Seattle Bubble

Let’s check in again on our regular monthly neighborhood update to Seasonally-Adjusted Active Supply (SAAS). For an explanation of what seasonally-adjusted active supply is, please refer to this post. Also, you may view a map of the areas discussed in this post.

As usual, the sweet interactive data visualizations (new and improved!) in today’s post come to you courtesy Tableau Software.

In the charts below I have taken the calculated value for SAAS and subtracted 2, in order to better visualize the difference between a buyer’s market and a seller’s market. Using this method, negative SAAS values indicate a seller’s market, while positive values indicate a buyer’s market.

Summary

King County’s overall SAAS dropped further below the “balanced” level, coming in at 1.80 for September (August was 1.88). 11 of 30 areas came in below 1.75 as seller’s markets, 5 of 30 came in above 2.25 as buyer’s markets, and the remaining 14 were more or less balanced between 1.75 and 2.25.

Hit the jump for the rest of this month’s interactive charts and commentary.

Here’s a year-over-year comparison for each NWMLS neighborhood.

Year-Over-Year Comparison

Downtown Seattle condos still stick out like a bit of a sore thumb, coming in with an SAAS above 3.

Regional History

Most regions again saw declining SAAS values from August to September, probably due to the increasing number of sales that are being spurred by the tax credit. Further evidence that the tax credit may be heating up the market can be found in the fact that some of the cheapest parts of the county (down in the south) are seeing the largest drops in their SAAS.

The three toughest markets for sellers were Downtown Seattle condos (701) at 3.1, Enumclaw (300) at 2.4, and Central Seattle (380) at 2.4.

The three best markets for sellers as of last month were Vashon Island (800) at 1.3, East Bellevue (530) at 1.4, and East Lake Sammamish (540), at 1.5.