Okay, now that the first month of 2012 is behind us, let’s have an early look at January’s stats. 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:
Very slight bump up from a year ago. Nothing to write home about, really.
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.
Snohomish came in 11% below last year, though I suspect this may be due in part to a dip in foreclosure deeds, whic as you’ll see, declined quite a bit in King County.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Big drop from a year ago in both counties, but also an uptick from December.
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.”
Like I mentioned, there was a pretty big dip in actual foreclosure sales between December and January.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
This is the first year in quite a while that January hasn’t had more active listings than December. It looks like we’re going to have a seriously slim selection this year if things keep up at this pace. Not too surprising since there are so many people out there who can’t afford to sell.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.