Welcome to November! New month, new 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:
Still coming in quite a bit above last year. We’ll see if that trend continues into December, when last year there was an unusual spike in sales.
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.
Pretty much the same story in Snohomish. Higher than November of last year, lower than December of last year.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
First uptick in eight months for Snohomish, three months for King. I expect this number will start to slowly increase again in the coming months.
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.”
An uptick there, too, but still lower than last year.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
Same boring story we’ve seen all year. Lower inventory than last year, following the usual seasonal pattern.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.