July is now done, so let’s have a look at our 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.
Let’s try something a little different this month. Here’s a snapshot of all the data as far back as my historical information goes, with the latest, high, and low values highlighted for each series:
Summary: Sales are up, foreclosure notices flipped back to year-over-year gains, and inventory is still in the gutter. Hit the jump for the full suite of our usual monthly charts.
First up, total home sales as measured by the number of “Warranty Deeds” filed with King County:
Sales dipped from last month and will likely fall through the end of the year, but still came in well above a year ago.
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 story as King County, down from last month but besting last year.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Whoops! Last month I said that it would probably take until September for foreclosure notices to break back into positive year-over-year territory, but we hit it for both counties in July.
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.”
Another slight uptick, but still well below a year ago.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
Same basic story we’ve seen since May. Barely any change in inventory with levels holding well below where they were a year ago.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.