Snohomish County Real Estate Market Update | February 2023

Hey y’all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my Snohomish County Real Estate Market update for February, 2023.

All right, Snohomish County. We’re starting to see some of that competition returning to the market. We’re starting to see buyers coming back, and we’re also starting to see really massive negative year over year numbers. So there’s some encouraging signs, there’s going to be some negative data, and I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. It’s been a rough, rough second half of 2022. I think 2023 started off pretty well so far, and I, I’ll show you that. I know December was really slow and that’s reflected here in some of this data. specifically the amount of closed sales in January 29.4% down year over year, 374. Closed sales. Not very many, but I think some of the encouraging things are going to be the new listings. We saw more this last month than we did the previous month. We also saw more pending sales than the previous month.

New listings was down 11.4% year over year. but pending sales was up 6.5%, which means that we’re starting to see that buyer activity returning, which is a good sign days on market in Snohomish County, 44 versus 14 last year. So a massive jump in the days on market. I think a lot of those houses were houses that have been sitting a little bit during the end of the fall and heading into the winter, and they’re now sold. I would suspect that this number’s gonna start kicking down over the next few months as inventory is shrinking and houses are starting to sell a little bit faster, and it’s a little bit easier to price too. I think in the summer and the fall and even early winter, it was a little bit more challenging to decide where to list a home, but I think right now there’s been a lot more data and there’s more history there for people to make that decision.

So I would suspect that we’re gonna see things not sitting on the market as long over the next few months. but again, we’ll see. Median sales price in Snohomish County was down 1.4% year over year. It is up though month over month at $689,970. Average sales price also down slightly 1.2%, but also down slightly from the previous month. $758,099. I’m just gonna say this down, 1.4%. Pretty good given all the changes that we’ve seen. Now, I will also say this, that as we went through the spring last year, that’s where we saw the biggest jumps. So people that bought in 2021 and even the very early part of 22 are probably not much underwater as far as home values go, but it’s, I think some of those people that bought in the spring that are gonna have to sit on their house a little bit.

But I would be optimistic and not discouraged if I, it was a buyer in 2022 because home prices did decline fairly quickly, but they were increasing fairly substantially. And given the market starting to shift back, I wouldn’t be surprised to see things bounce a little bit quicker, not a slow, steady bounce over time. I think we’re gonna see pretty big jumps when the market starts to heat up again. as far as the percentage of list price received a pretty big delta here, 7.2% less. 98.4% was the average of the list price received, but last year was 6% over asking price. So quite a bit more competition. I think we’re gonna be a lot closer to the asking price this next month. So the next update, we’ll get to verify that, but I think we’ll be a lot closer to asking price inventory of homes up quite a bit.

but we’re seeing that supply numbers continuing to go down. Last month the supply number was 1.1 months of supply, and this last month 0.9 months. So we’re seeing that slowly declining and it’s continuing. Last year again, was super, super low all-time, lows of 0.3 months, essentially one week. It’s like every house that came on the market was selling immediately, but we’re seeing that that number is dwindling, which is a sign that we’re gonna start to see some more competition over the homes that are available, especially given that we’re seeing an uptick in that pending sales activity. And across the board, listings are getting more showings open houses are having more attendance, so the buyer activity is starting to pick up. Again, that’s anecdotal. It’s hard to, there’s no hard data here for me to share with you, but it’s experiential. I’ve seen it myself, and I’ve been told that by other agents in my office and other agents that I know.

So I think that’s a good sign if you’re a homeowner. I also think it’s a good sign if you’re a buyer, there’s confidence returning to the market just like there’s confidence returning in the stock market. Now, let’s highlight a few spots here in Snohomish County. I know many of you really like to take a peek at this. Now, the median sales price in Snohomish County, again, $689,970, and I’m just gonna go through here for you and, and do this a little differently. I’m just gonna highlight the median sales price here for the different cities here in stylish county. So Edmunds was 749,000 Mount Lake Terrace, 650,500 Linwood, 815,000 Muckle to 819 500 Mill Creek, 837,500 Everett, 617,000 Bothel Bothel. You were up 14.1%, 1,125,110. Now, parts of Bler and King County, but I always put Bothel here in the Snohomish County, one Snohomish median sales price, 813,750 stanwood’s, median sales price, 501,500.

Lake Stevens, 710,000, Arlington, 585,000. Granite Falls, 517,500 Sultan 505,000 Monroe, 799,000 Gold Bar, 327,500 Darrington, 325,000 Briar. You didn’t have a closed sale. That’s exciting. Marysville 525,000 in Woodway. Well, Woodway, you didn’t have a close sale either. Alright, Snohomish County, if you are a buyer considering a purchase in Snohomish County, I think you gotta be on the lookout for the competition. Again, the past six months, we’ve been talking about getting a house below, asking price, negotiating the terms on the contract, and also maybe having the seller help pay for your mortgage rate to be bought down or something like that. Now, those were all relevant things over the past six, seven months. I think the trend is going to be away from that here over the next few months at least, and maybe start to disappear all together again, the competition’s returning and whenever there’s competition, the seller’s picking the best offer on the table.

There’s no if, ands or buts about it. They, they don’t care that you would like to have the interest rate bought down anymore because somebody else is willing to buy the house without it. And I’ve had some listings sell without those buy downs. I’ve had them sell without seller concessions. And on the same side with buyers, I’ve had buyers start to pay over asking price because there’s competition and remove those contingencies again. So I think as a buyer, the expectation needs to start shifting back to, yeah, we’re in a more balanced market, but it’s still leaning towards sellers and it’s starting to lean more heavily towards sellers as the amount of supply dwindles for sellers. Prices are still down. Buyers are not paying what they were paying last year in the spring, but they’re not paying that much less than they were paying at the same time last year.

So I hope that’s encouraging. If you’re a homeowner, I would say to you, if you’re somebody who’s thinking about selling, that you’re gonna wanna start prepping for that sooner rather than later. Number one, it takes time to do it, but it’s also heading into the season of the year where you’re gonna be able to get the best bang for your buck. So if you wanna take advantage of the competition and you are ready to make a move, I would start prepping and laying the groundwork for that here as we’re heading towards the spring. Thanks so much for watching this Snohomish County Real Estate Market update. If you made it all the way to the end, I know you got some value out of this video, so please consider subscribing to the channel and if there’s any way I can bring value to your real estate situation, whether you’re thinking about buying, selling, or investing in real estate, please don’t hesitate to reach out.