Here’s the breakdown of homes on the market and homes that went off the market last month in King County (SFH only).
While the number of delistings had been dramatically increasing year-over-year earlier since June last year—even reaching 200% YOY in April—the rapid growth seems to have leveled off, with November’s 1,758 delistings nearly matching the November ’07 level of 1,767. The 2000-2006 average for November delistings was 1,111.
Inventory has leveled off, delistings have leveled off, while pending and closed sales continue to decline 20-40% YOY. Until we see all of these factors flattening and beginning to turn around, I don’t expect we’ll see a bottom in pricing.
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THE REGRESSION ANALYSIS ESTIMATE ON YOUR MONTHLY RED BAR DATA DOESN”T SHOW HISTORICAL IMPROVEMENT
Its flat, horrifying and chronic. Like you said Tim, the problem got steadily horrifying in 2008, with clear linear degradation of delistings in 2007.
It may be with the recession officially starting in 2008, the high priced listed homes are disappearring [reduced delistings/listings] this year. Of course delistings will decrease as prices become more affordable, assuming unemployment isn’t up to 9% in 2009, with another 9% under-employed and/or “give ups” weighting the economy down.
I know, we’ll all go out and buy Seattle homes with our minimum 740 credit rating and we all can get the $240K maximum 4.6% BECU 30 year fixed money…..assuming Seattle RE prices collapse another 50% to make the pipe dream 4.6% loan limit other than a “Seattle area laughing stock”….lol
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All the de-listings over the past several months suggest there is a large and growing inventory of unlisted homes that owners want to sell. It’s a pent up supply that isn’t currently measured in the inventory statistics. I wonder how many pulled their homes from the market in order to re-list in 2009?
I’ve been tracking $500k-$800K homes on Redfin in the Seattle core for about 9 months. There’s now 62 homes on my Redfin “favorites” list that have gone off market since about May. Of that, 24 never ended up selling. From what I’m seeing, two types of homes are selling. Nice, updated, well designed homes in good neighborhoods and fixer uppers selling for dirt cheap. The somewhat flawed or needs a little work houses in questionable locations are just not moving.
I’m currently renting a place that the owner couldn’t sell. Despite a pretty hefty rental price, the owner is still losing significant money each month. Although he’s happy to have a renter, he wants the place sold.
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With the exception of some ares of Seattle there is no real “market”, as the whole process has broken down. Current listings aren’t selling, those who want to sell aren’t listing (what’s the point?), and buyers are waiting for prices to fall, but the whole mechanism is jambed up.
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We need to see how the summer market comes back to see if there’s any real change in direction or stabilization to the market on a year-over-year basis.
Trying to call bottoms or stabilization on a month-over-month basis is going to result in a lot of false bottoms. Eventually it will call the ultimate bottom, and it’ll trigger sooner than y-o-y analysis, but there’s no rush to buy into the bottom.
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Any utility in calculating/graphing ratios for new:stale and sales:delisted over a long time? Just by eyeballing, huge ratio differences since 1/07.
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I did this on an annualized basis a while ago. It only goes through 2007 but it should give you an idea of how this has trended over time
http://seattlebubble.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/stay-or-go.png
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JPMorgan dropping six WaMu leases in Seattle
By DAN RICHMAN
P-I REPORTER
New York banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co., which in September bought the branches, deposits and loans of Washington Mutual Inc. of Seattle for $1.9 billion, plans to drop the leases in six downtown office buildings now housing WaMu employees, a WaMu spokeswoman said.
WaMu currently leases about 880,000 square feet in downtown Seattle, said Patrick Mullen, a research analyst with Grubb & Ellis Co., Seattle.
“Assuming Chase lets go of most of the workers in those leased offices, and then lets go of the offices, that event alone could drive up vacancies 2 to 3 percentage points in the central business district,” Mullen said. “It would depress rent rates even more than they are now.”
Mullen said the massive withdrawal could also undercut the roughly 2.5 million square feet of office space due for completion in downtown Seattle next year.
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At least one of the crooks is going to jail.
“A federal judge sentenced a former Bellevue loan officer today to seven years in prison for perpetrating what prosecutors say is one of the largest home-mortgage fraud cases brought so far in Western Washington.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008793819_webbrooks27m.html
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