Seattle Real Estate Market Update | May 2019
Video Summary
Here are my latest thoughts on the Seattle Real Estate Market: The Seattle real estate market is rebounding, with three months in a row of price growth and a significant decrease in days on market. Seattle area home prices are down from where they were at the same time last year, but up considerably from where they were in early 2019.
Relevant links
- Last month’s market update – Seattle Real Estate Market Update April 2019
Video Transcript
Hey, I’m Zach McDonald your real estate agent with Real Property Associates and this is my Seattle Real Estate Market Update for the month of May 2019. In this video, we’re going to talk about the stats from April. We’re going to talk about a story from a past client, and we’re also going to talk about some application to you. So we’ll start off with a story. I start every market update off with the story. Today, we’re going to talk about Tim and Sarah. They were referred to me by the Galbraith family. If you guys are watching this, thank you so much for the connection. I love taking great care of your referrals.
Tim and Sarah were and are first time home buyers and they had a modest budget for the Seattle area, and especially where they wanted to be there weren’t a ton of options at the moment. So one of the things that happens every once in a while is I have off-market opportunities. I had a seller that was referred to me by another business person. Kevin Smith if you’re watching this, thanks so much for that connection too. Kevin connected me with one of his friends. He didn’t want to list his house, but he did want to get it sold off-market because it was an estate sale and didn’t want to have to deal with much of the hassle and hoopla that comes with listing.
So when we talked afterward, it was just kind of like one of those aha moments like, “This is the perfect house for Tim and Sarah.” And so I talked with the seller, he was like, “Yeah, cool. If you have clients that’d be great.” So I brought Tim and Sarah through, they loved the house and we were able to get a really good price for them, and also a good price for the seller so that he could move on with the sale. So at this point, everybody’s happy. Tim and Sarah have a little bit of a remodel project ahead of them. So, Time and Sarah, if you guys are watching this, it was so great to work with you. Thanks for the opportunity to serve you on your first home purchase.
Now, let’s talk about the stats. I know many of you come here for the stats, so let’s dive in here really quick. The median sales price and this is something that we follow every month, but even more interesting as of recently, the median sales price in the city of Seattle last month, $745,000, which if we compare with the same time last year is down about 7% from where we were at the same time last year. Now, a couple of things to note. Countywide we’re down about 4.7% King Countywide and Snohomish County’s actually up just a tiny bit, but pretty much even from where it was at the same time last year.
A couple of things to note about the median sales price and kind of the market in general right now. Since January, the low about $685,000 median sales price, the prices have climbed about 8.75% in the Seattle market. This is the third month in a row as well that home prices have increased. We’re kind of entering into what we would call prime-time in the Seattle real estate so I would suspect, unless we have something crazy happen, that we would continue to see home prices rise for the next few months at least maybe modestly like we’ve seen, but as I said, 8.75% from where we were in January is pretty significant and kind of right along the lines with what I was predicting. I believe I said about 5%, three to 5% total for the year, so we’ve already seen that growth start to happen here.
Now, homes are selling above the asking price again. I’ve talked about this in my past few updates that there is more competition in the market. Buyers and sellers, sellers, if you’re specifically in Seattle, there area lot more multiple offers happening. Again, it’s not every property but we are seeing pre-inspections again. I am advising certain clients to do those, depending on the house, but at the same time, your house isn’t just going to sell if you price it too high. So there’s a fine balance to it. If your house is priced well and it’s priced within that market range, you’re going to get your home sold relatively quickly as opposed to what we were seeing. And that is reflected in the median days on market. That’s just the amount of time that your house is on the market. Last month, Seattle was seven days on the market, which is the same as last year, Shoreline nine days, Edmund seven days, Lynnwood 12 days. All relatively low numbers compared to what we were seeing in the late fall, early winter when we were up around 30 days plus in some spots.
Now, we’ve seen a few other trends, which are kind of interesting we’ll talk about real quick. So we’ve seen more listings on the market than we have in past years. We’ve also seen more pending sales and more closed sales. So really, even though inventory is a little bit higher, we’re at about 1.8 months of supply in the city of Seattle, we’re seeing homes sell and keep selling. We’re not seeing that even though there are more homes coming on the market, we’re not seeing that inventory number rising, which I think is a good sign. There’s a lot more activity buyer activity right now in the market than we’ve seen even in past years, which is an encouraging sign for the market as a whole.
Now, everybody always asks me, “Okay, where’s the market heading?” And this is going to be specifically somebody maybe that’s going to be buying their first house. And it’s so hard to predict. Right. I talk about every month, I’m not a prophet, I don’t have a crystal ball, but from what I’m seeing, I don’t suspect we’re going to see a huge cliff we did last year. I’m much more of the opinion that we will see I think home prices decline a little bit.
They do every fall and winter. It’s not an uncommon thing. I don’t I think we’ll see the drastic drop that we saw last year. It wouldn’t surprise me if we saw a little bit of a decline more in that two to 3% range, which is normal for the time of year. But I think as we get to the end of the year, we’ll start to see prices right around either even or maybe even up a little bit from where they were last year as we get to the fall. As I’m reporting this, I’m like, yeah, we’re down about 7% from the same time last year. I think we’re going to see that number be either more neutral or even maybe positive as we get towards the end of the year. Now, those are just my thoughts. Take them or leave them.
Now, buyers, people are always asking me, “Okay, is this a good time to buy? When should I buy?” Buying right now, the perks are the market is down still 7% from the high where it was, so that’s a positive, right? If you’re a buyer and you’re trying to time the market on a yearly basis, you’re going to want to wait until the fall. That’s going to be your best time to get the best price typically in a given year. At the same time, you’re also going to have the least amount of options, so these next few months’ kind of prime selling season, that’s when you’re going to have the most availability of inventory. The most selection.
You might pay a little bit more this time of year, but again, it’s hard to predict. Home prices could keep going up. They’ve done that in the past few years we’ve seen or they never go down. They just keep going up, so hard to predict, but if you’re trying to time it, usually the fall is the best, but if you want to buy a house in the fall or by the fall you’re going to want to get started. It typically takes two to three months to finish a purchase from the beginning to the end of the process.
Now, sellers, this is the best time of the year. The next couple of months, between May and beginning of July, is kind of the sweet spot for listing your home. Again, like I just said, there are the most amount of buyers in the market and you have the most amount of competition in the market as well. You’re going to have more homes to compete against, but you’re going to have a lot more buyers that are in the market looking for your home. So that’s going to get you, theoretically, the top dollar for the time of year. Plus, if you live in the Seattle area, you know that the weather’s the nicest to from about now until September. We still have another month or so of the spring weather, but the flowers are out. Your yard looks nice, the weather’s beautiful. We just had 80 degrees last year and now it’s raining and 60, but that’s Seattle in the springtime.
So I hope this was helpful for you. In fact, I know it was valuable and if you’re watching this and you are a first time home buyer, maybe you moved here from somewhere else. I loved to be a resource for you and sit down and talk about your individual situation. I mean, this is more of a general video. It applies broadly, but if you’re curious about how this video applies to your specific situation, I’d love to be a resource for you. It’s monthly, even weekly I get people that reach out to me on my YouTube channel and they want to learn more about their situation.
They want to learn, “Okay, how do I go from renting to purchasing a home in Seattle?” And if you’re watching this video and you’re a seller, I’d love to be a resource for you and bring value to your situation however I can. Thanks so much for watching. And if you did get value from this video, please consider subscribing to my channel. You’ll get more videos just like this on a monthly basis, and you’ll find other awesome content regarding the Seattle real estate market right here on this channel. Bye for now.
