Seattle Real Estate Market Watch – 11/21/2022

Hey y’all. Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my weekly Seattle Real Estate Market Watch for November 21st, 2022.

Well, we’re about to hit Thanksgiving here in Seattle, well, and all across the US and the market is slowing down as we would expect, and I, I suspect it will continue to slow down as we continue into the holidays. Uh, specifically approaching Christmas, I think we’re in that last little push here. We’ll probably see some more listings early December before it starts to really, really slow down. November’s not usually as slow. December is usually the slowest month of any given month. Um, but if we’re looking at some of the data here, just, um, straight off the cuff here, new listings, uh, about the same as last week. We had seven more new listings, 449 versus 442. So again, pretty much the same back on the market. New listings coming back on, so some of those would be canceled or expireds. It came back on about the same, um, list price reductions, um, five 14 here.

Um, that is less than it was last week, but it is considerably less than we were seeing in the springtime. So the, as the amount of homes on the market is declining, we’re seeing fewer of those reductions. Um, it also does mean we do have fewer houses on the market. Uh, list price increase, uh, 26, um, which is just a weird <laugh>, a weird one. A lot of times people will take their house off the market and then, um, or it’ll be under contract maybe for a little bit more, and then they’ll put it back on for more, or they will do some work to it, fix it up, and then put it back on for more. So those are usually the two most likely scenarios for the list price increase. The contingent sales 16 last week in King Snohomish County. That is down, uh, from the month before, and we’re seeing this number continue to tick down.

Part of it is there’s just fewer sales, fewer houses, um, but the, it’s becoming less and less likely right now. A lot of, a lot of that is because their homes aren’t sitting on the market quite as long, and they are starting to sell a little bit quicker again, given, um, the homes are priced competitively. So again, not every situation, but it’s interesting to watch that contingent number continue to tick down. Expired listings 84 last week. I would say it, that’s most likely because Thanksgiving’s coming up, so people might have said, Hey, let’s have that kind of set, um, right before so we can take the house off the market. Again, just speculating, but it was more than last week pending sales up by 2 6 43 versus 6 41 last week, but about the same. Um, and sold listings 5 61. Again, that’s up week over week and just looking at the amount of houses coming off the market versus going on 6 43 versus 4 49.

So we’re seeing the same thing last week and this week, and we’re gonna continue to see that it might even be more pronounced heading into the holidays here. So again, there’s just going to be fewer and fewer homes available for the buyers, and there’s clearly more buyers than homes coming on the market right now. So the inventory or the backlog is slowly being eaten away at right now. Um, canceled listings about the same, exactly the same, actually 1 98, same time last week. But really as I’m looking at this, we’re seeing the normal trend. We’re seeing the normal downward trend as we head into the holidays as far as inventory goes. But in my most recent market update, looking back at the October stats, we did see the market tick up a little bit, um, in Kingston, Hummish County, uh, and stabilize versus going down and continuing to go down, um, as it has been here over the past few months.

So encouraging as far as being a homeowner, I think the big news a couple weeks back was that the, um, you know, inflation numbers weren’t as bad as we thought they would be. Again, they’re still pretty bad <laugh>, so inflation is still, um, a big issue that we’re trying to deal with and we will be dealing with, but it is encouraging to know that maybe not as bad as projected and hopefully the next batch of data or, and the edited data will continue to support that trend. I think that’s good, uh, at least, um, you know, for the psyche <laugh>, uh, to know that it’s better, but again, it’s still really, really difficult, um, to keep up and get under control right now. And, um, speaking of inflation, inflation’s been a big part of why the mortgage rates have been increasing and mortgage rates have been a big reason that the housing market’s been slowing down, right?

So it’s all kind of connected here. And mortgage rates last week were down. And if we’re looking at the mortgage news daily, which is what we’ve been following here recently, 6.64% today, uh, for rates just been about where they were, um, most of last week. And if we’re looking at the Freddie Mac primary Mor mortgage survey, that’s been, that was one that we followed more in the past, but I like mortgage News daily better, but recently Freddie Mac and it was just this last week, updated some of their methodologies. So I think we’re gonna see a lot better data because they’re ensuring, along with Fannie Mae, about 50% of all the loans that are done. Um, and that puts them in a position to see those rate locks and those, um, applications coming through. So I really like, um, what they’ve done and kind of updating versus surveying lenders previously in the week or earlier in the week to publish.

They’re getting a lot more, um, up-to-date data, so I think it’s gonna be a better, um, survey here for us going forward. But 6.61%, um, as of the 17th was their, uh, one week average. And if we look at their range, you’ll see how dramatic the change has been. The 52 week range goes for the 30 year fix from 3.05 to 7.08. So they jumped up and that was again, for a weekly average. The 15 year was down at 2.3 and all the way up to 6.38. Uh, but the 15 year at 5.98% on their survey last week. And I think one other thing to add here, we’ve been talking about rates and how that’s affecting the affordability, especially in a place like Seattle Bellevue area where you’ve got some of the higher priced real estate in the country and those increases in payments are pretty substantial.

Now, incomes are also substantial to support that, but at the same time, those payments are jumping at a bigger rate than other places. And we’ve been talking about interest rates being higher now and then coming down, and although they still are projected to come down, some of the new data is suggesting that we will, and this is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac revising some of their data that we’re probably going to see this higher interest rate climate in 2023 all the way through. And 2024 is when we would start to see some of these numbers coming down, uh, maybe into the upper five. So they were previously thinking, man, we’re gonna get through this quickly, and it, it could, it could change, right? The mortgage market’s been extremely volatile and will continue to be here going forward most likely, but it has been a little more stable over the past few weeks.

Um, and they are projecting that we will see at higher rates in 2023 in the sixes, uh, possibly getting closer to the low sixes. But I did want to put that out there that I think we are going to see, um, some higher rates. And again, I am not a loan officer and I am no, um, expert on mortgage rates, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the experts and they are ensuring the majority of the loans here. And so I defer to them for some of this data. So I wanted to share that with you here, the most recent data, and we’ll get to see some of those graphs. I’ll put ’em up here for you to look at real quick how they’ve revised some of those numbers from the spring and summer till now. And I’ll make a separate video here about that as well and put it up on the channel so you can get a little bit more information on that.

I didn’t want to spend the whole time talking about that, but I did want to give you a heads up. Um, I think that does just mean that as we’re looking at 2023, and I’ll put out some predictions here in the coming weeks, I think that price is going to be the focus for the group of buyers for this next year. Affordability was, I think one of the big, um, driving forces in the market earlier. Um, in 2022, people were thinking, man, interest rates are really low. Yeah, prices are high, but if I can lock in my interest rate, I’m going to have a lower payment for the next 30 years. Most people don’t own their house for 30 years, so we’re gonna talk about a little bit more on the channel about price versus the affordability piece. And of course, you have to be able to afford the mortgage payment to get the better price, but if you can and you can get a better price, interest rates will come down.

We don’t know exactly when that’s going to be. We thought maybe it was gonna be six to 12 months, maybe it’s going to be more like, uh, 12 to 18 months or 24 months. So it might be little bit longer span of time than we were originally thinking. But still the same idea applies that if you can get a better price and then eventually refinance and get a better rate, you have the best of both worlds. As we wrap this video up, again, I think we’re going to see things slowing down as we head into the new year. And then I will, um, expect to see more new listings and things picking up in 2023. I do think we’re gonna see prices down year over year, heading into the spring versus the opposite that we’ve been seeing here. And again, that’s just the year over year data. So, uh, brace yourselves for that. Enjoy the holidays, uh, specifically Thanksgiving here. Um, I know I’m gonna be enjoying that with my family and we’ll talk to you here soon.