Happy November, everybody! With October behind us, 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 and Snohomish County public 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 King County:
Recent month-over-month variations in King County Warranty Deeds have not been very closely related to the dip we’ve been seeing in closed residential sales, but the year-over-year trends have been roughly the same. The number of Warranty Deeds filed in October were down 25% from a year ago, so we can likely expect to see another 20% drop or so in SFH sales over the same period.. Based on this data, I suspect we’ll see NWMLS-reported SFH closed sales for October come in at around 1,200.
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.
Warranty Deeds in Snohomish County fell month to month and year over year. Considering the likely still increasing number of Trustee Deeds (bank repossessions) included in this measure, this is not a good sign for SFH sales.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Month-over-month and year-over-year increases in both King and Snohomish Counties. Both counties saw the largest year-over-year jump since June 2009, but those of you that have been paying attention already know exactly why.
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.”
Backed off slightly from the high, but still extremely elevated.
Lastly, here’s an approximate guess at where the month-end inventory was, based on our sidebar inventory tracker (powered by Estately):
Exactly what you would expect for this time of year: inventory is declining into the slow winter months. Both King and Snohomish remain above where we were last year at this time.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.