Editor’s Note: I’d like to welcome new contributor Jonness to Seattle Bubble. He maintains the excellent set of tools at HousingCorrection.com and has provided an interesting analysis of housing data in his comments. – The Tim
An article in the Seattle P-I indicates that our home sales slowed more than anywhere else in the nation.
Sales of existing houses dropped more in Washington than anywhere else in the nation last quarter, compared with a year earlier, according to a new report. King County’s median sale price also dropped roughly 10 percent from a year earlier.
The state’s sales were down 36 percent from the third quarter of 2007, the National Association of Realtors reported. The next-largest annual drops were in Vermont and Delaware, where sales fell 33 percent.
A big reason why Washington’s annual drop is larger than other states’ is that its decline started later, meaning other areas had much slower markets a year ago.
According to Global Insight’s analysis, Washington is still overvalued, while bubble states California, Nevada, and Florida have largely corrected. It looks like Washington real estate has some fat left to trim in order to catch up with the rest of the nation.
(Aubrey Cohen, Seattle P-I, 11.19.2008)