April market stats have been published by the NWMLS. Here’s a link to the NWMLS press release (not live quite yet): Brokers cite tax credit and rising consumer confidence with stabilizing housing activity around Washington state.
“While the tax credit has gone away, the buyers haven’t,” observed OB Jacobi, a board member of the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. Commenting on the MLS summary report for March, Jacobi described the tax incentives, which expired April 30, with being the “lubricant the market needed,” but credits rising consumer confidence with “driving the engine now.”
Okay, first off, the tax credit has been gone for less than a week. These statistics that were released today are all from when the tax credit was fully in force. What we have here is a strange bit of misdirection.
Commenting on the latest report, two industry leaders referred to market stability. “The home buyer tax credit did what it was designed to do; it helped with stabilizing the housing market which in turn helped stimulate economic recovery,” said J. Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO of John L. Scott Real Estate.
“It’s exciting to see the stability of the real estate market continue to improve,” said NWMLS director Bobbie Chipman, co-managing broker for Coldwell Banker Bain-Tacoma/Puyallup. “The tax credit seems to have accomplished its purpose,” she added, noting, “It motivated home buyers to enter the market place, creating a synergy that should propel us through the summer months.”
Good luck with that one.
Here’s your King County SFH summary, with the arrows to show whether the year-over-year direction of each indicator is favorable or unfavorable news for buyers and sellers (green = favorable, red = unfavorable):
| April 2010 | Number | MOM | YOY | Buyers | Sellers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Listings | 9,206 | +4.4% | -4.2% |  |
 |
| Closed Sales | 1,642 | +2.9% | +63.5% | |
|
| SAAS (?) | 2.15 | -3.2% | -25.1% | |
|
| Pending Sales | 2,955 | +7.5% | +39.8% | |
|
| Months of Supply | 3.12 | -2.9% | -31.5% | |
|
| Median Price* | $375,000 | +2.1% | -1.3% | |
|
Closed sales were basically flat from March, which seems to be the usual pattern most years. As expected, pending sales shot up, gaining 7.5% in a month that usually declines an average of about 5%. I would not be at all surprised if this is the highest level of pending sales we see in 2010.
Also interesting is the fact that while the raw number of pending sales is still far higher than the eventual number of closed sales, over the past eight months the YOY change in pending sales has generally tracked fairly closely to the following month’s YOY change in closed sales:
If this pattern holds through next month, we’ll be looking at about 1,825 closed sales in May.
Feel free to download the updated Seattle Bubble Spreadsheet, and here’s a copy in Excel 2003 format.
Here’s your closed sales yearly comparison chart:
Still not too much different than 2008. Next month we’ll probably bounce up off that line, but I’m betting we still won’t reach the level of sales seen in 2001 (the lowest year other that 2008 and 2009).
Here’s the graph of inventory with each year overlaid on the same chart.
The pattern of inventory growth this year seems to be more similar to 2007 and 2008 than last year. With the tax credit buyers all gone, I wouldn’t be surprised if we bump ahead of 2009 as early as next month.
Here’s the supply/demand YOY graph. In place of the now-unreliable measure of pending sales, the “demand” in this chart is represented by closed sales, which have had a consistent definition throughout the decade.
Still way up there in the sales, thanks to the total dumps the market was in through about May of last year. I expect that the red line will drop back down and possibly even fall below zero by July.
Here’s the median home price YOY change graph:
April saw the opposite move from what we saw in March. The median bumped up slightly month-to-month, but fell year-over-year.
And lastly, here is the chart comparing King County SFH prices each month for every year back to 1994.
I don’t expect that we’ll be getting back up to that blue line on top for quite some time.
Here are the news blurbs from the Times & P-I:
Seattle Times: Tax credits fuel King County home sales in April
Seattle P-I: Seattle home prices up in April, report says
Check back tomorrow for the full reporting roundup.