Snohomish County Real Estate Market Update | December 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 December, 2022.

Now, as we jump in, we’re gonna be looking at the Northwest MLS stats from November, 2022. So technically next month will be that year over year recap when we look back at all the numbers from 2022. But essentially every single one of these updates is a year over year snapshot. I do think that’s the best way to look at real estate data, but as we’ve been talking about on this channel for quite some time, we’ve seen home prices coming down quite a bit from the spring high and considerably more than normal. So every year we have this seasonal correction, or almost every year where home prices tend to be at their peak, late spring, early summer, and kind of slowly dwindle into the fall and into the early winter. And then we see ’em climb again. And there’s just kind of this gradual bump in the road every single year in the fall and into the early winter.

But this year has been way more pronounced. So let’s not call it that. Let’s not call that a, in a seasonal correction, let’s call it what it is. And it is a downturn in the economy, especially the housing market. And the Seattle area has seen some of the bigger drops. And as we’re looking at this data, we’re gonna talk about the numbers first, and then we’ll talk about some of the cities and, and what’s going on there in Snohomish County. And then we’re gonna talk about some of my thoughts as we wrap it up. Let’s start with the data, though, as I know that’s everybody’s favorite or most people’s favorite, and we’re just gonna go through this list here. New listings, we are down 23%. If we look back year over year and also down month over month. The pending sales in Snohomish County, 34.1% down year over year, and also down month over month.

Again, those, that’s normal, right? So the down month over month, and we should expect to see that. But the year over year is the, is the big game changer here. Closed sales. Last year we had over a thousand, almost one point. We had 1097, let’s just call it what it is. Sales in 2021 in Snohomish County, 599 last month in Snohomish County. So that’s a 45.4% drop in the close sales in November days on market. Snohomish County, 14 days last year, 34 days this year. And that’s up three days over on the month over month scale, but more than a hundred percent jump in the days on market there. Average in Snohomish County, price-wise, median sales price in Snohomish County, 6 99. Nine 50 was the median sales price up 2.8% year over year. If we look at the average sales price in Snohomish County, 7 72, 8 59, 2 0.9% jump in the average sales price.

The average percent of the list price, 98.3%, which is about the same as last month, but down 5.3%. So that’s the delta between last year when homes were selling for 3.8% above asking price inventory of homes more than 260% up, just barely 260.2% increase, 332 homes available versus 1,196 homes available. Now in Salish County, there were 0.3 months of supply in 2021, and now we have 1.5 months of supply. That’s down though, 0.2 months of supply, but 400% up from last year. Now, last year was odd in some of those numbers. Supply was way lower than normal in Snohomish County. So is the 1.5 months of supply really high? No, but it is considerably higher than we’ve seen last year and even the year before. But historically speaking, we’re gonna see, and this is a trend, home prices coming down a little bit in the fall, heading in into the winter.

We’re gonna see the supply numbers as fewer people are listing their house dwindle. We’re gonna see less buyer activity. Less people are buying during the holidays and wanting to move and relocate and uproot their, if they have a family during the school year. But at the same time, we’re looking at numbers from last year at the same exact point in time, and we can see that there’s quite a big shift here. So even after all the craziness after home prices in Snohomish County went up considerably, we were talking about some pretty big numbers year over year. When we look back, all of that’s gone. All of the 15, 20%, 25%, or even more sometimes over asking price, most of that’s just gone. And so those prices that people were paying, really if you take away the multiple offer situation, that’s about how much of a drop we’ve seen in prices since the spring.

and so I, to me, it’s not necessarily a cause for concern, but I think the craziness is definitely out of the market. But I think we’re gonna start seeing those negative year over year numbers heading into 2023. I think a lot of the beginning of the year is probably going to be negative year over year numbers. Who knows? Later in the year. I, I would say we’re probably gonna be close to kind of some of the numbers we’re seeing right now. Maybe slightly up or maybe slightly down, but I think it’ll be a little bit more of a contrast when we hit the spring. I don’t expect we’ll see a big jump in prices in 2023. I think it will be relatively flat from where it is now. That’s my opinion and prediction, and we’ll talk more if you want to hear my thoughts there.

I’m gonna do a predictions video here in the next couple weeks as we wrap the year, but Snohomish County’s already starting to see some of those trends negatively. And I mentioned that I think we’ll see that more in 2023, but I wrote down and my assistant is amazing and puts together all the numbers here each month. And I’m going through Snohomish County’s numbers, and I’m seeing that seven cities are already negative year over year. So if we look back at last year versus this year, Edmonds, and I’m gonna read these all because I figured you might want to know if you live in one of these places or you’re thinking about buying there. Mount Lake Terrace was down, muckle, Teo is down. Mill Creek is down, Everett is down, Goldbar is down high, Goldbar and Breyer is down. Now, there also are still more cities that are positive, which is why we have a positive overall number here for Snohomish County.

But 11 cities still are up year over year, starting with Linwood, and then Bothel is up. Snohomish is up year over year. Stanwood Lake Stevens, Arlington is up, granite Falls is up, Sultan is up, Monroe is up, Darrington is up, and Marysville is up. Woodway, we love you, but you didn’t have any change here. So you’re, you’re just gonna be mentioned here at the end. But if we look at some of the Snohomish County numbers, I think heading into the spring, we’re probably gonna see negative numbers in most places in Snohomish County as even though the data isn’t necessarily telling us the full story, when we look at the year over year numbers, we already know the truth that prices are down. It’s a lot more of a buyer friendly environment. Interest rates are up, homes are selling below, asking price, they’re selling with inspection contingencies again, and people are negotiating for items and credits from the seller and repairs from the seller.

So as a buyer, this is an opportunity, I would say, for you to buy for less and also with way less competition, but also get to have the protections in the contract that you would want, essentially everything you would want as a buyer. I do think that the market isn’t going to get much worse as far as pricing goes here. I could be wrong and I’d be happy to be wrong if, if I’m on the buyer’s side cause I, I wanna buy another house too, so I’d be happy to be wrong on that. But I think that for buyers, you, you have a great opportunity right now if you can afford the higher interest rates. And sellers are, in a lot of cases wanting to sell their houses and they are willing to pay for buy downs on your interest rate, which helps with those first couple years about the higher interest rates.

Then there is a lot of belief here from the experts that I would, I would look at Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae that rates, interest rates will be lower in the next couple years. and that would give you the opportunity to refinance your mortgage, get a lower rate too. so lower price, lower rate at the end of the day, I think for sellers, the encouragement would be houses are still selling and we don’t have a massive amount of inventory buildup, and it’s by no means a buyer’s market where, you know, everything’s selling 15% below and you just kind of take what you can get for your house.

But it’s a different market for homeowners in Snohomish County. I think if you’re thinking about selling, it’s not a, it’s not a bad time to sell, but it’s definitely not the best time that ever existed. But I think if you need to sell this year or want to, maybe you buy something else, right? and capitalize on that side, you’ll be selling at a little lower price, but you know, you’re gonna be trading that money across in the end. I think it’s more important this year than last year to do things like prepping the house for sale and doing some of the repair work and maybe staging the house. I think the presentation’s going to matter more this year than it did last year. Not that it didn’t matter, but I think there’s going to be more of an impact for you as a seller if you sell without doing some of that prep work on the price.

Then in other times and last year, maybe doing some of that prep work. Got you a nice bump on the asking price this year. I just think it get, helps you get the best price possible for your house versus getting, you know, any kind of multiple offer scenario going. So for sellers, it’s not the perfect time to sell, but it’s still a good time. Thanks so much for watching my Snohomish County real estate market update here as we look back at November, 2022, and we look forward to the next year here, 2023. If you have questions about real estate buying or selling or investing in real estate and you’re thinking about maybe 20, 23 being the year, I’m happy to be a resource for you. no pressure to work together afterwards, but if you have questions and wanna run those by me, feel free to reach out. My contact info is down below.