Let’s take an updated look at how King County’s sales are shifting between the different regions around the county, since geographic shifts can and do affect the median price.
In order to explore this concept, we break King County down into three regions, based on the NWMLS-defined “areas”:
- low end: South County (areas 100-130 & 300-360)
- mid range: Seattle / North County (areas 140, 380-390, & 700-800)
- high end: Eastside (areas 500-600)
Here’s where each region’s median prices came in as of February data:
- low end: $177,000—$307,475
- mid range: $265,000—$674,225
- high end: $418,961—$1,099,950
First up, let’s have a look at each region’s (approximate) median price (actually the median of the medians for each area within the region).
The low and high regions both had their median bump up a bit, while median in the mid-tier regions fell slightly.
Next up, the percentage of each month’s closed sales that took place in each of the three regions. The dotted line is a four-month rolling average.
The high tier fell while the low tier surged in January, which fits nicely with the big drop in the overall median price. As of February 2013, 34.5% of sales were in the low end regions, 30.9% in the mid range, and 34.6% in the high end. A year ago the low end regions had a fair bit more sales and the high end less: the low end made up 39.7% of the sales, the mid range was 29.8%, and the high end was 30.6%.
Here’s that information in a visual format:
Finally, here’s an updated look at the percentage of sales data all the way back through 2000:
The big shift away from the low end regions and toward the high end regions explains a good amount of the 18.5% increase in the county-wide median price. No big surprise that the median would go way up when sales in cheap parts of the county fall off and sales in expensive regions shoot up.