Seattle Housing Market Watch 09/06/2024

Hey all’s. Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my Seattle Housing Market Watch for September 6th, 2024. Big news today, jobs report came in considerably lower than expected in mortgage rates have been responding, going down even more from where they were earlier in the week. As of yesterday, mortgage rates were hovering around 6.25 and have been headed down even as we speak. So it’s going to be interesting to see what happens here. As we finish out the year, there are talks that we’re going to see the Fed rate cut here soon in September, and mortgage rates have already been baking in some of those cuts. But the speculation around the economy and rates and all the election stuff has mortgage rates coming down. And we’ve been talking about this all year, that the rates coming down is going to signal that the housing market will start picking up.

What we’ve seen over the past few years is the correlation between the higher rates and the prices slowing down and or the expectation of higher rates even because the prices were in fact lowest when rates were still lower than where they’re at now, but there was fear and concern about higher rates. And then as rates climbed and people adjusted, we’ve seen home prices continue climbing even though rates are still higher than they were mid 2022, and we started seeing prices coming down. So right now, home prices in the Seattle area have, for the most part gotten close to where they were in 2022, at least maybe at the peak of the year. We’re not too far off, but mortgage rates are still considerably higher, but also significantly less than where they were last year when we were up over 8% at some points. But are we going to see mid to upper five rates here in 2024?

Is it going to be next year when rates start to come down and get maybe back into that four and a half to 5% range? Will they even get back to there? Right? That’s the big question. And as of now, they’ve been trending down pretty quickly here as continued news comes out about job reports being inaccurate, and now we’re seeing less than ideal job reports as of today. So we’ll see what happens and how the trend continues. But as of now, we’re starting to see rates dropping, and we’re also seeing this week kind of that final push for the year as far as new listings. And speaking of that, we had four new listings go on the market yesterday, so I would’ve normally filmed this video yesterday or even a little earlier in the week, but it’s just been a lot going on, which is good.

Two weeks ago, or at the end of last week, we were talking about the new listings being low because I called it dead week where we have the Labor Day holiday and things slowing down, and then now we’re seeing new listings jumping up. So 5 54 was last week’s number, 807 new listings in King, Snohomish County, big jump. A lot of people that had waited from the Labor Day week that week leading up to it till now to list their house. And in fact, we had multiple clients doing that. So I would say now is that final push, the next two to three weeks, maybe next month for most of the rest of the listings for the year to come on. There still will be listings in October, November, December, but it does tend to taper off as we head towards the holidays. So buyers, right?

If you’re a buyer thinking about purchasing in Seattle, you’ve got more selection right now and probably will over the next few weeks. You have rates that have been coming down, they’re considerably lower than where they were, maybe mid sevens earlier in the year, and there’s the prospect of rates continuing to go down. So I’ve shared that. I think that’s going to continue to push prices up as rates go down later in this year and even into next year. I think next year is going to be where we’ll see some of the bigger jumps. My guess, at least at this point in projection is that we might see prices eclipse where they were in 2022 in the spring here in 2025. So again, time will tell, and I love to share my thoughts and what I think is going to happen. Not always, right, think more often than not I am, but there are times where I get things wrong.

That’s what I’m thinking right now. Again, assuming that rates continue going down here in the Seattle area. Now let’s look at some of the other stats here real quick. We saw 453 price reductions versus 389 the week before. We’re still seeing houses that are not selling super quick. So I’ve mentioned this over the past month or two that this is when we start to see houses listed closer to what they should be in the spring. Sometimes people are priced a little bit lower than they should be. You see the multiple offers, the competition, sometimes it’s a factor of just too many buyers, not enough listings. And as inventory builds, we see a little bit less of that pressure. We see houses sitting 453 price reductions last week. And again, I’m not surprised by that. I wouldn’t be concerned by that. But it does mean that some houses are not selling immediately.

In fact, we have a listing right now into layup that has not sold yet. I think there’s some unique factors to that property. It’s really special. Everybody that’s seen it loves it. They think it’s super cool, but it’s also pretty far out in Snohomish County and in the area. It’s considerably nicer than many of the houses, but it’s special, and that house is just going to take some time to sell. But if you’re looking for a house in Snohomish County that has a view is newer and is sitting on almost an acre, hit me up now as we look at the pending sales. 700 sales, still quite a bit of buyer activity last week and 588 closings over the last week, kind of wrapping up the end of August and hitting the beginning of September. There’s a few that probably didn’t quite make it before the holiday.

And as we’re looking at the rest of the year, as we look at even at the rest of September, I think we are going to see more and more buyer activity now than we were seeing during the summer. People are getting back from trips and vacations, maybe taking a pause for me. We have kids back in school, so I’m able to focus on other things besides maybe just surviving a little bit when I get home. And so I would suspect that we will see, just like we normally do, a little bit of a push for some sales to happen here as we round out the rest of the summer and head into the fall. Believe it or not, it’s not even fall yet, but it’s starting to feel like it here in the Seattle area. If you have questions about buying or selling here in the Seattle area, I’d love to be a resource for you if you have questions about timing.

I know I see questions about when should I buy a house? Is it time for me to buy a house? Those types of questions are very situational and unique to each person. There’s not necessarily one right answer for everybody. So if you have questions like that and you want to bounce them off of me, you can feel free to drop ’em in the chat. I’m happy to engage with you that way, but it would be, I would say, more advantageous to even reach out to me via email or phone call. I’m happy to have a conversation.