Well I waited all weekend for the NWMLS “recap” pdf to be posted, and it’s still not up. In the mean time, here are the pertinent numbers for King County (residential only), pulled from the summary sheet, which has been posted.
Active Listings: 6,909 (+ 19.29% YOY)
Pending Sales: 2,665 (– 13.08% YOY)
Median Closed Price: $435,000 (+0.01% M2M, +16.00% YOY)
Nothing too surprising. The trends of the last few months are just continuing—increasing inventory and decreasing sales. The median price pretty much stalled, but it seems to do that pretty much every July. (Last year it was unchanged at $375,000 from June to July.) Generally speaking, inventory tends to start decreasing month to month during the last half of the year, but as you can see, active listings are still increasing at over 6% per month. If the trend continues, I think we will start to see a real slowdown in the median price next spring.
Meanwhile, in Olympia…
Thurston County home sales continue to show signs of slowing as the South Sound housing market crossed into uncharted price territory last month.
For the first time, the average price of a single-family home rose above $300,000 in July, according to Olympic Multiple Listing Service data released Friday.
The average price of a home was 21 percent higher than last year at $301,129, while the median price of a home also was higher at $262,000, up 12 percent compared to July 2005.
…
Regardless of the increase in average and median prices, South Sound real estate professionals say there has been a noticeable shift in the market.“The ratio of buyers to sellers has drastically flipped from the past,” said Chad Roraback, a real estate agent with Abbey Realty in Lacey.
“The buyers haven’t left the market; there is just so much more to choose from,” he said.
Roraback attributed the surge in median and average home prices to sales of higher-priced homes.
Sales of homes priced at more than $450,000 have doubled since 2005, climbing from 106 to 216 home sales in 2006, an increase of 104 percent.
Roraback also thinks inventory levels are much higher in Thurston County than the Olympic MLS data would indicate because large home builders don’t always list every home available.
The number of homes on the market is more in the range of 2,200 to 2,500, he estimated.
“I just think we will be flattening out and take a while to absorb the inventory,” he said. “The population growth isn’t going to match the number of homes available right now. Builders may have to slow down production.”
At 1,928, the total active listings (residential & condo), Thurston County is already over 80% higher than a year ago. If they’re really looking at 2,500, that’s an over 100% increase. I don’t see how that kind of increased inventory can sustain continued price increases. I guess that’s why I’m not an economist.
(Rolf Boone, Olympian, 08.05.2006)
(NWMLS, 08.2006)
Update: The recap pdf has been posted. Also, the big Seattle Bubble Spreadsheet has been updated to reflect the July numbers.