Snohomish County Real Estate Market Update | April 2022

Hey y’all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates and this is my Snohomish County Real Estate Market update for April, 2022. Before we jump into the update, I want to just preface this with the stats coming a little bit differently this month. The stats are still extremely accurate and relevant, but they’re coming directly from the MLS softwares versus their pre-printed stats. You typically see me set here on the table in reference. I’ve got my laptop up today. We’re gonna go through the Snohomish County stats just like we normally do. We’re going to highlight a few areas in Snohomish County. And I have to admit this time we’re just going for where are houses selling for the most in Snohomish County. And we’ll also talk about some application for you towards the end. Let’s jump into the stats here and we’ll start off with the median sales price in Snohomish County.

And we have a new record, median sales price in Snohomish County last month at $800,000 up, 25.7% year over year, guys, 25.7% up the stock market was kicking butt last year. It’s not kicking butt this year. And if you bought a house now you kicked the stock market it’s butt. It’s pretty much what that means. If we’re looking at average sales price in Snohomish County, $908,211 up 31.3%, the average is being pulled up as we talk about in these videos by the more expensive houses in Snohomish County. And I do videos on that. So if you want to follow along and see the most expensive home sales every single month in Snohomish County, this is your chance to hit that subscribe button. You’ll also get to follow along with these updates as well as a lot of the other real estate content on the channel.

Alright, now back to the stats. Average percent of list price in Snohomish County. So this is how much our house is actually selling for 12.4% above the asking price, which is a little bit higher, 3.5% higher than last year. The new listings in Snohomish County, a lot 1,418 new listings last month in Snohomish County, which is 21.1% more new listings than this time last year. Pending sales are also keeping up 8.2% up year over year in pending sales. 1,203 new pending sales in March. And a few of those listings that came on at the end of the month are going pending if they haven’t already. As we speak, the homes for sale number is up 30.3% at 460 houses. Now, before we start to think, this means that there are a bunch of houses starting to stack up and the supply is starting to build. I will preface this by saying I’m gonna burst that here at the end of the video. but we’re still seeing houses selling five days median sales nine days on average, which is about 18.2% down from last year. So we’re still seeing houses sell super fast. And the supply number I mentioned, ah, there’s some more houses on the market. Supply is up year over year. 33% crazy when you hear the stat, but when you, when you consider that it went from 0.3 months to 0.4 months of inventory, well it’s not as big of a number, but we did see a little jump in Snohomish County as well as King County and some of the surrounding areas because this is the time of year where more houses are coming on the market, but we’re still seeing the houses go pending faster than they’re coming on the market.

And this is what I mentioned I’m going to share last week, so this would’ve been the week of April 1st. So the beginning of April, right after these stats came out, we had 177 new listings and 350 pending sales. So that’s where some of those lagging sales, that difference between the new listings and the pending sales gets wiped out. And that’s why I’m saying there’s not a lot of inventory starting to stack up. And I think that’s one of the concerns that people have had with the prices and the market is that what happens if interest rates go up and interest rates and supply have been two of the leading factors in the growth in the housing market around here. Well, we’re definitely seeing interest rates up and as of today four five bank rates average for the country was 4.88%, actually 4.85%. That was the weekly average, 4.88%.

And when we are looking at interest rates, they’ve been climbing all year long. And what we’re still seeing though is this amount over asking price, this competition in the market, and we’re not seeing the inventory levels really pick up in any substantial way yet. So that doesn’t mean later in the year we won’t see more supply. And what happens is when there’s more homes on the market, there’s less competition for the ones that are currently on the market. And for a lot of people it feels like this is not sustainable. There’s no way that housing prices can continue to climb and increase. And I think that it’s valid that there is a, there is a point where the market can bear the increases in prices and where it can’t. And back in 2018, we definitely saw that the market could not bear increased interest rates.They couldn’t, it couldn’t. Inventory started to climb, prices started to go for eight months in a row. It’s a lot, lots of backwards, right? A little bit more than normal. It wasn’t a seasonal slowdown, it was beyond that. It was a recession according to economists. But what we’re seeing now is interest rates climbing and we’re still seeing houses sell well above asking price, even as we’re getting close to 5%, which I thought early in the year might be a little bit of a problematic price point, but I’m seeing that there’s still a lot of buyers. So there is got, there’s gotta be a point where affordability starts to impact the pricing, but right now we’re not hitting that threshold yet. So maybe the market can’t bear it this time. if you look other places in the country, there are places in markets where the same types of houses that we have here are selling for three times, two times.

So there is room for growth, whether our market in the Seattle area is ready for that now or not remains to be seen, but at this point, we’re still seeing enough buyers in the market to keep up with the, the houses and even more. So what that means though is if you’re a buyer, is that right now you’re gonna be paying a little bit more for a house in Snohomish County than you would have in the past. And it’s, it’s not just the, the price, but it’s also the rate. So your rate is going to also be a big factor in what your actual payment for your mortgage over the life of the loan will be. with that being said, the rate that you get today isn’t necessarily the rate you keep forever. So I know for me, when I bought my house, we were at 4.25%, which was a great rate at the time.

We then refinanced down to 3.25%. They, they went down even farther. We just didn’t bother. We kept our rate. but that is an option in the future, so it’s not something you have to lock in forever. If rates keep going up, you’ll be super grateful that you got what you got. But if they go down again, which most likely in the long run, they will, at some points you’ll be able to refinance that rate. But just keep in mind when the rate’s higher, you’re paying more for the money. and if prices are higher, you’re also paying more. So it’s kind of the, it’s a tough spot to be as a buyer. I’ll, I’ll say for a seller though, the market’s still hot and this is still a great time to sell. So if you want to talk a little bit about your situation, you’re thinking about buying or selling in Snohomish County, feel free to reach out to me. I’m happy to dialogue about your specific situation. And if you haven’t subscribed yet to the channel, I urge you to do so so that we can see each other on a regular basis and we can exchange information you get to learn here about the Snohomish County market on a monthly basis. And hopefully here in the future we’ll get to connect in person.