Seattle Real Estate Market Watch 3/28/23

Hey y’all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my Seattle Real Estate Market Watch for March 28th, 2023.

All right, we’re almost done with March and we’ve officially headed into the spring here in Seattle. The weather’s starting to get a little nicer, which is amazing. That’s why we all live here in the Seattle area. But this time of year, typically we’re seeing a lot of listings coming on the market. That’s why we call it the spring selling season, but really this year we’re not seeing the volume of listings that we’re used to seeing, and that’s causing us to stay in this low inventory environment. Although there are fewer buyers in the market right now. It’s true there are less people that are looking to make a purchase. I’ve had clients myself that have been maybe thinking about buying that are kind of sitting on the sidelines and, or some people that are, you know, maybe looking to upgrade their house, but they’re like, you know, let’s just kind of see how things go.

And, and I would say specifically tech clients, right? I think there’s been some layoffs and some reorganization and people are wanting to see how the dust settles, which is completely understandable. given, you know, you want to have confidence in your job as you’re making a home purchase. But I think, right, even with the people on the sidelines, we’re still seeing the housing market heating up. The evidences of the A are the multiple offers and the competition coming back. Not every listing, but some of the good ones are selling quickly and selling multiple offers over asking price. They had a client miss out on a condo last week. They made a great offer. They were at asking price. They didn’t have any contingency, super clean offer, but somebody paid 20,000 over what they were willing to pay for the house. They essentially paid what somebody else had paid to live in this condo community last year at the peak of the market.

So anybody in that building is probably pretty pumped to see that prices are back to almost where they were before the market started adjusting. Can’t say the same for everywhere, but in that particular condo complex, I think the people that live in there gotta be a little bit excited. I would say, as we look at the data here, let’s start with interest rates, cuz that’s been, I think one of the bigger drivers here of price and also some of the concerns people have had specifically around affordability. In interest rates last week we’re at 6.7%, and that was a Wednesday recording. I’m recording this on a Tuesday, so we can take this comparison with the grain salt. But essentially over the last week, rates right before the fed announcement were around 6.7. And as of today, for the 30 year fixed 6.6% on average, according to mortgage news dailies, survey rates had dropped considerably still in the sixes, but low sixes and then have kind of started to climb back up.

But we’re still hovering in that same range even after the quarter point tick up. And again, remember, the mortgage rates are more closely tied to inflation and concerns over inflation than they are on the Fed funds rate. So just continue to keep that in mind. The Fed funds rate is for short term interest and helps in theory curb inflation. And when that’s happening, when we feel like inflation’s under control, we’re actually see interest rates coming down. So right now we’re kind of hovering in the mid to upper sixes. We haven’t eclipsed the, you know, previous highs in 2022 yet. And maybe we will again, maybe we won’t, and we’ll see how the next inflation reports come out and what the news is there. But for now, the housing market is still moving forward. In Seattle, we’ve got 425 new listings on the market. 4 52 last week.

Again, just not what we’re used to seeing in a given week. We had 47 come back on the market again, a lot of those would’ve been canceled. There were 49 canceled listings. and 14 expired listings, not very many, so most likely, most of those are from there, maybe a few that we’re sitting out for a bit. sold listings, 4 94 we’re heading towards the end of the month, so I think next week we’ll have maybe a few more pending listings. 7 56. Again, still a really solid number of pendings, and again, that’s homes that went pending this week or we’re already pending inspection maybe, and then now are pending closer to being sold. But again, that number is continuing to outpace the new listings of 4 25 and it’s keeping inventory low. But good news, there’s still opportunities for contingent purchases. Again, that’s probably houses that have been sitting on the market for a little bit.

There were 12 contingent purchases last week in King in Snohomish County. There were price reductions, still 172 price reductions over the past week. There are still opportunities, right? Some people are still putting, pushing the price a little bit. and again, just depends on preference for how they want to approach the negotiation. But there are also people that are pricing and getting multiple offers. There’s this complicated dynamic right now, right? When you’re on the higher side of the market, you’re sitting and you’re seeing your price coming down, or maybe you’re selling for a little bit less than asking price, but if you’re pricing competitively on the lower side, most likely seeing those multiple offers better terms and things like that. So for sellers, if you have been thinking about selling, putting your house on the market right now, it it, depending again, where you’re at, you’re most likely going to have buyers competing for your house, but at a lower price than they would’ve last year.

buyers unfortunately, inventory has declined. So the asking for mortgage rate buy downs and having more favorable terms, well, those are less likely right now in this market. They may return in the fall, right? If, if the amount of inventory really picks up this summer, I don’t expect it to given the rate climate. But if we see a lot of houses coming on the market, that would shift the balance towards the buyers again, in the negotiations. But right now, a lot of houses, unless they’ve been sitting for a while, right? And some of these might be holdovers, a lot of houses are selling relatively quickly, assuming that they’re priced competitively and the negotiations are a lot more in the favor of the sellers. Again, thanks so much for watching this week’s Seattle Real Estate Market Watch. If you have questions about your situation and you want to connect, feel free to reach out. And as always, if you haven’t subscribed to the channel and you want to follow along and hear more updates like this on a regular basis, please do so.