Let’s take a look at March NWMLS statistics from around the sound. As usual, courtesy Tableau Software (available free to use online), 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 eight covered counties as of March 2010.
| March 2010 | King | Snohomish | Pierce | Kitsap | Thurston | Island | Skagit | Whatcom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Median Price |  0.9% |
 11.1% |
6.1% |
1.9% |
5.4% |
1.1% |
8.3% |
13.6% |
| Listings | 8.3% |
6.6% |
7.0% |
6.0% |
11.9% |
8.6% |
6.7% |
14.1% |
| Closed Sales | 64.9% |
73.7% |
22.9% |
31.7% |
30.4% |
3.0% |
40.3% |
39.4% |
| SAAS | 2.19 | 2.19 | 2.24 | 2.09 | 2.05 | 3.49 | 3.22 | 2.54 |
Still continuing the trend of active listings inching back into positive YOY territory.
Hit the jump for this month’s visualizations.
Summary
The visualization below looks at closed sales in each county in March 2009 and March 2010:
Closed Sales
Still seeing big YOY gains compared to the anemic performance last winter. Since the tax credit didn’t really start to boost closed sales much until May or June of last year, I suspect we will continue to see pretty strong YOY comparisons through at least May. After the tax credit expires though, I wouldn’t be surprised if we dip back down into negative territory.
Here’s our comparison of median prices in each county at their respective peaks and in March 2010:
Change from Peak
Prices have still been relatively flat, except for Snohomish, where they continue a pretty steady march downward, and Whatcom, where they dropped sharply in just the last month.
Seasonally Adjusted Active Supply
Everyone is still in “buyer’s market” territory thanks to a continued boost in new listings, but the SAAS is trending lower across most of the sound.
I think we will continue to see some weak signs of strength for the next few months, then another period of decline, most likely more gradual than what we saw through 2008.