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August Stats Preview: Spiking Foreclosure Edition

Posted on September 4, 2012September 4, 2012 by The Tim

With August now behind us, let’s have a look at our stats preview. Most of the charts below are based on broad county-wide data that is available through a simple search of King County and Snohomish County public records. If you have additional stats you’d like to see in the preview, drop a line in the comments and I’ll see what I can do.

First up, here’s the summary snapshot of all the data as far back as my historical information goes, with the latest, high, and low values highlighted for each series:

King & Snhomish County Stats Preview

Summary: Foreclosures spiked sharply up, sales increased again, and inventory is still at or near all-time lows. Hit the jump for the full suite of our usual monthly charts.

Next, let’s look at total home sales as measured by the number of “Warranty Deeds” filed with King County:

King County Warranty Deeds

Sales look to have risen slightly from last month, and still came in over 30% above last year’s level.

Here’s a look at Snohomish County Deeds, but keep in mind that Snohomish County files Warranty Deeds (regular sales) and Trustee Deeds (bank foreclosure repossessions) together under the category of “Deeds (except QCDS),” so this chart is not as good a measure of plain vanilla sales as the Warranty Deed only data we have in King County.

Snohomish County Deeds

Similar month to month increase, but only barely up (1%) year over year.

Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:

King County Notices of Trustee Sale

Snohomish County Notices of Trustee Sale

Big spikes upward in both counties. King County is up 36% from a year earlier and Snohomish had a whopping 78% increase from last August. Yikes.

Here’s another measure of foreclosures for King County, looking at Trustee Deeds, which is the type of document filed with the county when the bank actually repossesses a house through the trustee auction process. Note that there are other ways for the bank to repossess a house that result in different documents being filed, such as when a borrower “turns in the keys” and files a “Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure.”

King County Trustee Deeds

Still below last year’s level on repossessions, but the percentange drop has been shrinking for the last four months straight, from down 63% year-over-year in April to down 47% year-over-year in August.

Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.

King County SFH Active Listings

Snohomish County SFH Active Listings

Still at ridiculously low levels. In fact, Snohomish County hit the lowest point since before January 2000 (as far back as I have data).

Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.

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