Seattle Real Estate Market Update | October 2019
Video Summary
Here are my latest thoughts on the Seattle Real Estate Market: As we’ve seen, Seattle home prices continue to be slightly below the previous year, but the gap is shrinking. In this video, I share a client story, current stats from the Seattle Real Estate Market, relevant news, and applications for buyers and sellers in the market.
Relevant links
- Last month’s market update – Seattle Real Estate Market Update September 2019
Video Transcript
Hey, y’all. It’s, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my Seattle real estate market update for the month of October, 2019. In this video, I’m going to share a story from last month. I’m going to share some stats about the Seattle real estate market, some relevant news, and applications to you if you’re a buyer or a seller in the Seattle real estate market. Really quick, before we jump in, I do one of these market updates every month. And if you’re somebody who watches these on a regular basis, or that finds value from this video that you’re about to watch, please consider subscribing to my channel.
Let’s jump right into this month story, and this month we’re going to feature Carl and Debbie Olson. They’re the owners of Viking Motors in Everett, a car dealership where they help people get into affordable used cars. Shout out to you guys and the work that you do. Really, really appreciate it, and it definitely is needed in the community. So I met Debbie and Carl in a business networking group. We meet every week to support and encourage one another in our businesses.
They were trying to sell their rental property for sale by owner all by themselves, in addition to the great work that they’re already doing, the tiring work that they’re already doing on a regular basis. So they asked me to take the reins of getting their home marketed and getting their home sold. And thankfully, a couple weeks ago we were able to get their home sold. So thanks again so much, Carl and Debbie, for the opportunity to work with you, and I look forward to continuing to support you guys in your business as well.
Now we’re going to jump into everybody’s favorite part about these videos, the stats. Now in the city of Seattle last month, we had a median sales price of $730,000, just, just slightly below where we were at last month. And year over year, looking at the numbers here, we’re about 2.7% down year over year. So that gap that we were seeing at the beginning of the year, when we were seeing 10%, 9%, 10% year over year down, now we’re looking at smaller numbers. Last month I think we were like in that 1% to 2% range. This month up slightly on the downturn, if you want to call it that, but significantly smaller gap than we were seeing at the beginning of the year. And if you look at places like Shoreline, down only 0.7%, Edmonds down only 0.8% year over year. So that gap is starting to shrink, which is a good thing for the market.
Other things to note, new listings down again. So we’re down about almost 14% in new listings year over year, and we’re seeing the same trend between 11% to 17% in the suburbs as well on the north end of the city. Pending sales, so we’re seeing less new listings, and we’re seeing pending sales jump. And we’re, in the city of Seattle, up 23% year over year on the pending sales. We had a 727, not that that matters to you as much. I think the percentages are more important. Closed sales, again up 16.7% on closed sales. So the trend here that we’re seeing, we’re seeing fewer new listings, we’re seeing more pending sales, and we’re seeing more closed sales.
And what that means is that the supply of housing is shrinking and stabilizing. So now we’re looking at just over a couple months of inventory, and we’re actually down slightly on the amount of supply that we have in the market than we did last year. So good news. I think there was a little bit of fear that that was never going to stop. Last year at the same time, we were just seeing that supply of housing continue to go up, and we’re seeing the number of new listings skyrocketing. Pretty much the opposite of what I just shared with you is what we were seeing last year, like, “Oh, my gosh. When is this going to stop?” And we were in the middle of a eight month downturn, eight month correction in the market. So it’s nice to be on the other side of that at least for the time being, and a little bit more stable market.
A couple things to note, I’ve just shared how we’ve seen supply going down, and our median sales price may be more stabilizing, almost to kind of the same point that we were at last year at the same time. But what we’re seeing is the days on market is up significantly. So, interesting. Seattle as a whole, about 17% on the median, and the average, we’re looking at 33 days on market. Both those numbers are significantly up from the same time last year, even though we’re seeing a difference in stats.
So what we’re finding, what I’m seeing with clients myself, is that people aren’t rushing into a purchase. They’re still taking their time to evaluate the other properties on the market. There isn’t that sense of urgency that we were feeling a little over a year ago in the springtime when we were at our peak, which is a good thing. I think that’s good for the housing market, but there really is like … It’s more a relaxed feel out there for buyers. Buyers are not in as much of a rush to get the preapproval. They’re not necessarily pre-inspecting every house that they make an offer on, and sellers aren’t expecting that. So it’s a nice shift in the market.
Quick news update to add to this video here, Price Waterhouse Cooper and the Urban Land Institute just released their emerging trends in real estate report. It’s an annual report that they do. It is geared more towards investors. They interview over a thousand investors, owners, agents, economists. It’s a huge pool of people from all over the country, and they pull together data from all the different major cities. And they come up with lists of priorities of where you should be if you’re an investor looking to put your money.
And this month and this year, so looking into 2020, Seattle is now on their top 10 list again. We’ll put that up on the screen so you can take a look at that. And they’re now number four projected next year for investor demand. So Seattle fell off this list. They were on it previously. Last year they fell off that top 10, and now we’re seeing Seattle back into that number. So not only are we starting to, in my opinion, see some good signs in the Seattle market, buyer activity picking up, prices stabilizing a bit, but what we’re seeing is a national consensus more so, that the Seattle market is still, and will be, a good place to be investing in real estate, at least compared to some of the other markets.
As we wrap up today, I want to give a quick just FYI to buyers. Typically, this time of year, the next few months, is the best time in a given year to make a home purchase. It’s kind of the best case scenario where you have the most amount of supply. No, not necessarily the highest numbers, but compared to the amount of buyers in the market, there’s typically the best kind of perfect storm, if you want to call it, for the options and the competition. And typically what we see is prices going down, or at least kind of staying more the same, and a little less frenzied these next few months.
The other thing, interest rates are still really low compared to where they were at the same time last year. And just historically, they’re super low right now. So as a buyer, if you’re thinking about making a purchase … And again, the same disclaimer I’ve done in some of these other videos, you want to make sure that this is the right time for you to buy, and you’re planning to be here for a while. You’re not trying to make a quick buck.
But if that’s you and you are planning to make Seattle your home for the long haul, and you’re thinking, “Yeah, I want to buy a home soon,” this next few months might be a nice window of time where prices are going to be the best they’re going to be for the year, theoretically, and also having those low interest rates. So if you’re a buyer, this might be the time to maybe speed up that process, or look to capitalize on where we’re at in the market right now.
Thanks so much for watching my monthly market update. I love making these videos for you, and I value your attention super highly. So thanks again for watching. If you made it all the way to the end, please subscribe to my channel. I know that you found this video valuable. And if you have something to contribute, I’d love a comment down below. And lastly, if you know somebody who could benefit from this video, please share it with them. Thanks so much. Bye for now.
