It’s time for April market statistics from the NWMLS. Here’s the NWMLS press release: Pending sales in Western Washington rise with improved affordability, buyer incentives
Northwest Multiple Listing Service members reported pending sales for April surged 11.4 percent compared to twelve months ago – and rose 21.3 percent from March.
Brokers reported 6,918 pending sales during April across the 19 counties that make up the Northwest MLS market area. That’s up from the year-ago total of 6,208, and the March figure of 5,701 pending sales (offers made and accepted, but not yet closed).
For the four-county Puget Sound area (King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish), brokers notched 5,372 pending sales, the highest total since August 2007 and a jump of 26 percent from March.
What a shock that their primary focus is on the apparent positive trend in pending sales, when pending sales are rapidly becoming a totally useless measure of actual market activity.
Here’s your King County SFH summary, in a new table format with helpful arrows to show whether the direction of each indicator is positive or negative news for buyers and sellers:
| April 2009 | Number | MOM | YOY | Buyers | Sellers |
| Active Listings | 9,608 | +0.2% | -15.9% |  |
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| Closed Sales | 1,004 | +3.7% | -35.3% | |
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| SAAS (?) | 2.86 | +2.7% | +20.3% | |
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| Pending Sales | 2,114 | +25.6% | +14.9% | |
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| Months of Supply | 4.54 | -20.2% | -26.8% | |
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| Median Price* | $380,000 | +4.4% | -15.3% | |
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The disconnect between pending sales and closed sales grows ever larger. While pending sales were up 15% from last year, closed sales were down over 30% yet again. Something is becoming extremely fishy about the pending sales data. Observe the stark difference in the two charts below:
The 33% spike from February to March in pending sales resulted in all of a whopping 4% increase in closed sales in the following month. We’ll explore more on this huge disconnect in a little more detail in a future post, but it is good to keep in mind when you start reading news reports in the coming weeks about the market supposedly picking back up. It’s an illusion.
Here is the updated Seattle Bubble Spreadsheet, and here’s a copy in Excel 2003 format. Click below for the graphs and the rest of the post.
Here’s the graph of inventory with each year overlaid on the same chart.
Inventory stayed mostly flat again in April, which is not surprising. Most people that don’t need to sell are avoiding listing their homes in the current market.
Here’s the supply/demand YOY graph. Keep in mind that “demand” in the next two charts is measured by pending sales, which are becoming increasingly unreliable as a market indicator.
Pending sales jumped sharply back into positive territory in April, while inventory continued its downward trend. No surprises.
Here’s the chart of supply and demand raw numbers:
April’s pending sales exceeded the peak seen in 2008. Big whoop though, since 30% or more of them will apparently never turn in to actual closed sales.
Here’s the median home price YOY change graph:
Despite the nearly $20,000 spike in the median price from last month, the year-over-year change still exceeded negative 15%.
And lastly, here is the chart comparing King County SFH prices each month for every year back to 1994.
April 2009 King County median SFH price: $380,000.
July 2005 King County median SFH price: $375,000.
Our little spring bounce advanced us forward four months in 2005. It will be interesting to see if median prices stay virtually flat through the summer following the bounce, as they did last year.
Looks like we beat the Times and the P-I to the punch on these numbers yet again. I’ll update this post with news blurbs from them when they become available. As usual, check back tomorrow for the full reporting roundup.
[Update]
Seattle Times: Median home prices in King County continue to fall compared to year ago
Seattle P-I: Area home sales sprang up in April
RE: The Tim @ 99 – What it does show is that there are more atypical sales compared to past years. That’s useful, but not as useful as the NWMLS actually requiring those listings to be specifically identified.
It sort of reminds me of Aubrey’s article entitled something to the effect: “Agents Learning To Do Short Sales.” My thought was that previously it wasn’t really necessary for agents to learn that because they were a small part of the market, so only a few did. Well it’s sort of the same with the NWMLS and short sales/bank owned. Previously it wasn’t necessary to specifically identify them because they were such a small part of the market.
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RE: The Tim @ 99 –
If it something I have learnt by watching the market the last years it is that there is no need to for a month or two advanced notice of market conditions, especially if the notice isn’t reliable. You are much better served to look at closed sales and Case Shiller than to base any decisions or plans on pendings or median sale prices. Kary, the reason that there is no discussion about the median price is that it’s really not that interresting outside the agent community. So what if a few more expensive or cheaper homes sells one month. It says nothing about what people care about the value and price direction of homes. If half the homes that sells are above $300k or $400k isn’t interresting to me. If it moves to say to $100k or $800k it is more interresting. Case Shiller on the other hand is always interresting.
iIheard the following on the radio yesterday from a large news outlet. “Prices in North Seattle shot up with 53% between March and April and 35% on the Eastside.” talk about horrible repoting. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. Real estate reporting is a total mess, Seatle Bubble excluded of course.
For agents I understand that median is of outmost interrest since it’s as close to a community salary level you can get. If median moves up the agent community income moves up.
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Interesting stats from Zillow today via Aubrey’s blog at the PI
So if 26.2% of the volume in the past year was “distressed”, and I would bet that figure is higher more recently than it was at the beginning of the period.
Based on that assumption I’d hazard a guess that in March/April ~20% of the pendings are short sales. So what portion of those will really close?
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RE: deejayoh @ 103 – I don’t think Zillow really has a way of determining what percentage of sales are short sales.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 104 – I bet they do. They have stats on sales prices and mortgage amounts that they are pulling from county records. So if they compare sales price to previous mortgage, then short sales are where it sold for less than the mortgage amount.
Are you suggesting they are just making it up?
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I just ran a search of current pendings for all properties, short sales and bank owned (King County SFR)
Approximate Median and Mean:
All properties 360 and 458
Short Sales 329 and 418
Bank Owned 235 and 282 (Great marketing guys!)
All properties exc. SS and BO 365 and 466
Data from NWMLS sources and not guaranteed. It also fluctuates a lot from day to day, and the indicated short sales and bank owned are probably only a fraction of the real number at this point in time given the new rule is only a few days old.
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RE: deejayoh @ 105 – All they would have is original mortgages amounts, and for HELOCs they’d have absolutely no idea what was owing.
About the only way they’d know current balances for certain would be if there was a recorded Notice of Trustee’s sale.
Also, I’d exclude from short sales properties where the owner has the funds to pay off the bank. There’s no way they could know that either.
Finally, they wouldn’t know closing costs.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 107 –
Not to mention, that some of the mortgages that appear on sources like Realist and others who offer reports have old dead mortgages on them. In my mind, they would have to have a title company or someone on staff to verify encumberances.
Also reverse mortgages appear for the full amount. For instance, I just had an estate sale that showed the mortgage at 250k when they really owed under 100k. On the surface, this house looked like it would be short.
They
would have to have sophisticated systems to have any kind of accuracy from county records. Maybe they do!?
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RE: Greg Perry @ 108 – You can determine whether deeds of trust have been reconveyed in most instances, but it’s time consuming. Sometimes they are not reconveyed of record, and there it would likely appear to be a short sale even if it wasn’t.
This would mainly be an issue where people have refinanced a lot.
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By deejayoh @ 103:
Over in the forums Ira graciously pulled out some numbers (from yesterday? the day before?) about how many listings had the new “short sale” or “REO” tags in the MLS database. Roughly 10% of the single family houses listed in King County had those designations (980 out of ca. 9800)–which is quite a bit lower than that 26% number.
Wonder if that’s a sign of things to come going forward…Though as I recall Ira thought that this was an undercount since the tags are relatively new and may not be applied to all relevant listings.
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RE: Angie @ 110 –
It’s only been since April 29th? that agents were required to check boxes marked REO or Short Sale when inputting listings. They were also required to change any listings already on the NWMLS but not listed that way. So yes, I think the actual figure is probably a lot higher. Previously I would look for the words ” subject to lien holder approval” to find short sales, and I suspect there are still listings out there with those words in the agent remarks but not checked off in the proper box.
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By Angie @ 110:
I believe Deejayoh was referring to the percentage of transactions, not listings as Ira pulled up.
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Greg & Kary @108 & 109:
Yep, you can probably guess correctly most of the time if a home is going to be a short sale, but unless the owner provides you with a recent mortgage statement, it’s tough to know. Obviously, the other way is to have a payoff statement ordered via escrow or the owner.
With regards to reconveyances… actually they are pretty quick. Just plug in the recording number into the county system and any associated documents tied to the DOT will show: recon’s, substi. of trustee, assignments etc…
Reconveyances that are not done according to RESPA can hold up sales and refi’s (AND THEY ARE) because 1) companies have gone belly up 2) a change in servicers creates long delays or 3) private DOT’s are NEVER reconveyed because the parties don’t know that it has to be done to clear title. We’ve actually done courtesy reconveyances for agents who’s sellers have old DOT’s showing on title creating problems (like if the original note holder is long dead and it was never released).
Come work in escrow. Fun fun fun.
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RE: EconE @ 112 – yes, that is correct. Zillow was reporting transactions.
and I don’t believe that most foreclosures involve the MLS so the 10% number is comparable only to the 12.3% zillow reported as short sales. That is pretty close.
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By S-Crow @ 113:
It’s quick for each DOT, but when you’re talking 1004 sales and each property perhaps having four DOTs since the selling owner bought, that woudln’t be quick.
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RE: deejayoh @ 114 – They could determine the number of foreclosures relatively easy, or a pretty close number.
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