With August in the rear view mirror, it’s time for another 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 and Snohomish 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.
First up, total home sales as measured by the number of “Warranty Deeds” filed with the county:
Warranty Deeds were more or less flat in King County between July and August. Last year Warranty Deeds fell nearly 10% during the same month, so maybe that’s progress? Obviously they’re still at a crazy low point for this time of year. YOY Warranty Deeds were down 13%. Based on this data, I suspect we’ll see NWMLS-reported SFH closed sales for August come in around 1,300.
Here’s a long-range view of King County Warranty Deeds, to give you a little more context:
Here’s a look at Snohomish County Deeds, but keep in mind that Snohomish County files Warranty Deeds (regular sales) and Trustee Deeds (bank foreclosure repossessions) together under the category of “Deeds (except QCDS),” so this chart is not as good a measure of plain vanillla sales as the Warranty Deed only data we have in King County.
Snohomish County was up on the month. It will be interesting to see if SFH sales mark a similar jump.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Month-to-month decreases in King and Snohomish, but both came in well over where they were a year ago, thanks to last year’s rapid decline once the new state law kicked in.
Here’s another measure of foreclosures for King County, 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.”
Yikes. Another new high in foreclosure repossessions in King County, jumping so far that I had to readjust the vertical axis on my chart.
Lastly, here’s an approximate guess at where the month-end inventory was, based on our sidebar inventory tracker (powered by Estately):
Nothing too surprising here. Look for new 2009-2010 highs in both King and Snohomish. We’ll probably see a continued growth in inventory until about October.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.