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.
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.
On Friday I posted this graph of 2009’s pending and closed sales to demonstrate just how out of whack the two have become:
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).
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:
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.
Now that October is behind us, let’s have a look at the monthly stats preview. Most of the charts below are based on broad county-wide data that is available through a simple search of King County Records. If you have additional stats you’d like to see in the “preview,” drop a line in the comments and I’ll see what I can do.
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.
3.7%
0.4%
