Seattle Bubble Forum Archive

The chart below is based on Tim's logging of inventory shown on the SB home page. It compares the growth on all of the series indexed to 100% at 7/12/2007.



I thought it was interesting to see how Snoho and King Co Condo growth is outpacing everything else. And as discussed here before, condo inventory is probably underreported as most new units never go on the MLS - so reality may be worse. I was also surprised to see how rapidly King Co SFH inventory was growing in comparison to the other series.

For a bit of historical context, SFH inventory growth (I don't have the numbers for condos) between July and September for 00-06 averaged 3.4% for KC, -0.6% for PC, and 1.7% for SC. This year, only the Pierce County growth is in this range.

Interesting to note that the rate of growth for both KC SFH and Condos seems to have picked up as of 9/1. Correlates with point ~1200 above, but you can see it better below.



Since Tim started collecting the data, the average growth is about 20 houses per day. if you look at just Sept, we've added 33 houses a day on average thru the 27th.

and if that USA Today article was right, we aren't going to see a huge wave of closings today and tomorrow.

Inventory has already gone flat for the month due to houses closing. I don't think it is going to change much until a few days into October.

Looks like most of the closing volume shows up in Tim's data on the first of the month. On both Aug and Sept 1, some time early in the morning - the total dropped by about 140 units.

I expect that this month
a) There will be a smaller drop (fewer closings)
b) Net of that drop, the average daily growth for Sept will greatly exceed that of July and August.

IMO, the second point is the interesting one. Inventory growth usually starts dropping off in Sept. This year it is accelerating. This supports what I think both Alan and I have said - that the level of inventory will probably peak in october this year.

Sweet graphs.

More interesting stuff. Check out what is happening to the "Market Action Index" at Altos. I am pretty sure this is basically sales/inventory ratio. Their claim is that anything less than 30 is a buyers market. Seattle dropped to 19 this week. First time below 30, other than what looks like a bad data read back in July.



Let's look at the data we have:
- As shown above, we know inventory growth is accelerating
- According to RE/Max sales volume is dropping twice as fast as it has been in previous months (47% vs. mid-20's)
- The zip-code level report I have from Altos shows asking prices dropping across the board in the city
- Jim Cramer says it is still time to buy in Seattle! (contrarian indicator, IMO)

It appears that something has definitely changed in the markeplace in September...