Seattle Housing Market Watch 08/29/2024

Hey, I’m Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my Seattle Housing Market Watch for August 29th, 2024.

Welcome to Dead Week. Typically one of the slowest weeks, the Seattle Housing Market, and I’d argue probably in many of the markets across the country, we’ll look at these stats like we do every single week here in these housing market watches. But I’ll also share some thoughts about what’s coming up here with the rates trending in a downward direction. But let’s talk about why this is typically a dead week for those that are following along, and that is because it’s the last week of summer generally, at least around here, my kids start school next week. Some people already started. We also have people taking last vacations, trying to sneak those in, even if they did start school. And so it tends to be one of those slower weeks. In fact, just looking at the new listing numbers, it speaks volumes. Last week in the video we talked about 748 new listings.

And this week, 554 so far, pretty big drop off in the week over week numbers. Now the listings pending and sales pretty similar. 777 pending sales versus 841. So not a huge drop off, not at least the same amount as far as the new listings go. And this is typically when you start to see inventory get eaten up right this week. And next week too is not usually a huge week, at least at the beginning. So I bet next week’s numbers will be pretty small as well. It’ll be kind of a week and a half, two week window here. But just looking at what’s going on in our business. So we had a closing today. We’ve had a couple new listings last week that we’re reviewing offers today. One got two offers, another one didn’t get any offers. And then we also have, I think four that we’re planning to list next week.

We’ll see if we can get all of them on the market next week. One of them has quite a bit of work that’s being done, and then another one even the week after that that has a lot of work. So a couple different houses with more prep work, getting ready to go on the market, and then the ones that are a little bit more ready to go, but lots of listings coming up, intentionally waiting on a couple of them until after this holiday weekend. So other agents are probably doing similar things, I would think. And some of these agents are probably traveling, going on vacation, things like that. So it does tend to work out as a slower week in the housing market, but even then, it’s still an important week for people that are thinking about buying if they’re in town. There are opportunities, just like the listing I mentioned that haven’t received an offer, and that does happen sometimes if we would’ve listed this week versus last week, we would’ve hardly had any showings I would guess.

But we will have people that are going to come out and see it tonight. Maybe we’ll get it sold even in the next couple days. But just wanted to share the dynamics of this time of the year. And there is typically a little bit of a pickup in the housing market in September and early October before things slow down again for the holidays. We’re heading towards that little bit of a pickup in the fall once people settle into their rhythms in the school year, or even just getting back to normal life after summer travel plans around the Seattle area. Now, I mentioned interest rates because interest rates have been trending downwards here over the past month, plus 6.41% on mortgage News Daily’s daily survey, and last week we’re at 6.48%. There are different rates you can find a little bit cheaper for FHA and va.

I don’t talk about all the different rates because most people are looking for a 30 year conventional loan, but we are, it looks like below 6% for a 15 year fixed. I don’t know if the dropoff from 6.41% though to 5.95 really makes sense for the 15 versus 30. It’s still a huge payment difference. My thought with the 15 year versus 30, unless there’s a huge difference in the rate, you can always pay off a 30 year mortgage faster, but you would have a way smaller required payment. So typically why I wouldn’t think about getting a 15 year mortgage. But as we’re looking at the other stats from this week, I think noteworthy 389 price reductions last week, 455, but still a substantial amount of price reductions. What that means is there’s houses sitting on the market, and I was talking with one of my appraiser friends and we were talking about how the market has slowed down over the past few weeks.

It is normal for the summer, and I’ve been talking about that all summer, just so you’re all expecting it. It’s not a surprise to see the housing market slow down around here in the summertime, at least as far as the escalation of prices and such. But it is anecdotally starting to pick up again a little bit, just even from some of the activity on these listings and also just with anticipation of what I would expect to be happening here in the fall. So some parting thoughts as we head into the Labor Day weekend. Number one, we are hearing rumors of rate drops, and it seems more imminent now than before. Some of that’s already priced in. So mortgage rates aren’t just going to all of a sudden be super, super low as a result. Again, mortgage rates aren’t directly connected to the fed rate. So the conversations and the rumors are already causing rates to be going down.

If rates were not expected to be going down, rates would not be going down for mortgages right now. So the bond market is responding to some of these conversations, and that’s affecting the housing market specifically. The mortgage rates. And the mortgage rates are affecting people’s ability to, and also their desire to purchase as well. So I would expect as we see rates come down, if they do in fact come down, again, there’s no guarantee I don’t have a crystal ball. I wish I did, that would be amazing. But if rates do come down, we will likely see more people looking to make an exchange buy and sell. If they already own a home, maybe trade that mortgage, maybe five point a half percent or whatever, 5%, whatever that number ends up being, sounds better than maybe a seven point a half percent rate, which somebody might’ve got last year when they traded their house for a new mortgage.

I know I still have a 7% mortgage rate and I’d love to get out of it and refinance hasn’t really made sense yet, and I won’t do it for 6.41 at this point unless I expect that to stay for a long time, which I don’t. But I’m hopeful to be able to refinance. And I think if rates do start coming down and get into the fives, that’s when it might make sense for people to start considering a refinance if they have a mortgage rate like mine. So I think mortgage lenders would love to hear this, that when rates do come down, there’s going to be a ton of people looking to refinance. There’s plenty that are already stuck in rates that aren’t going to want to refinance up, but if you are in need of cash and you want to do a cash out, you might have a better chance to do that here soon. And if you are somebody like me who’s not planning to sell but wants a better rate and less interest to pay every month, I think that there is hope in the future. So those are my thoughts for today. If you have questions about the housing market here in the Seattle area, if you’re thinking about a purchase or even considering a sale, I’d love to be a resource for you. And of course, I’d love for you to share this video with somebody else who could benefit from it.