Also, if you removed the bank owned and short sales from the mix, the median for King County would probably be about 10k higher. Again a different market that might not affect an individual seller or the value of their property.

Numbers from NWLMS sources but not compiled or guaranteed by the NWMLS.

Sure it’s possible that an agent wouldn’t enter the information correctly. I ran across a bankruptcy listing recently where the agent wasn’t aware the box needed to be selected.

I’ll assume that means you did use that feature to come up with that figure. Many agents who listed the property before the data field was available, did not go back and edit their original listing. Most new listings will be accurate, but the pendings and solds…not so much.

ditto

Where are you getting the “only 28 are short sales”. If you are using the new search feature, it is not working properly yet, and unreliable.

BTW, I just re-ran the numbers, and we’re now over 1000 closed month to date, and only 28 are short sales. That compares to over 20% of the pendings and over 10% of the actives.

Numbers from NWMLS sources, but not compiled or guaranteed by the NWMLS.

Much lower than a 6 month supply. 6 months is a balanced market, not a seller’s market. 3 months…or even less, I’d say for a “seller’s market”.

But even if you had a 3 month supply right now it wouldn’t be a seller’s market, as there are too many sellers who “want” to sell but aren’t, or can’t because they are upside down (hence all the rental signs). So by the true definition of a seller’s market, unless all of the sellers who truly want to sell were actually for sale, you can’t have a seller’s market. The minute it turned to an actual seller’s market, more sellers would come on market, tipping it back the other way again. It would be a false read.

King County May median sold price, if you take out houseboats, mobile homes and townhomes is $386,500 for May 2009 (median asking $399,000 at time of sale) and $457,741 (median asking $469,000) for May 2008. 15.5% decrease.

Median Price Per Square foot is $216.9 vs. $191.3 = 11.8% decrease YOY.

Most townhomes are single family in Seattle, but are condos most everywhere else in King County. Doesn’t seem right to count them as single family in some places and not in others, so best to exclude them altoghether in the stats.

May 2007 $480,000 – mppsf $227.

Given the discussion about “discrepancies” in reporting, I just calculated that while typing this comment. (required disclosure: *Stats are not compiled, verified or posted by NWMLS*)

The only real question is: do you want to buy a property that will worth less tomorrow than today and may take decades to appreciate?

This country is hopeless.

However, like I said, here in western Washington, months of supply has been artificially inflated by removing certain homes from the listings pool and adding them to the pendings pool, so it’s largely a useless measure anymore.

I always link directly to the NWMLS press release with my monthly reports (see the May data here) where you can download the pdf directly from the NWMLS yourself and see the data (click the first link in the post, then the pdfs are linked from the upper-right on the NWMLS page). Also, I do my best to consistently report the same data each month.

I have no idea where the $361,250 came from. The only place that number appears in the detailed May 2009 report for King County (a 56-page pdf not linked directly on the NWMLS public page) is as the cumulative year-to-date median for Area 390 (Central Seattle, Madison Park, Capitol Hill). $259,000 appears in a few places, but none of them are the median price for all condos in the county.

Where did the idea of seller’s market being 6 MOS come from? Is that something that the NWMLS made up, or did it come from somewhere else? The reason that I ask is that if you can arbitrarily change the definition of pending sales and thus the MOS, it is really meaningless. Seems kind of like a pointless measurement if there is no standardization.

As an example, today’s PI has an article by Aubrey Cohen that states: “In King County, the medians were $361,250 for a house and $259,000 for a condo, down 16.4 percent and 8 percent, respectively, from a year earlier and down 3.2 percent for houses and up 5.7 percent for condos from April.” Meanwhile, you report that the King county median is $375,000, down 15.7% YOY (per your snazzy interactive chart).

Why the discrepancy? Is the King County median $361K or $375K?