March market stats were published by the NWMLS yesterday. Here’s what they have to say about their numbers: Housing market "warming" as brokers report multiple offers in some areas.
Home sellers around Washington state are starting to a see something that had all but vanished in recent months: multiple offers.
Several directors of Northwest Multiple Listing Service noted they are encountering more bidding wars in certain neighborhoods and price ranges, even though the latest figures show fewer sales and lower prices than a year ago. Shrinking inventory is spurring activity, with some brokers reporting a “shortage of good listings” and “signs of normality.”
…
“With healthy sales activity over the last several months, a shortage of homes coming on the market and low foreclosure activity, the stage has been set for a multiple offer market,” observed J. Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO of John L. Scott Real Estate.
Wow, if this is what Lennox considers “low foreclosure activity,” I wonder how many foreclosures he’d have to see to consider it to be high activity.
I expect that we’ll se a lot made this month of the fact that the median price has ticked up two months in a row now, so I’d like to remind everyone that this has happened every single spring since the bust began…
All right, let’s get on with the rest of the statistics, shall we?
NWMLS monthly reports include an undisclosed and varying number of
sales from previous months in their pending and closed sales statistics.
Here’s your King County SFH summary, with the arrows to show whether the year-over-year direction of each indicator is favorable or unfavorable news for buyers and sellers (green = favorable, red = unfavorable):
| April 2011 | Number | MOM | YOY | Buyers | Sellers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Listings | 7,974 | +5.1% | -13.4% |  |
 |
| Closed Sales | 1,533 | +0.5% | -6.4% | |
|
| SAAS (?) | 1.86 | +8.4% | -13.2% | |
|
| Pending Sales | 2,435 | -4.8% | -21.6% | |
|
| Months of Supply | 3.44 | +10.4% | +10.4% | |
|
| Median Price* | $349,950 | +1.4% | -6.7% | |
|
Feel free to download the updated Seattle Bubble Spreadsheet (Excel 2003 format), but keep in mind the caution above.
Here’s your closed sales yearly comparison chart:
Here’s the graph of inventory with each year overlaid on the same chart.
Hey, we finally got a little uptick in inventory. About time.
Here’s the supply/demand YOY graph. In place of the now-unreliable measure of pending sales, the “demand” in this chart is represented by closed sales, which have had a consistent definition throughout the decade.
Both still falling. Quite an odd market where supply and demand are both continually dropping like this.
Here’s the median home price YOY change graph:
Back down a bit, since this year’s March to April price uptick wasn’t as big as last year’s.
And lastly, here is the chart comparing King County SFH prices each month for every year back to 1994.
April 2011: $349,950
April 2005: $355,000
Here are the headlines from the Seattle Times and P-I:
Seattle Times: King County homes prices, sales in April slip from year ago
Seattle P-I: Hotter housing market? Numbers say ‘no’
Check back on Friday for the full reporting roundup.