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.

…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.

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.

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

Year-Over-Year Comparison

120 (Des Moines) is the only region that came in as a convincing buyer’s market, with an SAAS of 2.9.

Regional History

Not surprisingly, the recent decline in SAAS has been felt pretty much all across King County.

The three toughest markets for sellers were Des Moines / Redondo (120) at 2.9, Kirkland / Bridle Trails (560) at 2.1, and Black Diamond / Maple Valley (320) at 2.1.

The three best markets for sellers as of last month were Juanita / Woodinville (600) at 1.2, Jovita / West Hill Auburn (100) at 1.3, and Redmond / Carnation (550) at 1.3.

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.

The visualization below is comparable to our previous chart of closed sales in each county in October 2008 and October 2009:

Closed Sales

Kitsap, Skagit, and Thurston counties all still seem to be mostly missing out on the sales spike action.

Here’s our comparison of median prices in each county at their respective peaks and in October 2009:

Change from Peak

Still pretty much in a holding pattern.

Seasonally Adjusted Active Supply

Only Skagit County came in on the “buyer’s market” side with October’s SAAS, and only Skagit and Thurston saw higher SAAS than last year.

The complete lack of a strong surge in sales in Kitsap, Skagit, and Thurston counties is interesting. Given that these counties have some of the lowest home prices around the sound, it is surprising to see that the tax credit incentive doesn’t seem to be having more of an effect.

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…

Only July of last year was higher than October’s reading of 666.

July and October of last year came in higher than October of this year in Snohomish.

Pierce County actually dropped below the levels set in every single month of 2008.

Note: The graphs above are derived from monthly Notice of Trustee Sale counts gathered at King, Snohomish, and Pierce County records. For a longer-term picture of King County foreclosures back to 1979, refer to the final chart in this post. For the full legal definition of what a Notice of Trustee Sale is and how it fits into the foreclosure process, check out RCW 61.24.040. The short version is that it is the notice sent to delinquent borrowers that their home will be repossessed in 90 days.

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.

In the comments, a reader claimed that I was “reading this graph wrongly,” and that plotting the data in this manner “will always see a giant gap.”

Since there is typically a delay between when a sale goes pending and when it actually closes, this would make sense logically. Unfortunately, the data does not bear this theory out. In general, the gap tends to appear only in the spring, with pending and closed sales generally evening out in the summer and fall.

Here’s another way to visualize the difference between this year and previous years:

Six of the ten months so far this year have blown past the lowest average monthly difference in 2000-2008 (-635 in February).

If you’re interested, I have also plotted the pre-bubble years 2000-2003 individually:

• 2000
• 2001
• 2002
• 2003

No matter which way you slice it, this year is incredibly out of whack when it comes to the number of pending sales that actually turn into closed deals.

Here’s your King County SFH summary, with the arrows to show whether the year-over-year direction of each indicator is positive or negative news for buyers and sellers:

October 2009	Number	MOM	YOY	Buyers	Sellers
Active Listings	8,869	-5.2%	-19.7%
Closed Sales	1,758	+8.7%	+33.3%
SAAS (?)	1.61	-11.4%	-27.9%
Pending Sales	2,295	+0.3%	+72.9%
Months of Supply	3.86	-5.5%	-53.6%
Median Price*	$377,500	-1.2%	-3.7%

In a great big surprise to absolutely nobody, closed sales bumped up in a seasonally unnatural pattern in October, no doubt due to the belief many buyers had that the $8,000 tax credit would be expiring at the end of November (it is now foolishly being renewed and extended, pushed through Congress on the back of an unrelated extension of unemployment benefits).

At this point it still looks unlikely that closed sales will manage to break through the 2,000 mark this year. In the past, closed sales have fallen an average of 15% from October to November. I suspect that this year we may see sales hold steady or possibly even post a slight increase, but a 14% increase would be surprising, especially with the tax credit now having been extended.

Here’s how the closed sales situation is shaping up compared to previous years:

Thanks to an apparent abundance of eager homebuyers that aren’t very good at math, closed sales made a clear break from the trend seen every other year since 2000, ticking up from September to October. I expect a similar market distortion to appear next month as well.

Feel free to download the updated Seattle Bubble Spreadsheet, and here’s a copy in Excel 2003 format. Click below for the rest of the usual monthly graphs.

Here’s the graph of inventory with each year overlaid on the same chart.

The tax credit isn’t having much of an effect on inventory, which pretty much followed the usual seasonal pattern.

Here’s the supply/demand YOY graph. In place of the now-unreliable measure of pending sales, the “demand” in the following two charts is now represented by closed sales, which have had a consistent definition throughout the decade.

Only 2003 had YOY sales increases in excess of what we saw for October. I’m starting to sense a Cash-for-Clunkers-esque hangover coming this winter…

Here’s the chart of supply and demand raw numbers:

Here’s the median home price YOY change graph:

And lastly, here is the chart comparing King County SFH prices each month for every year back to 1994.

Still floating along around 2005 pricing. July 2005: $375,000. October 2009: $377,500.

Here’s a few news blurbs to hold you over until tomorrow’s reporting roundup.

Seattle Times: King County home sales climb to ‘09 high in October
Seattle P-I: Pending home sales spike, MLS report says

In this particular case, “spike” actually means “stayed flat, but last year plummeted.”

Here’s an update to the post-WWII job loss chart, courtesy of Calculated Risk, in which I’ve added a mark so you can see where the “stimulus” was passed.

Wow, good thing we changed direction to the tune of $787 billion*, huh?

*(Actual cost: much, much more)

If there is any doubt about who the stimulus was really directed at saving, just take a look at an update to the stock market crash comparison:

Woo, go Wall Street!

Finally, speaking of bailouts for Wall Street and the banks: Congress Poised to Keep Homebuyers’ Tax Credit

The Senate and House are poised to agree on a compromise measure to extend unemployment benefits that also would expand a popular $8,000 tax credit for homebuyers, despite a recent government report on extensive mistakes and suspected fraud in the program.

The Senate might pass its version as early as Wednesday, and aides to Congressional leaders say the House could accept it this week, sending the bill to President Obama to sign into law. After weeks of partisan delay in the Senate, Democrats are eager to show progress before Friday, when the October jobless report is again expected to show high unemployment.

Super! So while people continue to lose their jobs, and absolutely zero of the underlying problems in the economy have been fixed, let’s pour another ten or twenty billion dollars into the housing market to try to keep prices propped up (i.e. – keep homes as unaffordable as possible) a little longer so our buddies in the big banks that got us into this mess can avoid taking losses.

Sounds like a plan to me!

Here’s your preview of October’s foreclosure and home sale stats:

First up, total home sales as measured by the number of “Warranty Deeds” filed with the county:

County sales as measured by warranty deeds were up significantly (16.7%) from last year in October, and marked another month-to-month increase (5.2%). This is no surprise, since as I mentioned last month, the impending expiration of the $8,000 mortgage subsidy is definitely having an effect on the people who have been duped into thinking we have already hit bottom.

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

Foreclosure notices actually declined from September, which could signal either an easing in the foreclosure “crisis” or possibly just a continued lag as the pipeline from SB 5810 continues to fill. We probably won’t really know for sure which one it is until sometime next year.

Here’s another measure of foreclosures, 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.”

A new record high in October, lagging the peak month for Trustee Sale notices by four months.

Lastly, here’s an approximate guess at where the month-end inventory was, based on our sidebar inventory tracker (powered by Estately):

Looks like listings will be down around 13% year-over-year, and 6% month-to-month.

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

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 September 2009.

September 2009	King	Snohomish	Pierce	Kitsap	Thurston	Island	Skagit	Whatcom
Median Price	7.9%	11.1%	8.2%	4.6%	2.8%	1.8%	2.0%	8.7%
Listings	19.4%	23.6%	25.8%	25.1%	15.8%	2.0%	4.9%	9.7%
Closed Sales	14.3%	14.6%	12.4%	14.5%	1.5%	11.5%	20.9%	19.3%
Seasonally Adjusted Active Supply	2.0	2.1	1.8	2.0	1.9	2.5	3.0	1.5

Hit the jump for this month’s interactive charts.

Summary

The visualization below is comparable to our previous chart of closed sales in each county in September 2008 and September 2009:

Closed Sales

Some of the outlying counties appear to be missing out on this summer’s sales spike. I guess the tax credits and low interest rates aren’t enough to overcome the commute anymore. Is “drive till you qualify” finally dead?

Here’s our comparison of median prices in each county at their respective peaks and in September 2009:

Change from Peak

Nothing really new here, since most prices have been holding steady all summer.

Seasonally Adjusted Active Supply

Kitsap, Island, and Skagit all actually turned in larger SAAS than a year ago, with Skagit’s market still coming in firmly on the buyer’s side. Interestingly, Whatcom was the worst market for buyers, with an SAAS of just 1.5.

As summer draws to a close we still haven’t seen a big spike in closed sales of the same magnitude that we saw in pending sales earlier in the year. More and more I’m starting to think we never will…

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.

Note that the tiers are determined by sale volume. In other words, 1/3 of all sales fall into each tier. For more details on the tier methodologies, hit the full methodology pdf. Here are the current tier breakpoints:

• Low Tier: < $274,582
• Mid Tier: $274,582 – $404,443
• Hi Tier: > $404,443

The tier breakpoints continued to shift upward ever so slightly in August, rising 0.3% to 0.4% while the overall index rose just 0.1%. This would seem to point to a continuing shift in the sales mix of homes away from the low end toward the high end, which would also help explain why the overall index rose only 0.1% when the low tier rose 0.5%.

First up is the straight graph of the index from January 2000 through August 2009.

The low tier rose 0.5% month-to-month, while the middle tier fell 0.3%, and the high tier was virtually flat. The “rewind” situation held steady again, with low tier sitting about where it was in April 2005 and the middle and the high tiers at May 2005 levels.

Here’s a chart of the year-over-year change in the index from January 2003 through August 2009.

With a month-to-month increase, the low tier’s year-over-year picture improved the most in August. Here’s where the tiers sit YOY as of August – Low: -16.2%, Med: -13.6%, Hi: -14.9%.

Lastly, here’s a decline-from-peak graph like the one posted yesterday, but looking only at the Seattle tiers.

So far I am still pretty unimpressed with this “recovery.” With nearly half a year of flatline prices in Seattle, it is still unclear whether this is the bottom, or merely an extended lull on the way to the real bottom. Personally, my money’s on the latter.

(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 10.27.2009)

Up 0.1% July to August.
Down 0.2% July to August (seasonally adjusted)
Down 14.7% YOY.
Down 22.2% from the July 2007 peak

Last year prices fell 0.7% from July to August (not seasonally adjusted) and year-over-year prices were down 8.8%.

Once again, here’s a little dose of sanity to contrast with what is no doubt set to be a day full of crowing and hoopla over the month-to-month increases seen in most of the 20 cities tracked by the Case-Shiller index.

It still looks as though Seattle is being somewhat left out of this party.

Here’s our offset graph, with L.A. & San Diego time-shifted from Seattle & Portland by 17 months. Look at SoCal’s year-over-year skyrocketing back up to zero. Portland came in at -12.5%, and now both Los Angeles at -12.0%, and San Diego at -8.9% came in better than Seattle.

Note: This graph is not intended to be predictive. It is for entertainment purposes only.

Here’s the graph of all twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities:

In July, fourteen of the twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities experienced smaller year-over-year drops than Seattle (vs. twelve last month). Dallas at -1.2%, Denver at -1.9%, Cleveland at -2.8%, Boston at -4.2%, Washington, DC at -7.9%, Charlotte at -8.6%, San Diego at -8.9%, New York at -9.6%, Atlanta at -10.6%, Los Angeles at -12.0%, Portland at -12.5%, San Fancisco at -12.5, Chicago at -12.7%, and Minneapolis at -13.7%. Vegas took the #1 spot again for the largest year-over-year drop, with prices still falling over 30% in a single year down there—stimulus? What stimulus?

Here’s an update to the peak-decline graph, inspired by a graph created by reader CrystalBall. This chart takes the twelve cities whose peak index was greater than 175, and tracks how far they have fallen so far from their peak. The horizontal axis shows the total number of months since each individual city peaked.

In the two years and a month since the price peak in Seattle prices have declined 22.2%. Definitely seems to be stuck moving sideways.

Here’s a complimentary chart to that last one. This one shows the

With just a 0.3% increase since March, the summer of stimulus seems to be having little effect on Seattle home prices. But hey, at least we’re not as immune to stimulus as Vegas apparently is. Down 9% in just the last five months. Ouch!

The following chart takes the post-bubble years of 2007, 2008, and 2009 and indexes each January’s Case-Shiller HPI to 100 so we can get a picture of how this year’s declines compare to last year:

Thanks to the tax credits, abnormally / artificially low interest rates, and lots of hype about a so-called recovery, it would seem that we have pulled 2009 into slightly better territory than 2008.

Lastly, here’s an update to the Case-Shiller vs. NWMLS median chart. The following chart shows Seattle-area 2009 home prices, indexed to January = 100, as reported by the NWMLS (using a 3-month rolling average) and by Case-Shiller.

Check back tomorrow for a post on the Case-Shiller data for Seattle’s price tiers.

(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 10.27.2009)

First up, here’s a two-year chart (stolen from my subscription journal Sound Housing Quarterly) of the year-over-year change in some of the broad job categories related to housing:

As of September, construction was still bleeding jobs at a rate of nearly 20% per year, though the rate of change has at least leveled off since March. Finance and real estate jobs have shown a similar pattern, leveling off at around 7-8% year-over-year drops. No particular signs of improvement in the year-over-year numbers just yet though.

The following chart shows the volume of job gains or losses in the last 12 months in some of the largest Seattle-area industries:

The same three sectors that were hurting in our June update are still suffering as of September: manufacturing, construction, and professional / business services. Between the three, a total of 50,600 jobs have been lost in the last year. Health care was the only major sector that added jobs in the period.

Here’s a look at the same data, broken down by the year-over-year percentage change, to give a better picture of the relative health of various industries:

Construction sticks out like a sore thumb in this view, with finance / real estate joining the general range of losses seen in manufacturing and professional / business services.

Lastly, here’s a big pie chart showing all major industries that make up Seattle’s job market, to give you some additional perspective to the above data:

Source: Washington State Employment Security Department

How many sales locally have been “stimulated” by this ridiculous giveaway of tens of billions of dollars we don’t even have? Let’s try to see if we can estimate the number of stimulated single-family house sales for King County, using some trend analysis of closed sales data from 2000 through 2008.

At left above is a chart that includes total closed sales each month from 2000 through 2009, with October and November data this year projected based on the May – September performance. At right above is a chart of a hypothetical “worst case” scenario of sales volume we may have seen without the influence of the $8,000 tax credit, generated by taking the average month-to-month change for each month in 2000-2008, and applying that from month to month in 2009, moving forward from the number of actual sales in April.

The “worst case” estimate at right above most likely understates the number of sales that would have taken place without the tax credit, since decreasing prices were already beginning to stimulate sales anyway, but for the sake of argument, let’s go with this estimate. Using the above estimates, we arrive at a total number of 3,850 tax credit “stimulated” sales of single-family houses in King County.

If we assume that 100% of the stimulated sales and 75% of the “worst case” baseline sales (i.e. – sales that would have happened anyway without the tax credit) were qualified first-time homebuyers, we can calculate that 11,911 sales will qualify this year for the tax credit. That’s a total cost to (future) U.S. taxpayers of over $95 million, for 3,850 “stimulated” SFH sales in King County—$25,000 per sale.

This is actually quite a bit lower than the nationwide estimates I have seen elsewhere, which put the cost per “stimulated” sale at around $43,000, which means we’re probably over-estimating the number of “stimulated” sales. With 60% as many “stimulated” sales (2,310), the cost per “stimulated” sale comes out to around $40,000.

If we assume that the lower number (2,310) is more reflective of reality and that roughly 90% of these sales were not pulled from thin air, but were in fact merely borrowed from 2010, we can calculate the approximate effect of the expiring tax credit on 2010 sales. Based on those assumptions, once the tax credit expires, we can expect sales to come in roughly 125 to 200 lower than they otherwise would have each month throughout 2010.

Of course, that assumes that the tax credit will be allowed to expire, which is looking less and less likely. Not that extending it another six months to a year will somehow prevent the market from having to pay back the borrowed sales eventually (at a greater and greater cost the longer it is deferred), but why should pesky little economic realities prevent Congress from spending billions of additional dollars that we don’t have?

September 2009
King: 796 NTS, up 31% YOY
Snohomish: 421 NTS, up 42% YOY
Pierce: 479 NTS, down 11% YOY

Not surprisingly, as the newly-mandated 30-day pipeline begins to fill up, foreclosures seem to be resuming their upward trend across the Sound.

It’s interesting to note that as of the end of the day yesterday, Trustee Deeds (the actual repossession of a house at auction by a bank) in King County were on track to hit five or six hundred in October, well over a hundred higher than the previous high, set in July (and ten times the levels we were seeing in 2007). But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. For now let’s focus on this month.

Here’s a simple look at how September’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 990 households, Snohomish County had 1 NTS per 626 households, and Pierce had 1 NTS for every 622 households (higher is better).

According to foreclosure tracking company RealtyTrac, Washington’s statewide foreclosure rate of one foreclosure for every 264 households was 23rd worst among the 50 states and the District of Columbia (up from 30th last month as the short-term effects of SB 5810 begin to wear off). Note that RealtyTrac’s definition of “in foreclosure” is much broader than what we are using.

Following are the usual charts of King, Pierce, and Snohomish County foreclosures from January 2000 through September 2009. Click below to continue…

Back up again in September, hitting a level higher than was seen any time prior to 2009.

Same story up north in Snohomish County. Lowest month in 2009, but higher than any month on record in any previous year.

Foreclosures ticked up the smallest amount in Pierce, which has been sitting below 2008 levels for two months in a row.

Note: The graphs above are derived from monthly Notice of Trustee Sale counts gathered at King, Snohomish, and Pierce County records. For a longer-term picture of King County foreclosures back to 1979, refer to the final chart in this post. For the full legal definition of what a Notice of Trustee Sale is and how it fits into the foreclosure process, check out RCW 61.24.040. The short version is that it is the notice sent to delinquent borrowers that their home will be repossessed in 90 days.

Here’s your King County SFH summary, with the arrows to show whether the year-over-year direction of each indicator is positive or negative news for buyers and sellers:

September 2009	Number	MOM	YOY	Buyers	Sellers
Active Listings	9,360	-1.4%	-19.4%
Closed Sales	1,618	+0.6%	+14.3%
SAAS (?)	1.82	-5.1%	-19.3%
Pending Sales	2,289	-1.0%	+29.5
Months of Supply	4.09	-0.4%	-37.8%
Median Price*	$382,160	+1.9%	-7.9%

Closed sales were basically in a holding pattern the last four months, trending similarly to the pattern we have seen in pending sales since roughly April. April – September pending sales have ranged between 2,114 and 2,447, while June – September closed sales have ranged between 1,609 and 1,727.

I suspect we will see a much stronger November for closed sales than usual, due to the impending expiration of the free money handout for knife-catchers, but I doubt that it will climb much above the 1,600-1,700 range we have seen through the summer. Historically (2000-2008), November closed sales volume has averaged 71% of June volume. 71% of this year’s June volume would be 1,179 sales this November. I’m guessing it will be higher than that, but I don’t see it going much above 1,500 – 1,600.

Here’s a visual of June volume (usually at or near the peak in the summer) vs. November volume since 2000:

Here’s how the closed sales situation is shaping up compared to previous years:

Feel free to download the updated Seattle Bubble Spreadsheet, and here’s a copy in Excel 2003 format. Click below for the graphs and the rest of the post.

Here’s the graph of inventory with each year overlaid on the same chart.

Inventory still pretty much flat-lining. Just enough people putting their homes on the market to satisfy the monthly demand. Not much more, not much less.

Here’s the supply/demand YOY graph. In place of the now-unreliable measure of pending sales, the “demand” in the following two charts is now represented by closed sales, which have had a consistent definition throughout the decade.

Another bump back up for the YOY closed sales. I suspect this will be in positive territory through November at least, and possibly December, depending on whether the tax credit is extended / expanded or allowed to expire.

Here’s the chart of supply and demand raw numbers:

Here’s the median home price YOY change graph:

And lastly, here is the chart comparing King County SFH prices each month for every year back to 1994.

Pretty much right at 2005 pricing. September 2005: $381,250. September 2009: $382,160.

Here’s a few news blurbs to hold you over until tomorrow’s reporting roundup, which may be posted later in the day than usual to give this post a longer period at the top of the page.

Seattle Times: Home sales in September surge in King County but prices still declining
Seattle P-I: King County home sales surge, but pitfalls remain

Go back up to the second chart in this post for a sec. Would someone mind explaining to me which part of that data constitutes a “surge”?

Here’s your preview of September’s foreclosure and home sale stats:

First up, total home sales as measured by the number of “Warranty Deeds” filed with the county:

County sales as measured by warranty deeds were down just slightly (0.3%) from last year in September, and actually increased month-to-month, up 7% from August. I would not be surprised to see September through November sales make a stronger showing than is usual for this time of year, with the impending expiration of the $8,000 free money giveaway pushing people who are bad at math to make a rush decision on a highly leveraged purchase.

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

September was the second-lowest month this year, but still came in higher than any month in 2008. I suspect this number will continue to rise back up to around the 1,000 mark.

Here’s another measure of foreclosures, 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.”

Second-highest month on record, despite the various changes to the foreclosure process legislated earlier this year here in Washington.

Lastly, here’s an approximate guess at where the month-end inventory was, based on our sidebar inventory tracker (powered by Estately):

If our tracker is close to the official numbers, inventory may actually increase slightly from August, but will still be down about 12% from last year’s level.

I don’t know about you, but there’s still nothing in these numbers that screams (or even really whispers) “imminent recovery” to me. Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.

Note that the tiers are determined by sale volume. In other words, 1/3 of all sales fall into each tier. For more details on the tier methodologies, hit the full methodology pdf. Here are the current tier breakpoints:

• Low Tier: < $273,625
• Mid Tier: $273,625 – $402,694
• Hi Tier: > $402,694

The tier breakpoints shifted slightly upward again in July despite a decline in the overall index, which would seem to indicate a continuing shift in the sales mix of homes away from the low end toward the high end.

First up is the straight graph of the index from January 2000 through July 2009.

The high tier actually increased slightly from June to July, while the middle tier dropped the most. The “rewind” situation held steady for the month, with low tier sitting about where it was in April 2005 and the middle and the high tiers at May 2005 levels.

Here’s a chart of the year-over-year change in the index from January 2003 through July 2009.

With a month-to-month increase, the high tier’s year-over-year picture improved the most in July. Here’s where the tiers sit YOY as of July – Low: -17.4%, Med: -14.3%, Hi: -15.3%.

Lastly, here’s a decline-from-peak graph like the one posted yesterday, but looking only at the Seattle tiers.

The best recovery hundreds of billions of government “stimulus” can buy.

(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 09.29.2009)

Down 0.1% June to July.
Down 0.3% June to July (seasonally adjusted)
Down 15.3% YOY.
Down 22.3% from the July 2007 peak

Last year prices fell 1.0% from June to July (not seasonally adjusted) and year-over-year prices were down 8.2%.

Since the national media outlets will no doubt be crowing once again about a month-to-month increase in the nationwide 20-city index, here’s a new chart to kick things off: every city’s percentage change from June to July (taken from the non-seasonally-adjusted data, since that’s all the national media usually reports on):

So, there’s that.

Here’s our offset graph, with L.A. & San Diego time-shifted from Seattle & Portland by 17 months. Still the summer of improvement on this one, with Portland up to -13.9%, Los Angeles at -14.9%, and San Diego again coming in better than Seattle at -12.3%.

Note: This graph is not intended to be predictive. It is for entertainment purposes only.

Here’s the graph of all twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities:

In July, twelve of the twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities experienced smaller year-over-year drops than Seattle (vs. ten last month). Cleveland at -1.3%, Dallas at -1.6%, Denver at -2.9%, Boston at -5.0%, Charlotte at -9.0%, Washington, DC at -9.8%, New York at -10.0%, Atlanta at -12.1%, San Diego at -12.3%, Portland at -13.9%, Chicago at -14.2%, and Los Angeles at -14.9%. Vegas held the #1 spot for the largest year-over-year drop, with prices still falling over 30% in a single year down there.

Here’s an update to the peak-decline graph, inspired by a graph created by reader CrystalBall. This chart takes the twelve cities whose peak index was greater than 175, and tracks how far they have fallen so far from their peak. The horizontal axis shows the total number of months since each individual city peaked.

In the two full years since the price peak in Seattle prices have declined 22.3%. We still haven’t quite moved over to the DC trend, but the summer of flatline prices did at least move Seattle off the Phoenix price drop trend.

The following chart takes the post-bubble years of 2007, 2008, and 2009 and indexes each January’s Case-Shiller HPI to 100 so we can get a picture of how this year’s declines compare to last year:

Still slightly below where we were this far into last year, at just over 3% off January.

Here’s an update to the Case-Shiller vs. NWMLS median chart. The following chart shows Seattle-area 2009 home prices, indexed to January = 100, as reported by the NWMLS and by Case-Shiller.

While Case-Shiller has been mostly flat since March, the NWMLS median has been swinging all over the place.

Check back tomorrow for a post on the Case-Shiller data for Seattle’s price tiers.

(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 09.29.2009)

As usual, the sweet interactive data visualizations 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

With new listings continuing to wane, King County’s overall SAAS finally dropped below the “balanced” level, coming in at 1.88 for August (July was 2.01). 10 of 30 areas came in below 1.75 as seller’s markets, 7 of 30 came in above 2.25 as buyer’s markets, and the remaining 13 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

Other than downtown condos, Seattle proper had the strongest showing last month for Sellers, with five of its eight areas coming in below 2.0.

Regional History

Most regions saw declining SAAS values from July to August, probably because people aren’t listing their homes as summer winds down unless they absolutely need to sell.

The three toughest markets for sellers were Downtown Seattle condos (701) at 3.8, Enumclaw (300) at 2.8, and Des Moines / Redondo (120) at 2.7.

The three best markets for sellers as of last month were Vashon Island (800), Queen Anne / Magnolia (700), and Richmond Beach / Shoreline (715), all tied at about 1.5.

The data they sent me is pulled directly from their database, and so includes MLS, FSBO and REO listings. We calculated the total percent of all listings in each city/town and neighborhood that were price-reduced at some point before leaving the market (either sold or removed unsold from the market) in the past 90 days. Cities/towns or neighborhoods in which the number of homes taken off the market was too small to provide believable estimates are excluded from ranking.

In the table below I have simply posted the median price-reduced ratio for each market’s cities/towns and neighborhoods. (Click a column header to sort.)

Note that Seattle cities/towns have the largest median price-reduced ratio among Redfin’s markets, and Seattle-area neighborhoods rank third, less than a full percentage point below the #1 slot.

Compared to Redfin’s California markets, Seattle sellers seem especially unrealistic. I just thought this data was an interesting look at the psychology of sellers here and around the country.

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 August 2009.

(Note: Keep in mind that certain NWMLS definitions were modified beginning July 2008 that affect the reported number of active listings and pending sales (and therefore the “months of supply”). The net result of this change is that active listings post 07/08 will appear lower, pending sales higher, and months of supply lower than prior to 07/08. See this post for more details.)

August 2009	King	Snohomish	Pierce	Kitsap	Thurston	Island	Skagit	Whatcom
Median Price	11.5	11.8%	8.8%	12.5%	3.8%	5.3%	13.7%	0.5%
Listings	20.6%	25.9%	24.0%	27.4%	17.2%	5.0%	0.8%	10.5%
Closed Sales	5.0%	8.1%	5.2%	4.7%	12.2%	2.4%	7.1%	10.3%
Months of Supply	4.1	4.6	4.4	5.2	4.6	11.3	8.4	6.1

Hit the jump for this month’s interactive charts.

Summary

The visualization below is comparable to our previous chart of closed sales in each county in August 2008 and August 2009:

Closed Sales

The YOY closed sales spikes that we saw last month in Snohomish, Pierce, and Kitsap were all tamed in August, with only Thurston County marking a double-digit gain in sales from August 2008.

Here’s our comparison of median prices in each county at their respective peaks and in August 2009:

Change from Peak

Same holding pattern we’ve seen all summer for the most part. A bit of fluctuation up north in Whatcom, but that is likely due more to low sales volume than actual price increases.

Months of Supply

Lower months of supply across the board than a year ago. Not too surprising, since many people are reluctant to list their homes in the present market, which is keeping down supply.

With pending sales having increased across the board an average of 20% from 2008 since April, it is quite telling that actual closed sales are still hovering in the single digits across most of the sound. Lots of deals falling through out there.

Click on any column header to sort by that column. Enjoy!

So what would be more fair? How about if we take the top 25 cities in the country by population, and see how Seattle home prices stack up?

Here are the top 25 cities in the United States, sorted by population based on Census Bureau estimates from July 2008 (source):

And here’s the same list of cities, sorted by population density (people per square mile):

Now here’s the same list of cities, sorted by median list price (source):

Detroit at #25 makes sense to me. Seattle at #3 above New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago… not so much. I guess Seattle is still special (at least in the minds of sellers)!

As of August, this is where the median prices were for our regions:

• low end (South Co.): $144,000—$343,250
• mid range (Seattle / North Co.): $302,000—$573,000
• high end (Eastside): $400,000—$915,000

It is interesting to note that no NWMLS area had a median above $1,000,000 in August.

The following chart shows the percentage of each month’s closed sales that took place in each of the three regions.

Here’s how much of the total sales each of our three regions accounted for in July:

• low end (South Co.): 32.5% of sales
• mid range (Seattle / North Co.): 37.6% of sales
• high end (Eastside): 29.9% of sales

The low-priced region (South King Co.) has been creeping back up the last couple of months. This could be due to the $8,000 tax credit that will expire at the end of November, which is likely much more of an incentive for low-end buyers than for middle or high-end buyers, who are usually not first-time home buyers.

Here’s a close-up of this year’s movement in bar-chart format:

It will be interesting to see how long the low-end region gains ground. I suspect that we may see a bit of a spike in November as people move to take advantage of the tax credit at the last minute, but as we move toward the end of the year and into 2010, we will begin to see the low-end sales taper off again, leading to another upward tick in the median price. Meanwhile, I suspect that Case-Shiller may remain mostly flat through the summer, based on the geographic shifts in sales and the reported county-wide median.

August 2009
King: 614 NTS, up 7% YOY
Snohomish: 329 NTS, up 20% YOY
Pierce: 430 NTS, down 7% YOY

As we predicted last month, Senate Bill 5810 seems to be resulting in a bit of a lull in foreclosure activity as the extra 30-day pipeline fills up. Keep in mind that the new law only applies to owner-occupied homes, with mortgages minted between 2003 and 2007. Still, I am surprised that there were as many foreclosures last month as there were.

Here’s a simple look at how August’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 1,282 households, Snohomish County had 1 NTS per 800 households, and Pierce had 1 NTS for every 692 households (higher is better).

According to foreclosure tracking company RealtyTrac, Washington’s statewide foreclosure rate of one foreclosure for every 1,033 households was 30th worst among the 50 states and the District of Columbia (down from 13th last month thanks to SB 5810). Note that RealtyTrac’s definition of “in foreclosure” is much broader than what we are using.

Following are the usual charts of King, Pierce, and Snohomish County foreclosures from January 2000 through August 2009. Click below to continue…

Down dramatically from the peak, but still at elevated levels. Will be interesting to see how it shapes up the rest of the year.

Pretty much the same trend in Snohomish County.

Pierce actually dropped slightly below last year’s level.

Note: The graphs above are derived from monthly Notice of Trustee Sale counts gathered at King, Snohomish, and Pierce County records. For a longer-term picture of King County foreclosures back to 1979, refer to the final chart in this post. For the full legal definition of what a Notice of Trustee Sale is and how it fits into the foreclosure process, check out RCW 61.24.040. The short version is that it is the notice sent to delinquent borrowers that their home will be repossessed in 90 days.

This week’s theme is YTD pending and closed sales as of August.

Let me know what you think of the “quick look” concept.

Here’s your King County SFH summary, with helpful arrows to show whether the year-over-year direction of each indicator is positive or negative news for buyers and sellers:

July 2009	Number	MOM	YOY	Buyers	Sellers
Active Listings	9,491	-3.7%	-20.6%
Closed Sales	1,609	-6.8%	+5.0%
SAAS (?)	1.88	-7.7%	-13.4%
Pending Sales	2,311	+4.2%	+31.5
Months of Supply	4.11	-7.6%	-39.6%
Median Price*	$375,000	-2.3%	-11.6%

Breaking from the pattern we had seen in recent months, closed sales declined in August, falling even further below the pending sales levels from the previous months. Barring an unexpected and incredibly uncharacteristic surge in closed sales in September or October, it looks like July’s 1,727 will end up being the one-month maximum.

I’m having some trouble uploading the spreadsheet from here at PAX, but before I head to bed tonight I will post the updated Seattle Bubble Spreadsheet, and here’s a copy in Excel 2003 format. Click below for the graphs and the rest of the post.

Here’s the graph of inventory with each year overlaid on the same chart.

Inventory for most of this year has been remarkably flat.

Here’s the supply/demand YOY graph. In place of the now-unreliable measure of pending sales, the “demand” in the following two charts is now represented by closed sales, which have had a consistent definition throughout the decade.

Diminishing YOY increases for sales in August. Will be interesting to see if we drop back into negative YOY territory before the year is up.

Here’s the chart of supply and demand raw numbers:

Here’s the median home price YOY change graph:

And lastly, here is the chart comparing King County SFH prices each month for every year back to 1994.

August 2009’s SFH median came in $10,000 below August 2005. I bet it would really suck to be somebody that was considering buying in August 2005, but started a bubble blog instead. Or not.

Here’s a few news blurbs to hold you over until tomorrow’s reporting roundup (which will probably be posted later in the day than usual due to it being a Saturday, and also PAX). [Update: I decided to hold off on the reporting roundup until Monday, since a lot fewer people read the site on the weekend anyway, plus with the holiday weekend I imagine traffic will be even lighter. Have a great weekend everybody, see you Tuesday.]

Seattle Times: August home sales strong in Puget Sound region but median prices continue to sag
Seattle P-I: Pending home sales spike, according to MLS report

The massive difference between pending and closed sales brings up the question: Is there really a backlog of over 5,000 homes waiting to close?

Most likely no, there is no such tsunami of closings about to crash on the shores of the Puget Sound. This growing discrepancy is probably due to a couple of factors.

First, the redefinition of what is counted as a “pending sale” last year to include homes that have merely reached the inspection point naturally means that a larger number of these pendings will not close simply due to failed inspections.

However, the larger factor is probably short sales. Hundreds if not thousands of these pendings in limbo are probably due to a buyer making an offer on a short sale, the seller “accepting” the offer (at which point the “sale” is counted as pending) and sending it to the bank, and the bank simply never replying.

It is also worth mentioning that each of these 5,000+ seemingly dead pending sales represents two parties (the buyer and the seller) that have wasted their time submitting and reviewing offers. The situation is definitely not pretty. One of my coworkers recently purchased a short sale, and he went for months without hearing anything from the seller’s agent regarding the status of their offer. It took him threatening over the phone to drive his truck through the (vacant) house to finally spur some action by the seller’s agent and the bank (not a recommended course of action)!

One suggestion that was floated in yesterday’s conversation was that the NWMLS ban short sales in their system all together unless the seller has gotten a pre-approval from the bank on the list price. This would certainly save a lot of people a lot of headaches, and would probably overall help the market to be more efficient.

Have you had an experience with a short sale that completely died? What, if anything, do you think should be done about this growing problem?

Here’s your preview of August’s foreclosure and home sale stats:

First up, total home sales as measured by the number of “Warranty Deeds” filed with the county:

County sales as measured by warranty deeds were down about 8% from last year in August, and off 10% from July.

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

Looks like exactly what we expected to happen. In our July foreclosure update a few weeks ago, I said “it is likely that we will see a lull in apparent foreclosure activity for a month or two as the newly-legislated time in the pipeline fills up.” Actually I was surprised to see that despite the lull, we still came in slightly higher than last year (+7%).

Here’s another measure of foreclosures, 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.”

Down from July’s high, but still up 86% from last year. Since actual repossessions lag trustee sale notices by 90 days, we can probably expect to see this drop for the next few months.

Lastly, here’s an approximate guess at where the month-end inventory was, based on our sidebar inventory tracker (powered by Estately):

If our tracker is close to the official numbers, inventory will decline again slightly, for another year-over-year decrease of about 18%.

It looks like there still aren’t any convincing signs of a strong recovery underway in the sales figures. Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.

Any time you attempt to simplify a complex concept into a single number, it is important to recognize the assumptions that go into calculating that number. Whether we are discussing the affordability index, the Case-Shiller home price index, or even the UV index, full understanding is crucial to a constructive conversation.

To kick things off, here’s King County’s quarterly affordability index back through 1993, the furthest back NWMLS median home price data is available, so we can all get a visual of the data that we’re discussing.

What the Affordability Index Is

In short, the affordability index is a simple measure that shows the relationship between median home prices, median household incomes, and interest rates. It is useful merely as one tool of many in gauging the overall health of a given housing market.

It is calculated by determining the monthly payment (principal and interest) that would result from buying the median-priced home, assuming a 20% down payment and current interest rates on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, then comparing that to 30%* of the monthly median household income (the standard measure of “affordable housing”). Note that the median household income is merely the mid-point taken from a sample of all households in the county, whether they are one person households or ten person households.

An affordability index of 100 means that a hypothetical household earning the median household income would pay exactly 30% of their monthly income toward the principal and interest of a mortgage on the median-priced house if they bought today with 20% down using a 30-year mortgage at prevailing interest rates. Above 100 is more affordable, while below 100 is less affordable.

What the Affordability Index Is Not

The affordability index is not intended to tell you whether or not you can afford a specific house in your specific financial situation. It is not a tool for determining the value of a specific house. It should not be used as a sole signal of when it is or is not a “good time to buy.”

Interest rates are used in calculating the affordability index, but the availability of financing is not a factor in the calculation. There is no easy way to quantify the fact that in 2005 anyone who could “fog a mirror” could waltz into a $400,000 loan, while today the standards are much stricter.

The historic standard for “affordable housing” is that a household not spend more than 30% of their gross income on total housing expenses. Note that when we calculate the affordability index we are only taking into account the principal and interest payment on the mortgage. The affordability index does not include the expense of taxes, insurance, maintenance, or any sort of home owners’ association dues.

It is also important to note that with respect to down payments, the affordability index simply assumes 20% down, and leaves it at that. Obviously very few people have 20% of the median home price saved up in cash sitting in a bank account to be used as a down payment. With the median single-family home priced at $384,000 in King County as of July, that would be $76,800. I would not be surprised if the majority of families do not even have one tenth that amount saved. However, you have to assume something, and if you assume less than 20% the equation would become much more complicated with PMI or piggy-back loans.

The affordability index also does not take into account an area’s jobless rate. An affordability index of 100 does not mean that a majority of households can now afford to buy a house, because it does not factor in unemployment, savings, or credit scores.

Conclusion

Some of the commenters on the Seattle Times article seemed to be extremely frustrated, decrying the article as “lies and inflated information,” or “propaganda.” This is somewhat understandable given the claim in the headline that the Typical King County family can again afford median-priced house (although I doubt Eric was the one that wrote that headline). However, the article itself stuck to the facts: King County’s affordability index has indeed recovered in recent months, thanks to a combination of falling home prices and falling interest rates.

Most of the anger in the comment section seemed to stem from a misunderstanding of what the affordability index actually is. Unfortunately, one of the downsides of the newspaper format is that they are not usually able to delve into a subject like this in depth to the degree that would be necessary to fully explain the underlying concepts to every reader. Hopefully this post is able to fill that hole for some of the confused and upset readers out there.

Additional Resources

• Long-term affordability index back through 1950
• Simple Affordability Calculator
• Additional posts on the subject of affordability

Data Sources

• Median Single-Family Home Price: Northwest Multiple Listing Service
• Median Household Income: Washington State Office of Financial Management
• Interest Rates: United States Federal Reserve

*The Seattle Times article says that the WCRER uses 25% of income in their calculations, but I have always used 30% as it is the more standard measure of “affordable” and my calculations tend to match pretty closely to theirs.

Note that the tiers are determined by sale volume. In other words, 1/3 of all sales fall into each tier. For more details on the tier methodologies, hit the full methodology pdf. Here are the current tier breakpoints:

• Low Tier: < $272,143
• Mid Tier: $272,143 – $400,584
• Hi Tier: > $400,584

The tier breakpoints continued to shift slightly upward in June, implying a shift in the sales mix of homes away from the low end toward the high end.

First up is the straight graph of the index from January 2000 through June 2009.

The high tier was flat from May to June, while the low and middle tiers each increased 0.8%. The “rewind” situation switched into forward for a month, with low tier sitting about where it was in April 2005 and the middle and the high tiers at May 2005 levels.

Here’s a chart of the year-over-year change in the index from January 2003 through June 2009.

The strongest upward turn in the YOY data has been in the middle tier over the last two months. The low and high tiers seem to be more or less flat YOY. Here’s where the tiers sit YOY as of June – Low: -18.0%, Med: -14.4%, Hi: -16.5%.

Lastly, here’s a decline-from-peak graph like the one posted yesterday, but looking only at the Seattle tiers.

Still bobbing along the spring plateau. Does this indicate a bottom, or just a seasonal break in the downward slide to a price level that is supported by economic fundamentals? I think you can probably guess which one I’m betting on…

(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 08.25.2009)

Up 0.4% May to June.
Down 0.3% May to June (seasonally adjusted)
Down 16.1% YOY.
Down 22.2% from the July 2007 peak

Last year prices fell 0.2% from May to June (not seasonally adjusted) and year-over-year prices were down 7.1%.

Here’s the usual graph, with L.A. & San Diego offset from Seattle & Portland by 17 months. Everybody’s getting some of the reduced rate of losses action, with Portland rising to -15.2%, Los Angeles at -17.8%, and San Diego at -16.0%. Note – Seattle: -16.1%, San Diego -16.0%. Hmm.

Note: This graph is not intended to be predictive. It is for entertainment purposes only.

Here’s the graph of all twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities:

In June, ten of the twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities experienced smaller year-over-year drops than Seattle (vs. nine last month). Dallas at -2.2%, Cleveland at -3.0%, Denver at -3.6%, Boston at -5.9%, Charlotte at -9.7%, Washington, DC at -11.7%, New York at -11.7%, Atlanta at -14.0%, Portland at -15.2%, and San Diego at -16.0%. Vegas pushed Phoenix out of the #1 spot for the largest year-over-year drop, as prices fell 32.3% in a single year.

Here’s an update to the peak-decline graph, inspired by a graph created by reader CrystalBall. This chart takes the twelve cities whose peak index was greater than 175, and tracks how far they have fallen so far from their peak. The horizontal axis shows the total number of months since each individual city peaked.

In the twenty-two months since the price peak in Seattle prices have declined 22.2%. Still looks like more or less a flatline since March, putting Seattle slightly above San Francisco’s line, but slightly below Washington, DC.

The following chart takes the post-bubble years of 2007, 2008, and 2009 and indexes each January’s Case-Shiller HPI to 100 so we can get a picture of how this year’s declines compare to last year:

Still tracking below 2008 compared to January, but performing slightly better than 2008 from March to June.

Here’s one more chart, for the folks that think that Case-Shiller is useless because it is somehow equivilent to the NWMLS data, but on a 2-month delay. The following chart shows 2009 home prices, indexed to January = 100, as reported by the NWMLS and by Case-Shiller.

The dramatic swing in the NWMLS data from down nearly 5% in March to up over 3% in June that had some people shouting about a bottom in home prices is non-existent in the Case-Shiller data. NWMLS March to June: +8.6% ($31,150). Case-Shiller March to June: +0.3%. This stark difference can most likely be attributed to a shifting geographic and sale tier mix, and is an excellent example of why the Case-Shiller data provides us a better picture of what’s really going on with home prices in the last few months.

Check back tomorrow for a post on the Case-Shiller data for Seattle’s price tiers.

(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 08.25.2009)

Yet again, the sweet interactive data visualizations 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 dipped ever so slightly in July, coming in pretty much right on a “balanced” market again at 2.01 (June was 2.06). 6 of 30 areas came in below 1.75 as seller’s markets, 11 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

Southeast King and the Eastside were more or less tied as the best regions for buyers, with SAAS in each averaging about 2.4.

Regional History

July was a mixed bag, as SAAS increased from June in some neighborhoods, but decreased in others.

The three toughest markets for sellers were Vashon Island (800) at 4.3, Enumclaw (300) at 4.0, and downtown Seattle condos (701) at 3.8.

The three best markets for sellers as of last month were U District / Wedgewood / Lake City (710) at 1.2, Skyway (360) at 1.4, and east Bellevue (530) at 1.5.

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 July 2009.

(Note: Keep in mind that certain NWMLS definitions were modified beginning July 2008 that affect the reported number of active listings and pending sales (and therefore the “months of supply”). The net result of this change is that active listings post 07/08 will appear lower, pending sales higher, and months of supply lower than prior to 07/08. See this post for more details.)

July 2009	King	Snohomish	Pierce	Kitsap	Thurston	Island	Skagit	Whatcom
Median Price	13.7%	14.3%	11.5%	5.9%	5.8%	2.4%	6.3%	4.4%
Listings	19.4%	25.2%	25.0%	27.6%	17.4%	4.5%	0.7%	11.7%
Closed Sales	10.6%	18.4%	16.7%	23.5%	6.3%	5.2%	0.9%	3.2%
Months of Supply	4.4	4.7	4.7	5.3	4.6	11.2	9.3	5.9

Hit the jump for this month’s interactive charts.

Summary

The visualization below is comparable to our previous chart of closed sales in each county in July 2008 and July 2009:

Closed Sales

Snohomish, Pierce, and Kitsap all sported rather unbelievable spikes in their respective YOY closed sales stats, which rose 18.7, 20.2, and 16.2 points. Interesting. Sales actually fell YOY in Thurston, Skagit, and Whatcom.

Here’s our comparison of median prices in each county at their respective peaks and in July 2009:

Change from Peak

Still hovering around 20% off for the most part, with the most notable exception still being Thurston.

Months of Supply

Allegedly the change in “pending” definition by the NWMLS took effect starting with the July 2008 monthly stats release, so this chart finally should be giving us useful data again. Rising MOS in Island and Skagit, but declining MOS everywhere else.

To me, the most interesting part of this month’s numbers around the sound is the big spike in closed sales in Snohomish, Pierce, and Kitsap. Of course, over in Kitsap where their closed sales were up 23.5% YOY in July, pending sales for June were up 55.6%, so I guess 23.5% is actually only surprising in that it is so low.

As of July, this is where the median prices were for our regions:

• low end (South Co.): $227,500—$324,712
• mid range (Seattle / North Co.): $282,750—$566,000
• high end (Eastside): $392,500—$1,060,500

The following chart shows the percentage of each month’s closed sales that took place in each of the three regions.

Here’s how much of the total sales each of our three regions accounted for in July:

• low end (South Co.): 31.3% of sales
• mid range (Seattle / North Co.): 38.6% of sales
• high end (Eastside): 30.2% of sales

The mid-priced region (Seattle) continued to take up a larger-than-usual portion of the sales in July, with the low and high-priced regions see-sawing again, but to a lesser degree than the dramatic spike seen from May to June.

Here’s a close-up of this year’s movement in bar-chart format:

I suspect that as we continue to see prices fall, there will be a continuing pattern of more sales in the close-in Seattle neighborhoods. When homes became too ridiculously expensive during the bubble, many people employed the “drive ’til you qualify” tactic when purchasing. Now that prices are coming back down to earth, it would appear that the strategy has shifted to “wait until the neighborhood you want to buy in falls into your price range.”

These charts are based on per capita income, “Median Contract Rent” (from 2005 adjusted using the “rent of primary residence” component of the CPI), and Case-Shiller home prices indexed to the county-wide median. They are not intended to be used as a valuation tool for any specific home or neighborhood, but rather as a broad measure of the local housing market as a whole.

First up, the home price to income ratio:

There has been a little bit of improvement since our last update, with the ratio falling another 0.19 points (3%). As of May (the latest Case-Shiller data presently available) the price to income ratio sits roughly 5% above the 1990-2001 average (an improvement from 8% in January).

Here’s the home price to rent ratio:

Improvement on that front as well, with the ratio dropping 12.7 points (3%) since the April update. The price to rent ratio is still 19% above its 1990-2001 average (an improvement from 23% in January).

Since incomes and rents are currently falling along with prices, neither ratio has improved as much as we might expect. In the five months between January and May this year, Seattle-area home prices fell 3.5%, but since income also fell 0.6% and rents dropped slightly as well (0.3%), neither ratio has fallen quite as much as the raw drop in home prices.

The mini-plateaus over the last few months in both of the above charts closely resemble the same spring “bounce” that was seen last year. Following last year’s spring plateau from May to December, the price to rent ratio fell 14%, while the the price to income ratio fell 11%. It will be interesting to see where each ratio sits at the end of this year.

July 2009
King: 1,248 NTS, up 71% YOY
Snohomish: 620 NTS, up 75% YOY
Pierce: 803 NTS, up 48% YOY

The effect of the new state law that was passed in April (Senate Bill 5810) began waning in July, as the number of foreclosure notices backed off their insanely-high June volumes.

The new law essentially makes it more difficult for a lender to foreclose on owner-occupied homes with mortgages minted from 2003 through the end of 2007, and adds an extra 30 days to the process. Since a notice of trustee sale comes 30 days after the notice of default, a surge in default notices filed before the bill became law in late July could result in a continued surge in notices of trustee sale through this month.

After that, it is likely that we will see a lull in apparent foreclosure activity for a month or two as the newly-legislated time in the pipeline fills up. My guess is that by the end of this year we will probably be back to a more “normal” post-bubble foreclosure level of ~1,000 notices of trustee sale per month.

Frequent commenter Kary L. Krismer also explained the situation with SB 5810 over on the SREP blog last week.

Here’s a simple look at how July’s foreclosures compare to the same month last year in each of the three counties:

To give the numbers some more context, here’s a comparison of July closed sales reported by the NWMLS and July notices of trustee sale:

We’re back to more people buying homes than losing them in all three counties, at least.

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 630 households, Snohomish County had 1 NTS per 424 households, and Pierce had 1 NTS for every 370 households (higher is better).

According to foreclosure tracking company RealtyTrac, Washington’s statewide foreclosure rate of one foreclosure for every 511 households was 13th worst among the 50 states and the District of Columbia (up from 17th last month). As usual, this was still better than the national average of 355 households per foreclosure. Note that RealtyTrac’s definition of “in foreclosure” is much broader than what we are using.

Following are the usual charts of King, Pierce, and Snohomish County foreclosures from January 2000 through June 2009. Click below to continue…

Down slightly from the June peak, but still the second-highest level ever.

Same deal in Snohomish: second-highest level of all time.

And again, same in Pierce.

It will be interesting to see if this new law has any effect other than to simply delay the foreclosure pipeline. Based on similar actions that have been attempted in other states, I doubt anything else will happen.

Note: The graphs above are derived from monthly Notice of Trustee Sale counts gathered at King, Snohomish, and Pierce County records. For a longer-term picture of King County foreclosures back to 1979, refer to the final chart in this post. For the full legal definition of what a Notice of Trustee Sale is and how it fits into the foreclosure process, check out RCW 61.24.040. The short version is that it is the notice sent to delinquent borrowers that their home will be repossessed in 90 days.

Still came in lower than any previous quarter—about 15% lower than last year. So far this quarter is off to a stronger start, with July sales coming in 11% higher than last year. It will be interesting to see if that holds for August and September.

Next, here’s another look at the monthly pending and closed sales chart, only this time I have split the pending sales onto separate vertical and horizontal axis to demonstrate the apparent two-month lag that has shown up in the data this year:

It used to be (from 2000-2007) that a given month’s closed sales were (on average) about 95% of the previous month’s pending sales. So far this year the relationship has been closer to a given month’s closed sales coming in at 78% of the total pending sales from two months prior.

Here’s one more chart, with pending sales, closed sales, and a plot of pending sales * 78%, shifted two months into the future:

If this relationship holds for August, it looks like we’ll see about 1,900 closed sales.

Here’s your King County SFH summary, with helpful arrows to show whether the year-over-year direction of each indicator is positive or negative news for buyers and sellers:

July 2009	Number	MOM	YOY	Buyers	Sellers
Active Listings	9,857	+2.1%	-19.8%
Closed Sales	1,727	+4.4%	+10.6%
SAAS (?)	2.00	-3.0%	-21.0%
Pending Sales	2,217	-9.4%	+19.5
Months of Supply	4.45	+12.7%	-32.9%
Median Price*	$384,000	-2.8%	-13.7%

Closed sales increased slightly over June, falling just shy of the 1,750 breakpoint in our May poll. My guess was that closed sales this year would top out between 1,750 and 2000. That may have been a little too optimistic.

Still haven’t broken that 2,000 mark though, despite four months in a row of pending sales in excess of 2,000.

Here is the updated Seattle Bubble Spreadsheet, and here’s a copy in Excel 2003 format. Click below for the graphs and the rest of the post.

Here’s the graph of inventory with each year overlaid on the same chart.

July came at about the same level as 2007. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some more inventory growth this year between now and September, but we probably won’t hit the 11,000 mark again.

Here’s the supply/demand YOY graph. In place of the now-unreliable measure of pending sales, the “demand” in the following two charts is now represented by closed sales, which have had a consistent definition throughout the decade.

Another slight YOY increase for sales in July. Looks like the tax credit and the increased time that it is taking for deals to actually close have managed to stretch this year’s buying season out a little longer than usual.

Here’s the chart of supply and demand raw numbers:

Here’s the median home price YOY change graph:

No big surprise there. The median price measure is notoriously noisy, and it continues to oscillate up and down.

And lastly, here is the chart comparing King County SFH prices each month for every year back to 1994.

So far, 2009 is tracking pretty closely to 2005. July 2009’s SFH median was just $1,000 under the August 2005 SFH median.

I’ll update this post with news blurbs from the Times and P-I when they become available. As usual, check back tomorrow for the full reporting roundup.

[Update:]
Seattle Times: King County home sales climb to two-year high in July
Seattle P-I: Home sales up more than 10 percent in King County
KING 5: Home sales up despite heat wave

I’m sensing a theme…

Using data pulled from public documents filed with King County, here’s a preview of July’s foreclosure and home sale stats:

First up, total home sales as measured by the number of “Warranty Deeds” filed with the county:

County sales as measured by warranty deeds were down about 6% from last year in July.

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

July saw a big decline over June’s surge, but another big year-over-year rise and the second-highest level ever.

Here’s another measure of foreclosures, 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.”

Since trustee deeds will naturally lag notices of trustee sale (which are filed 90 days prior to a scheduled sale), it is no surprise that July set a new record for this type of repossession.

Lastly, here’s an approximate guess at where the month-end inventory was, based on our sidebar inventory tracker (powered by Estately):

Nothing too surprising here. Looks like there may be a slight increase from last month, but still a considerable decrease from July last year (which was supposedly the first month in which stats were generated under the new definitions).

Overall, I’m still not seeing any strong signs of an imminent recovery in the numbers. Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.

Six new months of Case-Shiller data have been released since that series and two potential bottom dates are now in the rear-view mirror. It seems like good time for a little checkup.

First up, Method 0: Blind Optimism. Our “Blind Optimism” forecast method was based on a mere gut feeling that January was the peak for year-over-year drops. This method predicted a bottom in February at 16.9% off the peak. Let’s see how that turned out:

I guess we can put that one to bed. February was definitely not the bottom.

Next, let’s check in on Bottom-Calling: Inventory-Based Forecast, which was based on the relationship between standing inventory (”active listings”) and home prices that Deejayoh explored in his post Why Inventory Matters, and predicted a bottom in April at 20.1% off the peak.

Looks like April wasn’t the bottom either. Although, in fairness, in the time since we made this forecast, we discovered that the NWMLS changed the definition of “active listing” back in July 2008 a way that resulted in lower inventory being reported at the end of the month. So it’s no real surprise that this method turned out not to be very reliable.

Lastly, let’s check in on a summary of where we’re at so far with respect to all six of our bottom-calling methods:

Our official February 2009 call was for 36% off the peak in December 2010. Six months later, I’m still comfortable sticking with that guess.

Yet again, the sweet interactive data visualizations 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 dipped again in June, coming in just barely in “buyer’s market” territory at 2.06. For all practical purposes, the market was pretty much balanced between buyers and sellers in June. 4 of 30 areas came in below 1.75 as seller’s markets, 15 of 30 came in above 2.25 as buyer’s markets, 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.

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

Year-Over-Year Comparison

Southeast King actually came in with the strongest showing for buyers last month, which should come as no surprise given what we saw when we broke down the sales patterns on a geographic basis earlier in the month.

Regional History

Seasonally-adjusted active supply decreased again in most neighborhoods from May to June. Most of the exceptions to this pattern came in Southeast King.

The three toughest markets for sellers were Downtown Seattle condos (701) at 4.0, West Bellevue (520) at 3.6, and Enumclaw (300) at 3.5.

The three best markets for sellers as of last month were Ballard / Greenlake / Greenwood at 1.3, Jovita / West Hill Auburn (100) at 1.5, and U District / Wedgewood / Lake City (710) at 1.6.

Note that the tiers are determined by sale volume. In other words, 1/3 of all sales fall into each tier. For more details on the tier methodologies, hit the full methodology pdf. Here are the current tier breakpoints:

• Low Tier: < $268,947
• Mid Tier: $268,947 – $395,294
• Hi Tier: > $395,294

Interestingly, although the overall index fell slightly, the tier breakpoints increased from April to May, which would seem to indicate a shift in the sales mix of homes away from the low end toward the high end. This matches up with what I pointed out on the 8th, that there has been a general trend since the beginning of the year of increasing sales on the Eastside (more expensive homes) and decreasing sales in South King (less expensive homes).

First up is the straight graph of the index from January 2000 through May 2009.

The low and high tiers both fell, by 0.3% and 0.7% respectively, while the middle tier increased by 0.3%. The “rewind” situation held steady for the third month in a row, with low tier rewound to March 2005 and the middle and the high tiers to May 2005.

Here’s a chart of the year-over-year change in the index from January 2003 through May 2009.

Not surprisingly given the directions of their respective indices, the YOY drop in the low and high tiers increased, while the middle tier decreased. Here’s where the tiers sit YOY as of May – Low: -18.4%, Med: -15.7%, Hi: -16.5%.

Lastly, here’s a decline-from-peak graph like the one posted yesterday, but looking only at the Seattle tiers.

We’ve definitely got a spring price plateau instead of the spring price bounce we had last year.

(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 07.28.2009)

Down 0.3% April to May.
Down 16.6% YOY.
Down 22.5% from the July 2007 peak

Last year prices fell 0.5% from April to May and year-over-year prices were down 6.3%.

Here’s the usual graph, with L.A. & San Diego offset from Seattle & Portland by 17 months. Portland rose from April to May, so the year-over-year drops down there continue to come in smaller than here in Seattle. Meanwhile, down in SoCal, the losses shrank to less than 20% YOY. If this pattern keeps up, Seattle could be seeing larger YOY drops than Los Angeles & San Diego by September.

Note: This graph is not intended to be predictive. It is for entertainment purposes only.

Here’s the graph of all twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities:

In May, nine of the twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities experienced smaller year-over-year drops than Seattle (the previous four months it was eight). Dallas at -4.2%, Denver at -4.6%, Cleveland at -6.2%, Boston at -7.2%, Charlotte at -10.0%, New York at -12.1%, Washington, DC at -14.9%, Atlanta at -15.0%, and Portland at -16.3%. As usual, Phoenix had the largest year-over-year drop, with prices falling 34% in a single year.

Here’s an update to the peak-decline graph, inspired by a graph created by reader CrystalBall. This chart takes the twelve cities whose peak index was greater than 175, and tracks how far they have fallen so far from their peak. The horizontal axis shows the total number of months since each individual city peaked.

In the twenty-one months since the price peak in Seattle prices have declined 22.5%. This spring’s flatline puts us right in line with San Francisco’s relative drop. San Francisco and DC both seem to be having uncharacteristically strong spring upticks this year.

Here’s the “rewind” chart. The horizontal range is selected to go back just far enough to find the last time that Seattle’s HPI was as low as it is now. This gives us a clean visual of just how far back prices have retreated in terms of months.

Seattle’s Case-Shiller value for May 2009 of 148.96 came in just barely below its May 2005 value of 148.97. Prices have now “rewound” four years and one month.

Finally, the following chart takes the post-bubble years of 2007, 2008, and 2009 and indexes each January’s Case-Shiller HPI to 100 so we can get a picture of how this year’s declines compare to last year:

Note that last year the March to April uptick took two months to be erased, and prices fell nearly 12% from January to December. This year the March to April uptick was considerably smaller, and was erased in a single month.

Check back tomorrow for a post on the Case-Shiller data for Seattle’s price tiers.

(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 07.28.2009)

[Update]
Since the news reports on the radio and in the papers this morning are focusing on the month-to-month increase in the 10-city and 20-city indices, I thought I would add this chart, which compares the month-to-month change for all 20 metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller:

Of course, the seasonally-adjusted data (which is the only semi-sensible way to look at month-to-month numbers) paints a somewhat less rosy picture, but at least Seattle moves from fourth-worst to sixth-worst.

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 June 2009.

(Note: Keep in mind that certain NWMLS definitions were modified beginning July 2008 that affect the reported number of active listings and pending sales (and therefore the “months of supply”). The net result of this change is that active listings post 07/08 will appear lower, pending sales higher, and months of supply lower than prior to 07/08. See this post for more details.)

June 2009	King	Snohomish	Pierce	Kitsap	Thurston	Island	Skagit	Whatcom
Median Price	12.2%	11.6%	11.3%	8.4%	5.9%	4.7%	5.4%	1.1%
Listings	18.6%	22.2%	25.3%	28.6%	19.8%	1.3%	1.2%	10.6%
Closed Sales	4.0%	0.3%	3.5%	7.3%	1.3%	23.8%	21.6%	7.0%
Months of Supply	3.9	4.5	4.2	4.7	4.3	11.0	7.7	6.1

Summary

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

The visualization below is comparable to our usual chart of closed sales in each county in May 2008 and May 2009:

Closed Sales

King, Kitsap, Thurston, and Whatcom all saw slightly increasing year-over-year closed sales, while Island, Pierce, Skagit, and (just barely) Snohomish all had fewer sales than June 2008.

Here’s our comparison of median prices in each county at their respective peaks and in June 2009:

Change from Peak

Other than Thurston and Whatcom on the low end and Island on the high end, most counties came in right around 20% off the peak.

Months of Supply

Again, unfortunately this chart has been rendered mostly meaningless with the change in “pending” definition by the NWMLS. Next month the year-over-year comparison will be valid, but the MOS metric will still be of questionable use. We will integrate the SAAS measure into these charts beginning with July’s data.

Still seems like the market around the sound is in a bit of a holding pattern. Sales increasing slightly, but not a strong enough showing yet to signal any kind of true recovery. It will definitely be interesting to see how things hold up as we move into the fall in a few months.

The following chart shows the volume of job gains or losses in the last 12 months in some of the largest Seattle-area industries:

Manufacturing, construction, and professional / business services were by far the hardest hit in sheer volume, losing a total of 42,700 jobs between the three sectors.

Here’s a look at the same data, broken down by the year-over-year percentage change, to give a better picture of the relative health of various industries:

Relative to its size, construction has shed twice as many jobs as any other sector, while finance / real estate, manufacturing, and professional / business services all also lost over 5%. Apparently if you’re looking for a job in health services, you have a much better chance than most any other industry in the last year.

Finally, here’s a big pie chart showing all major industries that make up Seattle’s job market, to give you an idea which sectors have the largest effect on the total employment picture:

Source: Washington State Employment Security Department