Snohomish County Real Estate Market Update | October 2024
Hey all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my Snohomish County Real Estate Market update for October, 2024. What’s up, Snohomish County? I’m excited to talk and dig into the stats here a little bit, and I know many of you are following along on a regular basis. Some of you are new, so if you’re new, please consider subscribing to the channel for more updates like this one. And if you have been following along for a while, we’ve been talking a lot about mortgage rates recently, as there’s been a lot of talk about it in the news. And as your, I guess, news flash for the month, rates are up 6.62% is the average here on Mortgage News daily as of today, up closer to two month highs is what they’re touting here. But we did see rates drop considerably over the year.
They were up in the sevens earlier in the year, well over eight last year. They have been on the way down, but they have been on the way up since the fed rate cuts. So the Fed cut the rates half a percent, and we’ve been seeing rates going up and now rates are up almost half percent since those fed rate cuts. And for those of you that are wondering why this is probably not the place for too much of that, but at the same time, a lot of that has to do with the fact that mortgage rates and the fed rate are not directly connected. And I have explained this and talked about this a lot, but the mortgage rates were already baking in a Fed rate cut. And so some of the more recent news and also the conversations around will there be more of these to come soon are what are affecting these rates.
And there’s a lot more to it that we could talk about. But I think just to keep it simple, those mortgage rates are not connected to the Fed rates as much as they are connected to the bond market, which is what is causing these rates to go up at the moment. So let’s jump into the stats here, which is why no many of you are tuning into this channel. And as we look at the new listings, we’re seeing a decline in Snohomish County and new listings in King County. We saw an uptick. And in Snohomish County, we’re seeing a bit of a decline in those listings month over month, but year over year, 18.8% jump. So we’re continuing that trend of more listings here in the second half of 2024 than we had in the second half of 2023, which is to be expected, but is encouraging to see more people selling because there was a lot of pressure on the small amount of inventory even though rates were high, there just weren’t a lot of people selling last year and not as many people buying.
We’re seeing that changing as well here with 26% more pending sales this month than we saw at the same time last year. Those pending sales are down from last month though, right? And so we saw fewer listings coming on the market. We saw fewer pending sales in September than we saw in August, and we are seeing things slowing down a little bit as far as the competition, which is why we’re seeing the inventory building up, or let’s put it this way, we’re seeing inventory building up, which is causing things to slow down, right? If you have fewer pending sales, you have more listings coming on. There are more options for buyers to choose from, which is why we’re seeing the amount of houses on the market increasing. We have not a ton, but we have a few more houses on the market this month, 1.8 months of supply versus 1.7.
So not a huge difference, but a little bit. We have 20% more, almost 19.7 more houses on the market this month than we did last year at the same time. That’s a huge number, which would make sense. We had 18.8% more listings, so we have about the same more houses available. Prices have remained about the same. They’ve been relatively flat over the last month. Median sales price, 7 75, 7 74, 9, 9, 8 last month, almost the same last year. 4% jump year over year for the median sales price. The average sales price is also almost the same as last month. It’s $5,000 more, almost $5,000 more, 6.4% jump year over year though. So we’re seeing that things are continuing to move upwards in the prices as far as the year over year numbers. And that’s been a relative trend in that six to 8% up year over year, most of 2024 so far.
In fact, if we look at through September, I can give you a more exact number, 5.4% up year over year for the averages of the medians. And then if we look at the average sales price up 6.9% for the year. So again, kind of right in line with what we’ve been seeing as a trend for all of 2024, last stat for you here this month, homes are selling for just a tick under asking price, 99.9% under asking price in Snohomish County, pretty much what you see is what you get. There are certainly some houses that are sitting on the market for a little bit longer. We’ve talked about days on market going up a little bit, 23 days on market being the average. There are plenty selling really quick still, and there are plenty that are taking a little bit longer to sell five, six weeks on the market.
This is really normal. This is really normal to see in the housing market, especially in the fall as things do start to transition a little bit. I’ve heard some people call it the shoulder season. You’re kind of transitioning from summer to winter. There are going to be significantly fewer listings coming on the market in the next couple weeks and months. And so if you are somebody that wants to buy, you’re going to have way more choices right now if you start looking versus waiting until January, February when we’re usually at the lowest amount of supply. And then you also have all the competition coming into the new year. So I think if you’re a buyer, if I was a buyer right now, I’d be thinking about this being a time to consider that purchase versus waiting until everybody else is jumping in. And you also have the most inventory for the year right now.
Most choices. Most options. And also you’re going to be having people that have maybe had three, four or five weeks on the market and they’re ready to get their house sold. So you have that going for you as well, versus competing with other buyers for a higher price and fewer contingencies in the contract. Again, when you’re buying at the same time as everybody else, we talk about this a lot. If you’re doing the same thing everybody else is doing, you’re probably going to be paying more when you’re buying something, when it comes to a house, when it comes to a stock, whatever it is. So that would be my thoughts for buyers and for sellers. I think the reality is that we’re still in this transition of, hey, we were in a super hot market. The market has been recovering, but we’re not all the way back.
Prices haven’t quite gotten back to where they were, but they’re getting pretty close. And depending on where your house is located, I think location is a huge piece right now for buyers and also the lot. So the things that you can’t change about a house in the past maybe didn’t matter as much when the market is hot, everybody’s just like, I need a house. But when there are more options, buyers are a little bit more choosy. So just something to keep in mind. If there are things about your house that you can’t change, those things are going to cause the house to take longer to sell. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to cut the price or drop it a ton, but it does mean that it’s going to be a little bit longer of a process because buyers do have more options, and when they do, they’re going to be more picky about what they want versus I just need something right now. So thoughts for Snohomish County as we wrap up this video. If you have questions about buying or selling or investing in Snohomish County, I’d love to be a resource for you. And if you have not yet subscribed to this channel, please consider doing so.
