It’s time yet again to check in on our monthly stats preview for King and Snohomish counties. 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:
As expected, the number of sales has begun the descent into winter. The year-over-year comparison looks great of course, since last year’s closed sales fell off a cliff once the tax credit expired. What we’re seeing this year is a fairly normal seasonal pattern.
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 basic story in Snohomish County, down from the June peak, but up from last year’s artificially low July post tax credit level.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Down both month-to-month and year-over-year in King and Snohomish counties. I wonder if we’re now seeing the effects of the latest state legislation designed to make it harder for banks to foreclose.
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.”
I guess we still had at least one more month of year-over-year increases left for trustee deeds.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
We may have one more month of slightly higher inventory, but pretty soon we’ll see that head down into winter territory as well.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.