Seattle Real Estate Market Watch 6/21/23

Hey all, Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates and this is my Seattle Real Estate Market Watch for June 21st, 2023.

I was thinking we were coming up on one year here and we are soon, but it was August, beginning of August, 2022 that we started making these weekly market watches. And the big impetus for that was that the market was changing and shifting so much last spring and summer and fall. It just made sense to start doing a little bit more regular updates and then to continue those as we’ve seen the market continue to shift here in a different direction in 2023. Now last week I talked about some of the year-over-year type of numbers and also some of the changes that we’ve seen here even since the beginning of 2023. And the big, I guess the big highlight is interest rates are up since the beginning of the year, hovering around seven, thankfully down a little bit here this week. But home prices have gone up considerably.

So if you missed that update, go check out last week’s update where I share a little bit more about the numbers. And also if you want to get the latest on the data, the Seattle Monthly Market updates have the month, uh, recap. So last month’s data recapped in that most recent video, that would be the June 2023 update. So before we jump into the market watch data, I wanna share a couple success stories with you from this week. And one is a client who offered on a house in Everett, three offers, but they were able to get the house just a little bit over asking price and they were even able to include an inspection can contingency. And even though I’ve been talking about all these crazy stories or how the market’s been heating up, not everything is selling with 22 offers and every contingency waived.

A lot of it’s location-specific, house specific. So these clients, that was their first offer, they’re super excited. We did the inspection, we moving forward, it’s gonna be closing here in a few weeks. Another client who’s made multiple offers and been part of some of the crazy situations, uh, here the past couple months was, uh, successful on a purchase yesterday in Shoreline. So excited for them as well. And that house needs a lot of work. And you know, in their situation we were even able to get some closing costs negotiated. We did prepec the house, which was nice. Um, so it put them in a position to have a stronger offer and we were able to get those closing costs or some of the closing costs covered, um, as a result of some of the inspection items. But the seller still had the confidence that we were going to close on the purchase, uh, fairly quickly.

So couple fun success stories. Just as a reminder, as we look at the market watch data here, this is King and Snohomish County residential data over the past week. But the data here is remaining fairly consistent. We’re seeing less listings than pending sales, which makes sense. Um, for what we’ve been seeing all year long, still less listings than we would see no normally in a given year. Last week we had 579 new listings in King of Snohomish County, but this week, 5 61, so a little bit less here. Uh, in the second to last week of June back on the market, we saw 58 listings come back on the market. Again, a lot of those are uh, canceled that got re-listed, uh, list price reductions 280 last week we had 332, so fewer price reductions, but we’re still seeing price reductions. We’re not in a place where everything is selling immediately and selling way over asking price.

But we do have some that are doing that, but then some that are sitting. So again, a lot of its location house specific, the list price increases. So this is always a weird stat and I don’t talk about it a lot, but today I’m gonna talk about it because I experienced this yesterday and in this case the list price increases In Snohomish County last week there were 59 list price increases. This week there were 23. But the phenomenon there is somebody that is pricing their house and hoping that it’s going to sell for more usually, and it doesn’t, it doesn’t even sell for their asking price, but then they increase the price again. And so I think as you’re looking at listing, and so this is just a good FYI for you if you’re selling your house or thinking about it, list for a price that you’re willing to accept, don’t list for something that’s less than you’re willing to accept because you may be surprised that buyers aren’t interested even at that lower price.

And now you’re, well you look, I think it looks silly when you increase your price. Now sometimes people will do that after they’ve maybe been under contract and they did have multiple offers and it was selling for more. So they’re saying, Hey, if somebody’s willing to pay the price that the other buyer was, I’ll sell it. But they think their house is worth more now. And again, it was with the competition, but I think that list price increase is not the best strategy. Yesterday I showed a condo in Mount Lake Terrace to one of my clients and both of us weren’t impressed at the list price for what the house was and then they increased the list price by 10,000. So we just laughed about it, but I figured I would share that just as some news, like if you’re, if you see that as a buyer, it just means that the seller thought they would get more and they didn’t.

So then they’re now asking for more or maybe they did get more under contract and it came back on. So that would be the scenario. So just a good fyi. Contingent purchases 20 versus 19 last week kind of remaining the same. There is still room for contingent purchases. Um, again, usually on houses that have been on the market for a week or two weeks that have gone past their offer review dates. If it’s competitive at all, though you’re not in a position to make a contingent offer where you have to sell your house first before you can buy. But the fact that it’s still happening is an encouragement to buyers that own a home and want to maybe upgrade their house. If we look at the expired listings, we had 20 expired listings the last week and this number has been declining, which shows that things are selling instead of sitting and sitting for a really long time.

So that’s a positive. I would say when we look at pending listings, we had 829 versus 8 49 last week. So a little bit fewer pending listings. And again, these are houses that were already under contract, maybe pending inspection, going pending. There are fewer and few of those right now. More and more houses are going straight to pending. And you also have houses that were now either pending inspection or pending after being active. So that number still is remaining strong. Listings sold 5 89, which is more again than the new listings. So more coming off the market than going on the market. Um, and then canceled listings, 75 versus 105 last week. And the canceled listings, this is one of those where sometimes people will cancel it and then re-list it. So some of those back on the markets are those canceled and re-listed properties. But we do see that strategy when a house isn’t selling, if you do a 5% price drop, which is kind of the normal number or somewhere in that range, you’re able to essentially have a new listing in the MLS so it shows up, uh, fresh to buyers.

I think it’s kind of an old strategy cuz the days on market still shows and if you do a price reduction, all the real estate websites are still sending it out. So I don’t know if it really accomplishes anything now it used to, um, but that’s just some thoughts there. Now when we’re looking at rates, I mentioned that rates are down a little bit from last week. The rates as of yesterday, um, they haven’t posted the new ones yet. On mortgage news daily, 6.87% was the 30-year fixed average. And you can see some of the other ones here on the screen. The 30-year fixed is the most common interest rate that people are getting, so that’s why talk about it the most. And we hoped that the rates would be better after the fed’s announcement that they were gonna hold still here for a little bit.

Hopefully improve consumer confidence with some of the more positive inflationary data. But we haven’t really seen much of an adjustment here with the mortgage prices. I’m also buying a house, as I mentioned in the last video. And so I’ve been floating my mortgage rate, not locking it in, but I need to here in the next day or two. So I’m hoping that that number keeps declining a little bit selfishly. Alright, so real quick recap. The housing market is still heating up here in Seattle. We’ve seen prices continuing decline since the beginning of the year. We’ve seen the inventory shrinking and that’s what’s causing the upward pressure on pricing. And in a lot of places not. But in a lot of places you’re starting to see housing prices and sale prices start to creep up into the same ballpark where they were last year at the peak time.

So I know I’ve mentioned this, but I do think that there’s still a window of opportunity for buyers. It is shrinking though I think those prices are starting to catch back up to where they were last year. And interest rates are higher, which means that houses are even more expensive on a monthly basis than they were when prices were lower and interest rates were high. Right? It makes sense. A lot of people thought we would see lower interest rates by now and I think we still may in this next six to 12 months, but it just keeps getting punted right? And interest rates have remained in this same ballpark for the last, well, I mean we’re getting close to a year now where interest rates have kind of been in the sixes and it does put a lot of pressure on people’s wallets. And in this higher priced environment, there’s a lot more expense on a monthly basis when you have the larger loan amounts with the increased interest.

But at the same time, people are still out buying. And I think for sellers that’s really good news because some people felt like maybe they missed the boat or they wanna sell this year, but don’t wanna sell for a lot less than their neighbors. And so if you’re somebody who’s thinking about selling, you’re nearing that spot where you’re almost getting the same prices that people were getting even though interest rates are higher. Thanks so much for watching this week’s Seattle Real Estate Market Watch. If you got some value out of this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you wanna talk more about your situation, maybe you’re thinking about buying or selling somewhere in the Seattle Metro area, please feel free to reach out.