Seattle Real Estate Market Watch 5/2/23

Hey y’all , Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates, and this is my Seattle Real Estate Market. Watch for May 2nd, 2023.

What’s up everybody? A little different here. Today. We’re filming in the office versus the conference room. Just mixing up the scenery a little bit and excited for this week’s update because we get to weave in a little bit of the most recent data from the previous month. So let’s jump into the stats here. And before we do that, I want to share some of those highlights from last month’s stats here in King in Snohomish County, the Seattle Metro area. And if we are looking at prices for the third month in a row, King in Snohomish County, prices have trended upwards. We’ve also, this is really not normal, but we saw a slight decrease in the new listings month over month in King and Snohomish County. Normally we’re seeing listings increasing this time of year and we have been seeing more listings than we were seeing earlier in the year, but right now we’re actually seeing fewer listings even month over month, which is super abnormal.

And another thing I noticed is that because we’ve been seeing fewer listings, the homes for sale or the inventory is also declining because pending sales are up. So pending sales have continued to increase, which is seasonally normal. We’re still seeing less than we have in a hot market or in the past few years, but we’re seeing more. That trend is increasing. The trend though, last month was down for the new listings and consequently we’re seeing less homes for sale month over month, which again is odd for April. So we’re here the beginning of May, and we have fewer houses on the market than we did at the beginning of April. We are also seeing an abnormally low amount of new listings though here for the time of year. So let’s talk about some of the stats, because the weekly data we see is pointing us to what we’re going to see, but we’re trying to see where the market’s at currently versus you know, maybe where the market has been.

And that’s why we’ve been doing these market watches on a regular basis. New listings over the last week, 527 new listings on the market. Last week we had 536 for King and Snohomish County. And so we’re seeing, again, fewer, that’s the trend. Fewer new listings coming on the market. Again, it’s odd back on the market, we saw 66 come back on the market. A lot of those were canceled listings at the end of the month or expired listings at the end of the month. There weren’t a ton of expireds. I mentioned we’re not seeing as many of those, but we did see more than we did in the last week. And a lot of that is because it was the end of the month. That’s typically when listings expire and or people maybe cancel and re-list. So that’s where a lot of those back on the markets are coming from.

Price reductions, we had 212 price reductions, we had 200 last week about the same. We’re still seeing price reductions. Um, some people may be overshooting the list price a little bit, but we’re also seeing a trend, and I didn’t share this, I wanted to save it. We’re seeing in King and Elish County, the median days on market is now, as of today, it might update as a few updates happen to the listing data, but as of today, it was under a week in King and Salish County for the median days on market. But that average is still up in the twenties. So we’re seeing that across the board. There’s some houses pulling that average up, but a lot of the new listings are selling pretty quickly, especially if they’re priced competitively. And those would not be those price-reduction houses. I would say the contingent purchases, 17 versus 13 last week, we’re still seeing contingent sales, right?

Um, a little more than we were seeing when the market was super hot because, well, we were seeing zero, but not a lot of contingent purchases. It’s still pretty difficult to make a contingent purchase here in the Seattle area. The pending listings, this is that data point that we keep coming back to when we look at, okay, what’s the inventory numbers going to look like? Because whether we like it or not, a lot of the price and the value does have to do with supply and demand. And it’s a very basic economic principle. But I like to keep things basic and simple. And there are more factors that influence real estate as we’ve seen Fear <laugh>, right? People being afraid, the economy, right? We’ve seen the interest rates affecting the activity, but supply and demand is always a major player in this. And we’re seeing that as listing inventory is shrinking, that there’s more pressure on the prices.

And that’s why we’ve seen prices climbing here, even though interest rates really haven’t dropped. Interest rates are hovering right around that six-and-a-half-plus percent range, which is relatively close to the highest they’ve been in a while. But well, things are changing and people are adjusting to the interest rates. There is less inventory on the market. And so we’re seeing pressure on the pricing even with higher interest rates. Pending sales, though, we had 811 last week, we had 826 this week. So just like the data at the end of the month, right, for the entire month of April is showing us, we’re seeing that trend continuing, that we’re seeing more pendings, more houses coming off the market than we’re seeing coming on the market with the new listings and the sold listings. 2 655 versus five 60. It’s normal to see more at the end of the month.

A lot of things closing towards the end of the month. Some people are squeezing in shorter closes, things like that. But still the sold listings are more than the new listings. So I think the, the summary here for this week, and I know we’re looking at the same numbers every week, and that’s the point we’re seeing how things are changing and how things are adjusting. I had somebody comment, um, that this is all the same data. Well, no, it’s different every single week, but we’re talking the same things because well, we’re seeing how they vary and how they change. So I think as we’re looking at the market, the big observation that we’re, and the big trend we’re continuing to see is that there are fewer listings than normal. And we’re seeing the pendings continue to pick up even though the new listing inventory is not picking up, which means for sellers, it’s a great time or an ideal time in this year to be thinking about selling for the normal reasons because it’s nice out.

And the market usually peaks this time of year, spring and summer this year might be completely different. I personally think it will be, I think prices will steadily climb here for most of the rest of the year, but a lot of it’s going to be dependent on inventory. And we’re continuing to see a suppression in the listing inventory for some of the same reason we’ve been talking about, namely interest rates. And I think if that continues, we’re gonna continue to see pressure on pricing here in the Seattle area. Thanks so much for watching this week’s Seattle Real Estate Market Watch. Stay tuned for next week. We’re gonna talk about the monthly recaps here, the Seattle Real Estate Market update, the King County update, the Snohomish County update. So if you want to pay attention to those videos, follow along the channel, please consider subscribing. And if you wanna talk more about real estate buying or selling your own personal situation, please feel free to reach out.