With another leap day behind us, it’s time to take an early look at February’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:
That’s a fairly substantial increase from last year: 25%. It will be interesting to see if that big of a boost carries through to the NWMLS-released numbers.
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 also came in above 2011, but only by 2%.
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 another month-to-month increase.
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.”
Moving in the opposite direction of foreclosure notices, falling the last four months in a row.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
Continuing the unusual trend began last month, inventory continued to drop during a time of year that it usually is trending up. 2012 is still living up to its title of the year of crappy selection.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.