Seattle Housing Market Watch 08/22/2024

Hey y’all. Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my Seattle Housing Market Watch for August 22nd, 2024.

Well, it’s listing day. We just brought a couple listings on the market here today, one in Kent and another up in Everett. We’ve also got a listing into layup right now. So we’re kind of all over the place right now in King and Snohomish County, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk about what’s going on in the housing market in King and Snohomish counties, and each week in these market watches, we’re looking at the most recent listings coming on the market and seeing how quickly things are selling. And also I share a little bit of context for what I think is happening and what’s going to continue happening, and I do that towards the end. So let’s talk about some stats here, and as we look at the week of eight 14 to 8 22, right? So as we look at the past couple weeks, we’re seeing that things are remaining relatively the same.

So we’ve seen new listings coming on last week we had 751, this just past week 748. So a little bit fewer listings, but not really much change over the past week as far as inventory coming on the market, although it feels like more for us, I think it’s been about the same. Now, if we look at list price reductions, we saw fewer price reductions over the last week. So a couple weeks ago, 539 price reductions last week, 455 price reductions. Hard to say exactly what that means, whether fewer people wanted to reduce their price this week or things sold a little bit quicker. But if we look at pending sales, we’re seeing more pending sales 841 versus 820 last week. So there is an uptick in pending sales. We also saw an uptick in solds 666 versus 566 the previous week. We’re seeing things picking up a little bit, but really what’s been happening in the market is it has been more stagnant.

Things are sitting, I’ve had a few comments here over the past few weeks. Yeah, I’ve been looking in these neighborhoods. There’s houses that seem to be reasonably priced. They’re not selling within the first few weeks. That’s completely normal for this time of year. In any given year, we see cycles, and in the spring is when we typically see things at their highest frenzied pace. Doesn’t necessarily mean the height of the market, but usually in any given year, things closing in May and June tend to have the highest sales prices. When we look back at a given year. Now this year, I don’t think it’s going to be any exception to that. I did earlier think that it might, if rates came down, and I think I added that qualifier more than needed, but we haven’t seen rates dropping yet, although they’re down a little bit from the highs earlier in the year.

In fact, rates as of today on Mortgage News daily survey, 6.48 last week, 6.49. So relatively stable with last week, but they have been trending down from the low sevens earlier in the year. So we’re still in a higher interest rate environment. Home prices have certainly rallied from where they were last year when we look at the most recent market updates. So if you haven’t seen it, go back and take a look at that if you want to see more price comparisons. But King Snohomish County are up year over year, a pretty sizable amount and getting closer to where things were a couple years back, even with the higher interest rates. So if we’re looking at the market, things have slowed down a little bit, softened as some would say here this summer that is normal. Nothing is really out of the ordinary. Yes, we’re still in a higher interest rate environment.

We have been the last couple years, and in particular, even with these higher rates earlier in the year, rates were higher too when the market was hotter. So I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily rates that are slowing things down. I think it’s just a normal summer cycle. I don’t think there’s any big drop off happening or about to happen here. In fact, it seems like signs are pointing towards rates coming down here in the near future, which would only stimulate the housing market versus stall the housing market. So right now we’re seeing more listings on the market. People are seeing longer days on market averages, which if you’re a buyer is a good thing, you want to have an opportunity to potentially negotiate the price down instead of chasing the price up. I think for a seller, anytime you’re selling in the summertime, you just have to know that it might take a little bit longer.

It doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to get less for your house if you’re willing to sit on your price, but you are going to have a little bit less activity maybe than in the spring. But summer is still, I think, a good time to be selling your house. But it’s different, right? The prices typically peak in the spring, early summer, and then there’s a lot more transparency, and I’ve shared that over the past few months too. In the summertime, you have all these comparables throughout the year where you can see, okay, this is what buyers were willing to pay. And typically by the time you get to the summer, there is a temptation to maybe try to price it a little bit high right up to where a few of those multiple offers scenarios went. But if you don’t have the multiple offers driving the price up, then the prices are actually probably a little high.

As a seller, you don’t want to necessarily look at what did these couple houses that sold in the spring with five offers sell for, right? What was that peak price that people were competing and willing to pay? What you want to look at is what’s a good price right now for my house to sell at? Not what price is going to cause a multiple offer frenzy because you might not get it, but what’s a good market value price right now? And I’m going to be really excited if I get one offer, and I’m having many conversations like that right now. In fact, we’ve got, let’s see, six other listings coming up in the next three to four weeks. So things have been getting busy, at least on our end. If we’re looking at the map, we’re looking at Kenmore, we’re looking at Bothell, we’re looking at Edmonds, Linwood, lake Stevens, and then I already mentioned a couple ones earlier in the video.

So quite a few different things coming up. If you’re looking in those areas, feel free to reach out to me. I’m happy to chat. But as we’re looking at the next couple weeks, we’re heading into Labor Day, and then we’re going to have Labor Day kind of mixed in beginning of school for a lot of different people, at least for our family. So I would suspect that the next few weeks we’re going to see less inventory coming on the market, less houses listed. This is probably the week. We’ve got a couple this week, as I mentioned, where people are going to list. We’ve still got a weekend before the holiday weekend, but then it’s going to be kind of a push towards the holiday and school for many. So I suspect that we won’t see as many listings, and so the listings that are on the market will get special attention, at least for the people that are in town during the holidays.

So I expect that a lot of the listings that are on the market now will be gone by the time we get to early September, which will then cause a little bit more competition on some of those early September listings, which is why we are listing a few different listings early September for those that wanted to list after the holiday versus before the holiday weekend. So just a little bit of strategy there, but I think if you’re a buyer and you’re around and in town, somebody thinking about a purchase, you are going to have opportunities at some of these listings maybe that have been sitting for 2, 3, 4 weeks and maybe some negotiating power too. So again, these are just my quick thoughts here for what’s happening in the Seattle area housing market this week. If you have questions about the housing market a little bit more in depth or about a specific area in King or Snohomish County, I’m happy to dialogue about that. If you have questions about your situation, whether you’re thinking about buying or selling, I’d love to be a resource for you there as well.