Seattle Real Estate Market Watch – 8/23/2022

Hey y’all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates in this is our fourth ever Seattle Real Estate Market Watch. And for those that are new to these videos, these videos are a weekly snapshot of the housing market versus the monthly snapshot. And they’re also different. So in the monthly market updates, if you haven’t seen those yet, you should check those out on the channel. But we look at the stats, we’re looking at, um, prices and values, median sales prices, you know, percent over asking price on house, things like that, right? Stats that involve the values of houses and these updates on a weekly basis. We’re looking at what’s changing, how’s the market shifting? And I think in this market especially, these are more important now than ever as the market’s been changing a lot over the last four to five months in the Seattle area and really across the country.

So we’re looking at stats here and when I pull these, I’m looking at King and Snohomish County. All right? King and Salish County are historically considered the Seattle area. Sometimes you get Pierce County lumped in there for the metro area. But I see an experience that when people are talking about Seattle, right, they’re kind of lumping in King Insta, Hummish County historically. Without further ado, we’re looking at the market snapshot here. Market watch from the MLS from 8 23, right? So these numbers are the last seven days and every time we do one of these, we’re looking at stats over the last seven days. So I’m going to point out a few things, share a little bit of context. We’re gonna keep these brief and I’ll probably do less of an intro as we continue to get into these market watches. Last week, new listings down a little bit, 719 new listings on the market.

It’s different summer’s slowing down and the summer does usually slow down a little bit, but not normally with new listings. So the past few weeks I’ve been talking about this trend, we’re seeing fewer new listings and then a lot of stuff going off the market. So we’re gonna jump down again on this market watch. And we’re looking at sold listings. We actually had more houses sell that’s close sales than we had new listings. And I typically talk about the pending and new listing dynamic because that kinda shows what’s coming on and going off the market in real time. But the solds right are a month in arrears. So really the most of the sold listings actually were on off the market or pending in last month, right? July. So if we’re looking at that trend I mentioned here a few weeks ago that I think what we’re gonna start to see is the sold number, beating the new listings too, right? And so we’re starting to see that trend, um, this week. And the pending sales are still up considerably in King Snohomish County. We’re still seeing quite a few more houses in, and I’ve been talking about this almost for the last month

That I think when we see September stats, we’re gonna still see fewer solds, right? Um, but that trend will shift the following month. But the pendings, we’re still seeing more houses pending. So I think we’re gonna see inventory numbers actually go down a little bit, um, from where they were. Uh, because we have more houses coming off the market than coming on the market. Now, something that I’m still seeing contingent sales, 32 contingent sales in King Snohomish County. This is a trend that I think is around for the moment. It might not last for a super long time, but as the market has shifted, there’s more opportunity. If houses are sitting on the market, sellers would rather sell their house contingent than not sell it at all. And historically, when the market’s hot, it’s hard to purchase contingent on the sale of another house. But when the market’s a little bit more equitable between buyers and sellers, or really in the buyer’s favor, there’s more room for that.

So we’re not seeing a ton of contingent sales. We’re talking about 32 contingent sales and 1050 pending sales, right? So that’s a pretty small percentage that are contingent, but still contingent on here, and it wasn’t even four months ago. So I think that’s another trend that’s important to see. The last one I wanna point out here, 740 price reductions. We’re still seeing a lot of price reductions a bunch, so we’re still recalibrating, but that’s the word I’ve been using over the last month. I think we’re seeing that happening because we’re seeing a lot of pending sales. And I think some of these new listings that are coming on are gonna see fewer price reductions because sellers now have that expectation that what their house would’ve sold for, it’s not gonna sell for that now. And you can see the past three, four months of history to be able to say, okay, if I wanna sell my house and I wanna sell it quickly and I wanna sell it for the most money and not be dropping my price, I’m gonna need to actually list it in this range.

But you have that data to back it up. It’s hard when the market shifts and you were looking at these prices and there’s nothing to show it changing yet. But you gotta make that choice whether you try to get the max price or try to get a little bit less. And right now, I think people can make that choice a lot easier and be ahead of the market, if that makes sense. I think mortgage rates have jumped a lot this last couple weeks. They were down in the low fives. I think they even dropped into the four upper fours just for a brief minute, but now 5.73% as of today in the market according to Mortgage News Daily. Again, that’s my favorite place to look, just to check on a daily basis. Um, it’s a mortgage rate survey. I think the Freddie Mac one is still behind, right? They’re looking at weekly data that’s from the past. They were in above five as well. But this one’s a little bit more accurate reflection as the mortgage rates are actually fluctuating every day, right? Stock market’s down too. Um, and the fear index is up. So I think we may See shifting here still, um, on these rates, but rates have kind of settled somewhere in the middle of those lows of, um, you know, a few weeks ago. And then also the highs earlier, uh, in the summer. So hopefully we’re not gonna see them up above six and a half ish percent, but some lenders are already in the sixes again, so yikes. Um, but buyers I think, have finally accepted the rates. And sellers, again, have accepted the reality that buyers aren’t paying the same price. So I think everybody’s starting to get on the same page, which is good for the market. That’s why I think we have so many pendings. So I, again, I think this update, again, snapshot is showing a lot of what we’ve been seeing over the last few weeks. Again, we’re just continuing to adjust, but I think we’re heading in the right direction as houses are selling, not sitting as much.

And I think that bodes well as we come into the fall market for maybe a little bit of a renewed sense of, um, excitement around housing. As we wrap up, I realize I’m predicting that maybe the fall’s actually gonna be a little bit hotter, and I’m seeing that I’m seeing multiple offers on houses. Again, I’ve had some buyers considering houses where there’s like an early offer, like what the heck? Early offers I’ve seen where there’s multiple offers, and then I’ve also still seen houses going past the review date. But I think the past few months you haven’t really been hearing anything like that. But I’m seeing buyers making early offers with expiration dates of the same day, which we haven’t seen in months. So it might sound a little bit ambitious or ahead to say that I think maybe the fall might be a little bit stronger market, but historically, the summer is slower.

What I’m seeing so far as we wrap up this summer is fewer houses on the market, right? Less sitting, things are selling, houses are moving, which I think means that if we head into the fall and we don’t have a ton of new inventory, which we might not, then we’re gonna have buyers with fewer houses to look at. Thanks so much for watching this week’s Seattle Market Snapshot, where we talk about the stats on a weekly basis here in the Seattle market. We also talk about the stats on a monthly basis here as well on the channel. So please consider subscribing if you haven’t already, and if you wanna talk a little bit more about how this data applies to your situation, maybe buying or selling in the Seattle area, I’d love to be a resource for you.