With February in the rear-view mirror, let’s have a look at our 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 February’s foreclosure and home sale stats:
First up, total home sales as measured by the number of “Warranty Deeds” filed with the county:
Warranty Deeds saw a 29% increase over 2009 in February. Unfortunately, for some odd reason, Warranty Deeds in the month of February specifically seem to be a less-useful-than-usual predictor of that month’s closed SFH sales. Observe:
Virtually every year February is the most extreme outlier when comparing the number of Warranty Deeds to the number of NWMLS-reported closed SFH sales. If anyone has any probable explanations for this odd phenomenon, I’d love to hear it.
Based on the rough pattern apparent in the above chart, I would venture a wild guess that February’s 1,584 Warranty Deeds will represent somewhere in the ballpark of 1,000 closed SFH sales, which would still represent a 51% increase over last year.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
February continued the trend that began in January of year-over-year drops in Notices of Trustee Sale in King County. That said, the number of foreclosures is still in very high territory.
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.”
Actual completed foreclosures posted a stronger YOY gain than in January, increasing 44% from 2009.
Lastly, here’s an approximate guess at where the month-end inventory was, based on our sidebar inventory tracker (powered by Estately):
Down 12% from last year, but still 34% above the 2000-2007 average for February.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.