October unemployment info was released by the Washington State Employment Security Department this week, so here’s a shot of the Seattle area (King/Snohomish) unemployment rate (NSA) compared to the national U3 rate:
According to their data, the Seattle area has shed 66,600 jobs in the last year, while adding 42,320 people to the labor force.
→ 31 CommentsCategories: Statistics
Tags: unemployment
Zillow’s latest “Homeowner Confidence” survey came out yesterday, and as usual, provides an interesting look into the psychology of the market.
…in the hardest-hit region of the country, the Western states, homeowners continued to be overly optimistic when evaluating the value of their own homes.
Nationwide, when asked about their own home’s value over the past year:
- 25% think their home’s value has increased
- 26% think their home’s value has stayed the same
- 49% think their home’s value has decreased
In reality, 72 percent of U.S. homes lost value over the past year, and 22 percent of homes increased in value.
Drilling down into the more detailed release (pdf), you can see that out here in the west, homeowners still seem to be the most overly optimistic bunch in the country.
53% of homeowners in the west believe their home has declined in value in the last year, while 28% believe their homes have increased in value. In reality (according to Zillow), 78% of homes have declined in value, and only 17% have increased.
Meanwhile, only 15% of homeowners in the west expect their home’s value to decrease during the next six months, which is not too surprising given that nearly half the people surveyed base their belief in a housing market bottom on “general good news about the economy.”
With the stock market continuing to surge (quite likely due to a growing dollar carry trade) and the mainstream press giddily pumping an alleged recovery while all but completely ignoring the fact that none of the underlying poisons in the economy have been addressed (and in fact many of the problems have been amplified), of course most people would believe that housing has bottomed.
→ 53 CommentsCategories: Statistics
Tags: delusion, homeowner confidence, Zillow
Let’s check in on our October 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 continued to drop below the “balanced” level, coming in at 1.59 for October (September was 1.80). 18 of 30 areas came in below 1.75 as seller’s markets (over half for the first time in recent years), Only 1 of 30 came in above 2.25 as a buyer’s market, and the remaining 11 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.
→ 15 CommentsCategories: Statistics
Tags: graphs, Neighborhoods, NWMLS, SAAS, Statistics, Tableau
Let’s take a look at October NWMLS statistics from around the sound. As usual, courtesy Tableau Software, the Around the Sound update is rocking sweet interactive data visualizations.
Feel free to download the old charts in Excel 2007 and Excel 2003 format. To get specific info about a certain point on any graph in the post below, float your mouse pointer over the data.
Before we get to the cool stuff, here’s the usual table of YOY stats for each of our seven covered counties as of October 2009.
| October 2009 | King | Snohomish | Pierce | Kitsap | Thurston | Island | Skagit | Whatcom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Median Price |  3.7% |
12.3% |
10.3% |
 0.4% |
10.7% |
7.0% |
10.1% |
5.0% |
| Listings | 19.7% |
23.8% |
22.8% |
26.1% |
14.5% |
7.3% |
4.2% |
10.1% |
| Closed Sales | 33.3% |
42.5% |
24.0% |
5.5% |
5.7% |
26.8% |
9.0% |
19.0% |
| Seasonally Adjusted Active Supply | 1.6 | 1.8 | 1.7 | 1.6 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 2.0 | 1.8 |
Summary
Hit the jump for the rest of this month’s interactive charts.
→ 51 CommentsCategories: Statistics
Tags: around-the-sound, graphs, inventory, King_County, Kitsap, NWMLS, Pierce, SAAS, sales, Skagit, Snohomish, Statistics, Tableau, Thurston, Whatcom
Let’s have a more detailed look at foreclosure activity for October in King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties. First up, the Notice of Trustee Sale summary:
October 2009
King: 666 NTS, up 4% YOY
Snohomish: 323 NTS, down 2% YOY
Pierce: 385 NTS, down 36% YOY
Foreclosure notices dipped a bit in all three counties last month. Unfortunately the foreclosure rate seems to historically be an extremely noisy measure, alternating up and down month-to-month nearly every month, so we can’t really read much into this particular one-month dip. And, thanks to SB 5810 (more on that here), the year-over-year numbers aren’t particularly useful right now, either..
Here’s a simple look at how October’s foreclosures compare to the same month last year in each of the three counties:
Next let’s look at the percentage of households that received a Notice of Trustee Sale (based on household data for each county from the American Community Survey, assuming linear household growth between surveys):
King County came in at 1 NTS per 1,185 households, Snohomish County had 1 NTS per 816 households, and Pierce had 1 NTS for every 774 households (higher is better).
According to foreclosure tracking company RealtyTrac, Washington’s statewide foreclosure rate of one foreclosure for every 822 households was 29rd worst among the 50 states and the District of Columbia (down from 23rd last month, possibly still due to SB 5810). Note that RealtyTrac’s definition of “in foreclosure” is much broader than what we are using, and includes Notice of Default, Lis Pendens, Notice of Trustee Sale, and Real Estate Owned.
Here’s a look at King County’s Notices of Trustee Sales along with Trustee Deeds (which represent one way that a bank can actually complete the foreclosure process and repossess a house).
496 Trustee Deeds in King County set a new record, and was higher than the volume of Notices of Trustee Sales seen anytime prior to Q2 2008.
In case you’re curious, here’s one reason that I believe the current downtick in foreclosures is the result of the state legislation rather than an underlying fundamental trend of easing pressure on mortgage holders:
Since 2000, the unemployment rate and the foreclosure rate have tracked fairly close to each other. It seems doubtful that we will see a significant reduction in the rate of distressed mortgage holders while still experiencing a rising unemployment rate.
Following are the usual charts of King, Pierce, and Snohomish County foreclosures from January 2000 through October 2009. Click below to continue…
→ 13 CommentsCategories: Statistics
Tags: foreclosures, King_County, Notice of Trustee Sale, Pierce, Snohomish, trustee-deeds
Here’s another installment of “quick look,” a series of posts in which I present a fresh set of charts for some recent data with minimal commentary.
Today’s theme is King County SFH October stats in bar charts compared to each October since 2000.
Note that the definition of “Active Listings” was revised in July 2008 to exclude certain listings.
→ 32 CommentsCategories: Statistics
Tags: closed, graphs, listings, NWMLS, quick-look, Statistics
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