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I’d like to draw your attention to a post I made earlier this week on the Redfin Sweet Digs blog: Where are buyers getting the biggest discounts?
The specific portion that I believe may be of interest to Seattle Bubble readers is the following chart, which is a scatterplot of Seattle-area zip codes, with the average list price of homes sold in each zip code in the last 3 months on the x-axis and the average percent discount from the final list price that they closed at on the y-axis.
I thought it was quite interesting to see a relatively strong correlation between the average price of a neighborhood and the percent below asking price that homes are closing at.
For anyone that is out there right now making offers (not that I think it’s a great time to buy yet), be aware that the more inexpensive the neighborhood, the less likely a seller is to accept an offer significantly below asking price.
If you’re interested you may download the full data summary here.
→ 9 CommentsCategories: Statistics
Tags: below-list, discounts, NWMLS, Redfin
Happy Thanksgiving everybody. I hope you are enjoying it with family and/or friends. We’ve all got a lot to be thankful for.
No post today. Consider this an open thread for any of you that are hanging around here today.
Photo taken August 10, 2006
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Let’s check out the three price tiers for the Seattle area, as measured by Case-Shiller. Remember, Case-Shiller’s “Seattle” data is based on single-family home repeat sales in King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties.
First up is the straight graph of the index from January 2000 through September 2008.
Price drops accelerated slightly in September for all three tiers. The low tier and middle tiers are rewound to just below April 2006 values, while the high tier is just above its May 2006 level. The middle tier again took the biggest percentage hit in September, falling 1.8% in a single month.
Here’s a chart of the year-over-year change in the index from August 2002 through September 2008.
The low tier had the biggest year-over-year hit, but not by a large margin. Both the low and the middle tiers fell over 10% YOY in September. Here’s where the tiers sit YOY as of September – Low: -10.5%, Med: -10.2%, Hi: -9.2%.
Lastly, here’s a decline-from-peak graph like the one posted yesterday, but looking only at the Seattle tiers.
The decline frome the peak looks remarkably similar across the three tiers since peak +12. This is interesting, since the low tier reached a considerably higher peak than the middle and high tiers, and it would be reasonable to assume that it will correct further. So far we have not seen that happen to a large degree. It will be interesting to see whether the HPI for the three tiers get closer over the next year.
(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 11.25.2008)
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Tags: Case-Shiller, Statistics, tiers
Our resources tell us phones are ringing off the hook.
I’m hearing rates for purchases and refi’s are anywhere from 5.25% to 5.125% at par. Earlier this year, I sent out an APB for people who are waiting for super rates. Here they are again. Let me know off-line if you would like a reference to loan officers who can give you a good faith estimate and get the ball rolling.
S-Crow
→ 30 CommentsCategories: News
Tags: Interest Rates, Legacy Escrow Service, mortgages
It’s time once again for an update on the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. According to September data,
Down 1.4% August to September.
Down 9.8% YOY.
Down 10.1% from the July 2007 peak
Last year prices fell 0.25% from August to September and year-over-year prices were up 4.7%.
Here’s the usual graph, with L.A. & San Diego offset from Seattle & Portland by 17 months. Portland has now outperformed Seattle on a YOY basis for 10 months, dropping 8.6% YOY in September.
Note: This graph is not intended to be predictive. It is for entertainment purposes only.
Here’s the graph of all twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities:
In September, eight of the twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities experienced smaller year-over-year drops than Seattle (the same as August). Dallas at -2.8%, Charlotte at -3.5%, Denver at -5.4%, Boston at -5.7%, Cleveland at -6.4, New York at -7.3%, Portland at -8.6%, and Atlanta at -9.5%. Phoenix just barely edged out Las Vegas again for the largest year-over-year drop, with prices in both those cities falling over 31% in a single year.
Here’s an update to the peak-decline graph, inspired by a graph created by reader CrystalBall. This chart takes the twelve cities whose peak index was greater than 175, and tracks how far they have fallen so far from their peak. The horizontal axis shows the total number of months since each individual city peaked.
In the fourteen months since the price peak in Seattle prices have declined approximately 10.1%. The city with the most similar degree of price drops to Seattle fourteen months after its respective peak was Las Vegas.
Here’s the “rewind” chart. The horizontal range is selected to go back just far enough to find the last time that Seattle’s HPI was as low as it is now. This gives us a clean visual of just how far back prices have retreated in terms of months.
Seattle’s Case-Shiller value for September 2008 of 172.84 was fairly close to its April 2006 value of 172.28. Prices have now “rewound” two years and five months.
Check back tomorrow for a post on the Case-Shiller data for Seattle’s price tiers.
(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 11.25.2008)
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Tags: behind the cycle, California, Case-Shiller, graphs, Statistics
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