these updates, I talk about the stats, I share a story, and then I talk about a little bit of application to you. Let’s start off with the story. And this month we’re going to talk about Kyle and Myra. They’re past clients that recently actually purchased a house in Cle Elum, Washington, which is on the other side of the mountains from Seattle.
Now, I helped Kyle purchase his first house. It was a condo in Edmonds, and he, at the time, was just looking for a small place to live in the Edmonds, Lynnwood area. Now he started dating Myra. They decided they wanted to move over to the eastern side of the state, and he reached out. He said, “Hey, Zach. Had a great experience. I’d love to work with you again.” And I said, “Awesome. I’m so excited for you guys. I don’t think I’m going to be the best fit for you as your real estate agent over in Cle Elum.”
So what I was able to do is connect them with another great agent over in that area. They actually were able to find a house on their first trip out. They loved it. Then they just closed on it. So I’m going to show the picture here up on the screen. But isn’t that awesome? Isn’t that a super cool log cabin? I mean, it’s kind of that dream vacation house, but they’re actually gonna make it their home. So really excited for them. If you guys are watching this, super excited for you and your home purchase.
If you’re watching this here too and maybe you’re a past client of mine or somebody that’s maybe going to be moving out of the state or out of the area. I have a lot of good connections to other real estate agents in the state, but also around the country. I’m part of the coaching company that has a lot of the best real estate agents in the whole country. And so I have relationships with those people. So if you’re looking to make a move out of the area or relocate, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me as well and I can make a connection to somebody in your marketplace.
Now let’s jump to the stats. This is everybody’s favorite part and I think it’s my favorite part too. So in Seattle, and we’re going to peek at the notes here to make sure we get this all right, last month we had a $772,500 median sales price. Now that’s down about 3.7% from where we were last year at just over 800 thousand. Now, in this part, I want to do a little bit of a recap, a little annual recap, because we had quite an adjustment in the market from last May until this May, and love to kind of just quickly run through some stats you can kind of get a picture of, “Okay, this is where we were last year in May, which was the high point of the market so far, last May, to where we’re at today.”
So bear with me here really quick. So last May, May 2018, we had a median sales price of just over 800 thousand, 800,770. We had the average house selling for 8% over the asking price. The average house was on the market for a median of seven days and there was 1.1 months of inventory. Okay, the supply was pretty low, a little higher than it had been, but pretty low still. Now for May 2019 we had a median sales price of $772,500 again, like I said, just down about 4%, just under 4%. The average house is selling just above the asking price. So the median was at the asking price and the average was 0.8% above asking price. So we’re not talking about a significant amount there. The median days on market, seven, so about the same actually, the median house.
Now, the average house though in Seattle was selling in 21 days versus 13 days. So a pretty significant jump, but still pretty quickly I would say. And then the months of supply were at about 2.4 months of supply in Seattle, a little bit more in some of the suburbs, on the north end at least, the ones that I follow more closely. And it’s interesting to kind of just look at the market and see how the market’s changed. Now, we were down more than 15% from May all the way until January. So there’s a huge correction in the market, and we’ve seen a rebound, which I was thinking we would this year.
Now the big question is where are we going? Where’s the market going? And people always ask me that and I always make the same joke. I wish I had a crystal ball. And you might think on this show that that’s what I’m doing is kind of predicting the market. And really, I have a knowledge of the market and I work in the market, so I share my thoughts and my opinions, but I’m far from perfect. So I’ll kind of give you my best stab here. What I’ve been talking about this year is if you follow the other market updates, maybe go take a peek at a couple of those. The market has picked up significantly. Inventory tightened up a little bit. We saw home prices go up. And this is the time of year where you see the most new listings, but you also see the most amount of buyers so it makes sense that you’d see the prices go up.
Now what’s going to happen the rest of the year, every year there is a seasonal correction with the exception of maybe a couple of years. And typically that’s around 4 to 5%, and that’s more normal, right? Not The 15 plus percent correction that we saw last year. So this year, what are we going to see? Is the market going to continue to remain where it’s at? Is it going to correct? Is it going to go down? Is it going to go up? Typically, in a year you see home prices in May or June is kind of the top. So those are the homes that have closed in May, homes that closed in June. And it’s usually one of those two months. So is this year, maybe it’s going to be June. Maybe home prices are going to be up a little bit from where they were last year to this year in June.
But then what’s going to happen for the rest of the year? And as a professional in the market and, seeing what we’ve seen this year, I think we saw a large portion of that correction in Seattle already. Now, just be based on the fact that the market’s already picked back up and we have a lot of supply in the market right now more than we have in the past. We’re at about, like I said, 2.4 months of supply, which is a lot more than we’ve had, but still, it’s still a seller’s market. Sellers are still the ones dictating the price and the terms in general.
But what we’ve seen is also a lot of pending sales, a lot of sales, and so we’re kind of…we are slowly inching up in inventory, which is normal for this time of year, but we’re seeing a lot of that inventory turn. It’s not on the market forever. It’s not sitting for 100 days, 200 days. My thoughts, my predictions, if you want to call it my imaginary crystal ball, is I would say we’re going to see home prices drop off, but more in that normal 4 to 5% for the rest of the year, which would mean that we’re going to have home prices on average, at the end of the year, actually above where they were at last year.
So this year we’re … This month we’re talking about how we’re down about 3.7 to 4% on prices, but if we get to the end of the year and we’re only down a little bit, we’re going to be up still from where we were last year. So those are my thoughts on the market. You can take it or leave it, to be honest. But that’s where I think I see the market going here for the rest of 2019. 2020, I don’t even want to talk about that yet. But as a real estate agent, as even a prospective home buyer, my wife and I actually, we saw a house the other day that we were kind of curious about, and we have a great house, but we’re looking at this house and I’m not worried about the market. And like I’m looking at this house, seriously considering it, not thinking, “Oh man, there’s going to be a big crash. I shouldn’t buy it.”
So I’m not telling you something I’m not actually believing myself if that makes sense. Thanks so much for watching my Seattle real estate market update here. I know that it was valuable to you. So please consider dropping a comment and saying, “Hi.” I love your contributions to this video and your feedback. Also, please consider giving a thumbs up to this channel. And as always, if you are watching this and you have real estate needs, you’re thinking, “Man, I want to buy a house, or maybe I need to sell my house.” And you have questions about that, you want to talk about the process or your individual situation, I’d love to be a resource for you. Bye for now.
