By request, here’s an update to the distressed listings map I first posted six months ago.
In the map below I have taken all the currently active listings on the market in King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties, and separated them into three buckets: bank owned, short sale, and non-distressed. Each zip code has a pie chart that shows the breakdown for that zip code. Pies are sized according to the total number of listings in the zip code. Float the mouse over a slice of pie to see the number of listings it represents, as well as the median list price and median days on market for those listings.
King County’s most distressed zip code is 98168, right between Boeing Field and Sea-Tac Airport. Of the 56 homes on the market there, 58% are bank owned or short sales. West Federal Way comes in a close second with 57% of the 228 homes on the market being either bank owned or short sale.
In Snohomish County, Marysville’s 98270 is by far the most distressed, with bank owned and short sale homes making up a whopping 61% of the listings. Pierce County’s leader is Orting’s 98360, with 56% of its listings distressed. South Puyallup’s 98375 is also up there at 54% distressed.
Central King County (basically Seattle and Bellevue) have relatively few distressed listings, but once you venture very far outside that narrow band to the north or the south, the picture changes fairly dramatically.
Here’s the total distressed listings breakdown for each county:
- King: 12% bank owned, 22% short sale, 66% non-distressed.
- Snohomish: 16% bank owned, 27% short sale, 57% non-distressed.
- Pierce: 14% bank owned, 23% short sale, 63% non-distressed.
Overall, 37% of the listings in King, Pierce, and Snohomish are either bank owned or a short sale.
It’s also interesting to see the difference between the prices of the distressed inventory vs. the non-distressed inventory. Take single-family homes in Deldrige (98106) for example. Here’s the number of homes, median price, and median days on market for the three buckets:
- non-distressed: 45 homes, $275,000, 88 DOM
- short sale: 21 homes, $259,990, 105 DOM
- bank owned: 22 homes, $147,000, 47 DOM
Short sales are a little cheaper than non-distressed, but are taking a lot longer to sell. Bank owned homes are a lot cheaper than non-distressed homes, and are selling a lot faster.
If you want to know what’s continuing to drive prices down in this long, slow grind, there’s your answer. Bank owned homes are driving down prices hard, and will likely continue to do so until the foreclosure surge dies down.
If you’re a potential seller in one of these areas with a lot of distressed listings, you’re going to have to work pretty hard to overcome the huge price advantage of the bank owned homes on the market. If your home is not priced right and doesn’t sparkle right out of the gate, you’re going to get left in the dust. Fair warning.