With the last month of 2010 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:
Warranty Deeds jumped 35% in King County between November and December. I rather doubt that sales actually spiked that much, but it’s possible. Last year Warranty Deeds fell 5% during the same month. YOY Warranty Deeds were actually up 5%. If there’s not something odd going on behind the scenes with this data, I suspect we’ll see NWMLS-reported SFH closed sales for December bump up to 1,850 or so.
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 vanilla sales as the Warranty Deed only data we have in King County.
Same story in Snohomish County. Month-over-month bump and a slight YOY increase as well.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Basically flat MOM, but still up over the same month last year.
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.”
Another bump up in bank repossessions, both year-over-year and month-over-month.
Lastly, here’s an approximate guess at where the month-end inventory was, based on our sidebar inventory tracker (powered by Estately):
Nothing too shocking here. The usual seasonal inventory clear-out in both counties, but still sitting above where we were a year ago.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.