With April behind us, it’s time for another 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:
Nearly a two-year high for sales, and the highest April since 2007, which was the last year that sales were over 3,000 before the bottom fell out.
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 was down year over year again.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Same pattern in both counties, dipping from last month’s spike and coming in near February’s level.
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.”
Actual foreclosure repossessions dropped to their lowest point since 2008.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
Absolutely dismal inventory levels out there. Snohomish might possibly inch out a slight gain this month, but King County just keeps plummeting.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.