I’ve noticed an interesting trend when looking at weekly home price stats lately. Let’s see if you can spot it in these screenshots from Redfin’s region pages for Seattle, King County, Snohomish County, and Pierce County.
Spotted the pattern yet? Here’s a not-so-subtle clue:
Nearly every single region I have been looking at has shown the same distinctive trend since the beginning of the year: list prices are on the rise while sale prices continue to fall.
Any ideas what’s behind this trend? Are the year’s sellers seriously that delusional, or are we looking at something that could be explained by short sales and bank-owned homes making up an increasingly larger percentage of sales?