Seattle Housing Market Watch 10/22/2024

Hey, I’m Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my Seattle Housing Market Watch for October 22nd, 2024. I wanted to start off this update with a little bit of a celebration or memorial of 10 years for me doing real estate. Yesterday was the first weekday, and I was looking back at my calendar 10 years ago and it said first day of work and there was nothing on it. So here I am already doing something, but I remember looking back and thinking about what it was like starting in real estate and where I’m at now and that journey. And I’m number one, super grateful for all the clients that I’ve had the privilege to work with. I’ve helped over 300 people here in these past 10 years buy or sell real estate here in the Seattle area. And looking back this channel, this YouTube channel, these videos have been a huge blessing for me and hopefully have been really helpful for others that have been following along with the housing market.

So I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you and celebrate that milestone and memorialize it in a sense here. Now, let’s talk about the market because you didn’t come to hear me talk about my sentimental feelings about doing real estate or working with clients, but I think we’re seeing some of the things that I mentioned we would see as we’re looking at the tightening up of the market, so to speak. Every fall as it progresses, we start to see fewer and fewer listings coming on the market. And what that does is it starts to bring buyers back to those listings maybe that have been sitting for a little bit. There’s a couple of things I wanted to point out. The first thing, if we look week over week, we saw the new listings drop from 605 new listings to 478. So we’re starting to see that dropping off of new listings.

We also saw 463 price reductions last week in King in Snohomish County down just very slightly from 4 69 the week prior. But what we’re still seeing is buyers and sellers trying to find the market, right? Sellers are dropping the price here to get buyers to bite. And so we’ve been seeing fewer listings, right? We’ve been seeing the price reductions and the result is a ton of pending sales, 813 pending sales versus 794. Even though we’re seeing fewer listings, the listings that have been sitting and had the price reduction, some of those are selling. We’re also seeing houses that have been jumping on the market now selling quicker too, with a little bit more of an idea for what the market looks like, right? If you’re coming in and you’re looking at recent sales, which is how real estate’s typically priced, the market’s going up, it’s like an automatic multiple offer scenario.

You look at what houses sold for a few months ago, you’re like, oh, let’s kind of price it in here. And if you’re looking at where warehouse is priced here, and then we’re looking at now, it’s like, well, my neighbors sold for this a few months ago. I want to sell for that. And that’s not necessarily the case. The market’s always shifting and moving, especially right now. It’s been quite a bumpy ride the last couple of years here in Seattle, but right now we’re seeing things starting to sell. We had 634 closings. A lot of those would’ve been pending sales last month. And I mentioned we were going to see a little bit of an uptick because of those, the buyer activity last month. But we’re seeing a tightening of inventory. We’re seeing prices being reduced, but we’re seeing those homes sell as a result.

And so the last month or so since the mortgage rate drop, actually we’re seeing the market slow beginning of September. Most of September was relatively slow, and I had multiple listings come on the market helping to catch the windfall of those rate drops. But what we’re seeing is the exact opposite, I think, of what we were hoping. And that is that rates have been going up not down since the rate cut. And to spare the long-winded answer, the fed rate is not connected to the mortgage rates. The Fed does not set mortgage rates, and that is very evident as we’re seeing rates come down, but rates going up for mortgages. In fact, last week, mortgage rates, according to mortgage news, daily’s survey 6.62 last week, 6.85 this week, year over year change though down mortgage rates are down from where they were last year, but they are trending up right now, and that has had a slowing effect on the housing market.

But now what we’re seeing is prices coming down a little bit tightening of inventory, and so we’re seeing other factors starting to influence the housing market. In fact, I had, let’s see, last week I had a couple listings that had been on the market for a while, at least a month. And both of those got offers. I had another one, no, actually I had three that got offers. Two of them are under contract now. One of them we’re still kind of trying to figure that out. And then another listing, a new listing that came on the market that got an offer. So three different houses under contract, listings under contract, and a buyer as well under contract. That buyer ended up deciding that the house wasn’t a good fit for some inspection items, but just activity prices getting reduced and or a tightening of inventory and the choices.

And if you’re a buyer or somebody who’s thinking about buying, this is usually the better time to make a purchase while there’s more options. And we’re seeing those options quickly diminish. Because what happens is once the listings that have been sitting for a while sell, even those that maybe had price reductions, those would be even better deals. Maybe once those sell, there’s not a lot out there. And so people are competing over the few houses available. And then as the year turns and the seasons start changing again, you start to see lower inventory, a lot of buyers, and that’s where you typically have the most competitive market in Seattle, and that’s going to be in the spring. So if you’re a buyer, the fall and late fall, I would say, and the early winter is usually the better time for prices. And if you’re getting on the earlier side, you’re going to have more options to choose from versus the limited pool of resources. So if you have questions about the housing market, I would love to connect with you. And as always, if you know somebody who could benefit from this video, please consider sharing it with them.