Snohomish County Real Estate Market Update | August 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 August, 2022. The market is definitely starting to normalize a little bit here. I think sellers are starting to accept the fact that houses are not selling for the same price that they were. And I think buyers are also doing the same. I think buyers maybe went from this fear of missing out where they’re like, oh my gosh, I need to buy a house to, oh my gosh, what happens if I buy a house right now? Those questions are changing to me, like, am I gonna miss out on even ever being able to buy a house? And now people are asking me, well, if I buy a house, am I gonna be underwater and in trouble in the next six months? So I think buyer’s fear has shifted, but at the same time I think their fear around interest rates too.

I think interest rates have normalized, which has caused a little bit of a okay, you know, I can see what my payment’s gonna be. And I think there’s an acceptance of that. Cause I think the higher interest rates was initially a shock to the system. but again, acceptance of that I think has caused some normalization too in the market. Now, as we look at the stats in Snohomish County, I think we’re seeing a modest change in the new listings. we did see a decrease, which is normal for this time of year during the summer, but we also saw a drop from last year. So not as many new listings, about 4.2% less than last year in the same month, pending sales down 19.8%, which is significant. But we also had more pending sales this month in Sonoma County than we had last month.

So that’s an interesting, and I would say positive thing for the housing market. Closed sales are down month over month and also down 33.4% for the year over year numbers, which is significant. I want to point that out. Days on market also up almost a hundred percent. So eight days on market last year, 15 days on market this year, media and sales price is up in Snohomish County, 8.6% year over year, $760,000. But that is down from last month. Average sales price also down from last month, but up 14% year over year, $844,800. Looking at percentage of list price received, we’re seeing houses selling just 0.2% above asking price on average, which is down 6.1% from last year. So last year we’re seeing a lot of multiple offers situations. If we look at the percentage of the original asking price though, and I think this is an important number for us to be looking at when we’re looking at the market shifting, 98%, 98% of the original asking price.

So again, that means a lot of houses are having those price reductions or accepting offers for less, which spells opportunity for buyers. I think in the market, if we’re looking at the inventory numbers, so that’s the amount of houses on the market. We saw more than a hundred percent jump in that number. 1,810 houses for sale in Snohomish County, but 829 last year. So big jump there and that show, and that reflects in the supply numbers. When we start looking at what’s the amount of houses per buyer, you know, inventory numbers, we’ve got 1.9 months of inventory versus the 0.8 months of inventory last year. Again, more than a hundred percent jump and overall, right? We’re seeing this trend of more houses on the market, more options for buyers, and that means that sellers are competing for buyers versus buyers competing for houses. And that’s a shift.

That means that there might be multiple options that a buyer can consider instead of one or two. And that changes the negotiations and that’s why we’re seeing houses start to sell for less. But a another big change is we’re seeing houses where buyers are able to add in contingencies to protect themselves, inspection contingencies and financing contingencies and other types of protections in the contract that they were maybe removing or adding in incentives for the sellers like free rent backs and things like that, they’re able to start taking those things back and bringing things more into their favor. So with the amount of inventory that we have on the market, still a, what we would call a seller’s market, where sellers have more leverage, but it’s starting to equal out a little bit. So at this point, as a buyer, there’s opportunity in the market for you to maybe buy a house with less competition, maybe even a better price, right, than some of your neighbors paid recently.

You’ve also got the ability, what I’m seeing now is contingent offers contingent on the sale of a house purchases. And that is an opportunity that was non-existent. And I think you’ve also got the benefit of way more houses on the market and options. But for sellers, you still are able to sell for, as we’re looking at the data, 8.6% more right than you were last year, even though things have slowed down a little bit. So it’s not doom and gloom for sellers. Houses are still selling, but you just have to have the proper expectations. It’s going to take a few weeks, it might even take a couple months depending on the pricing structure and what you are willing to accept out of the gate and how in line you want to get with where the market’s at, if that makes sense. I think the Snohomish County housing market is starting to normalize here and stabilize, we are seeing more pending sales over the past few weeks than we are new listings, which means we’re starting to see a decrease. Again, it’s not reflected yet in that inventory. So end of August, September, even when some of those houses start to close, I think we’re gonna be seeing some

Of these not necessarily reversing, but stabilizing. And that’s a good sign. I think. positives, interest rates are stabilizing a little bit in the kinda low fives right now. Over the past week, I think it was 5.35% on mortgage news daily today as of eight nine. So that’s a good thing for buyers. I think buyers, again, are accepting those payments or at least the reality of higher interest rates for the moment. And I think sellers are aware that buyers aren’t paying what they were willing to pay even a few months back. Thanks so much for watching my Snohomish County Real Estate Market update for August, 2022. If you want to connect about your situation buying or selling in Snohomish County, I’d love to be a resource for you. And if you wanna see more videos like this on a regular basis, please subscribe.