Seattle Real Estate Market Update | July 2021
Video Summary
Here are my latest thoughts on the Seattle Real Estate Market: We are halfway through this year and still seeing a hot housing market here in the Seattle area. We’re looking at a $100,000 increase in median sales price since the beginning of this year. Most of these higher increases are contributed from North Seattle.
- Last month’s market update – Seattle Real Estate Market Update June 2021
Video Transcript
Hey all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my Seattle real estate market update for July 2021. We’re now at the midway point of 2021. We’ve had a crazy hot start to the beginning of the year in the Seattle real estate market. I know a lot of other real estate markets across the country have likewise had really hot starts as well. What we’re going to do in this update is we’re going to follow the normal pattern. We’re going to go through a quick client story. We’re going to talk about the stats. We’re going to talk a little bit about application here towards the end. I also want to give you a little perspective here on how the market has adjusted from the beginning of the year until now.
This month’s client story, we’re going to feature the North family. They recently sold a house of theirs in Mountlake Terrace, which is a suburb of Seattle, just on the north side. They listed their house for $650,000, and it recently sold for $800,000, a little over 20% above the asking price, so super awesome result for them. They’ve relocated out of state somewhere nice and sunny, and they spent about the same amount of money to buy a house that was more than two times as big and had a swimming pool, so excited for them and their next adventure. Grateful to get to be part of the process with them. I think it’s a good Testament just to how hot the suburbs have been. I mean, more than 20% over asking price. The house was in good shape, really good condition, but not completely updated and relatively small if we’re going to be talking about sizes of houses, so I’m really impressed with their result. I think this whole year has been a lot of 10, 15, 20% over asking price. I think at this point, we’re going to start to see things slowing down a little bit. I’ll share that as we continue on an update. For the North family, they timed it perfectly, had an awesome result.
All right, now let’s jump into the stats, which I know is why many of you are here. You want to know what’s going on in the Seattle housing market. If we look at the city of Seattle specifically, we were just down from the record high last month at $882,000 as a median sales price. For comparison to last year, 12.3% up year over year. If you look back to the beginning of the year, now that we’re at the midway point, we were at $776,000 in December 2020, and now as we fast forward, we’re up at $882,000, so a little bit more than a $100,000 increase in the median sales price year over the past six months. Quite a jump.
Now, the numbers are even more dramatic as we look over at Bellevue and the east side. If we look at Bellevue as a whole, median sales price was $1.6 million last month, which is up 54.2% year over year, which is a little bit mind blowing to me. In December, when we started the year, home prices in Bellevue, the median sales price, $1.225 million, and now we’re up to $1.6 million, which is ridiculous. Most of the east side though has followed suit. If we look at Kirkland, we were up 40% year over year, Redmond up 53.1%. Even Bothell was up 38.2% year over year. Even if we look to the suburbs on the north side of Seattle, we were seeing a lot more growth there as well, and prices are actually catching up in the suburbs to the city of Seattle, so much of the north side and the east side is now starting to mirror or even crush, if you’re on the east side, the prices in the city of Seattle.
Many factors play into that. Part of it’s the newer houses on the east side and in the suburbs. You’re also seeing larger lots, larger houses. There’s also things like politics that impact where and why people live where they live. Those factors along with some of the work from home trends we’ve been talking about in these updates have impacted where people want to live and why they’re choosing to live there. Now, people are going to be returning to work, which will be interesting, in the office. A lot of the tech companies are talking about having people in the office part of the time, at home part of the time. I still think that lends itself to people being willing to commute a little bit farther if they’re only having to do it a few days a week versus every single day.
We also have the expanding light rail up north, which is continuing, and over to the east side. That project will continue on and has made some really good progress. We’ve got some things that are changing transportation wise, workplace wise, that I think will continue to help push and increase home values on the north end and east side while also promoting growth in the city as well. Stay tuned on that. Now, county-wide, which you don’t spend a lot of time in these updates, but I will at least touch on it and then link up the King County and Snohomish County updates in the description below. So you can check those out if you want to get a little bit more focused in on the specific counties. In King County, one of the counties that I service, which was where Seattle and Bellevue and a lot of the east side suburbs are, we saw a median sales price of $867,250, an increase of 19.5% overall. On the east side, Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, those cities are blowing away this number. If we go to the south side of King County, you’re seeing a little bit less of the 30, 40% increases, so that’s going to balance out some of these numbers.
If we look at Snohomish County overall, up 28.5% year over year, and overall $848,000 is the median sales price in Snohomish County. Again, that’s some of the suburbs north of Seattle and then some suburbs even of Everett. We’ve seen massive growth overall in the city of Seattle. It’s actually lower than what we’re seeing in King County and also in Snohomish County. Again, that trend of people moving out into the suburbs, getting a little bit more space, a little bit bigger houses continues. As we continue on in the stat section here, new listings continue to come on the market, so we’re seeing more and more homes on the market, but we’re still seeing all of those houses selling, so we’re still seeing inventory selling quickly and homes are not lasting very long on the market. That story hasn’t changed at all so far in 2021.
Again, I mentioned we’re at the midway point and we’re still seeing a very, very hot market, which is customary in the Seattle market. I’ll share a few thoughts as we get to the end here about where I think we might be headed towards the end of the year, but at this point we’re still seeing a really hot market. If we look at the percentage above asking price that people are receiving, I think that’s a good indicator as well. I mean, we’re still seeing in Bellevue, we saw 13% over asking price. In Kirkland almost 10% over, 9.9%. Redmond was 12.7% over asking price. In Bothell, almost 11%, 10.9%. Over in Seattle and on the west side, again, very similar numbers. It was only 6.6% over asking price in Seattle. I mentioned Seattle is not quite as hot, but still, I mean, who doesn’t want to get an extra 6% or more on their home sale?
Shoreline was up. Edmonds was up. Lynnwood was up. All of those were in the 8 to 9%, almost 10% range. Again, we’re seeing that the competition is still there. People are still bidding up the prices. I think some context to add is that all these numbers are coming from June 2021, so these are all closings that have happened last month, sales that happened last month. The data’s all a few weeks old, okay, at this point. Just from experience, as we transition into more of the application piece, I am seeing homes not sell with multiple offers. Not every single house is selling that way. Now, granted not every house sells with multiple offers in general, but we’re seeing a large percentage of them receiving multiple offers.
I’ve had a few listings personally, and I’ve had some buyers offer on properties where they’re getting the house either right around the asking price, just above it, just below it, and then a few listings had sold at the asking price recently. I think just as I’m in the market and experiencing the market, I think we look at the data and the data speaks for itself, but at the same time, there’s that boots on the ground feel, and it does seem like we may be entering a period where instead of being red hot, that we’re going to be a little bit more warm. I don’t suspect we’re going to see a massive tumble backwards, but I think as a buyer, if you’re somebody who’s been thinking about buying a house, this might be the better climate to get into. If you have been sitting on the sidelines and sitting it out, we’re starting to see things not sell significantly over.
Again, some of the houses are still getting tons and tons of offers, but there are more opportunities. Part of that is just more houses on the market. I think part of that’s buyers that were in the market earlier have finally gotten into houses, so we’re starting to see a little bit more breathing room for buyers. Now, again, I have no clue where this is headed. I don’t have a crystal ball, but it does feel like some of the years in the past where we see more of a seasonal slowdown towards the end of the summer and into the fall, where there is a little bit more opportunity. It’s not a big tumble backwards, but there usually is a little bit of a pullback in the fall market here in Seattle, and I think this year might follow a more normal pattern, whereas last year we saw the opposite. We saw a little bit of a decline in the spring, which was super weird, but again, COVID happened. Then we saw a continual gradual increase all the way through the fall and winter, which is not normal.
I think this year might be a little bit more normal. What that means for you if you’ve been thinking about selling or you own a home, is I think we may be right at or close to whatever the peak is for the year, which means, this is the time, if you’re going to want to capitalize on where the market’s at, to take advantage of that. It’s, in my opinion, seeing where the market’s at and where it feels like it’s headed, probably going to get your best price here in the next month or two, and then I think we might see a little decline in prices, at least some of the competition, as we head into 2022. I can’t even believe we’re saying that. As a seller right now, a lot of what’s getting you the best price is the competition, and the price is being driven up. People are listing in line with the comparables and maybe even a little bit lower, and then they’re getting a big bump. If you’re not getting that big bump of 10%, well, you’re getting 10% less for your house.
I see that situation coming sooner rather than later, where your house is still going to sell quickly, but it’s not necessarily going to get 10 offers and sell 10 to 20, 30% above the asking price. I mean, there’s a video that I recorded. It was just talking about an article published in the Seattle Times, where they were talking about $300,000 over asking price on houses. I’ve had a few like that this year. It’s ridiculous. But I think there’s going to be an end to that sometime here in the near future. It’s just not possible for it to continue on. I think if you’ve been sitting on the sidelines, either way, buying or selling, it’s time to at least start thinking about it.
Thanks so much for watching my Seattle real estate market update for July 2021. I know that if you made it all the way to the end here that you’ve got some value out of this video. At the very least, please consider subscribing to my channel if you want to see these updates on a monthly basis. I also publish an update on King County market and the Snohomish County market, so those are also videos that you have access to as well as all the other videos on the channel here. If you are thinking about buying or selling in the Seattle, Bellevue areas, I’d love to be a resource for you. Feel free to reach out to me in one of the contact methods below, and I’m happy to take great care of you.
