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October Stats Preview: Late Sales Leap Edition

Posted on November 2, 2012November 2, 2012 by The Tim

With October behind us, 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.

First up, here’s the summary snapshot of all the data as far back as my historical information goes, with the latest, high, and low values highlighted for each series:

King & Snhomish County Stats Preview

Summary: Foreclosures ticked up, sales jumped (surprising for this time of year), and inventory began its descent into winter. Hit the jump for the full suite of our usual monthly charts.

Next, let’s look at total home sales as measured by the number of “Warranty Deeds” filed with King County:

King County Warranty Deeds

Salse in King County jumped 14% from September to October, highly unusual for this time of year. It will be interesting to see if we see the same leap in the sales stats from the NWMLS.

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 County Deeds

Deeds in Snohomish increased as well, but remained just below last year’s level.

Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:

King County Notices of Trustee Sale

Snohomish County Notices of Trustee Sale

Month to month increases in both counties, and big gains over a year earlier. I still expect the overall trend over the next year to be decreasing foreclosures. It is not unusual to see month to month spikes up and down no matter which direction the long-term trend is heading.

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.”

King County Trustee Deeds

Trustee deeds were down both month over month and year over year. It will probably be a few more months before we see the July spike in Notices of Trustee Sale translate into a similar spike in Trustee Deeds.

Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.

King County SFH Active Listings

Snohomish County SFH Active Listings

Looks like we’re heading south for the winter. If this year’s fall/winter trend follows usual seasonal patterns (which this spring did not), we can expect to hit all-time lows each of the next three months.

Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.

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Case-Shiller Tiers: Low Tier Hits Break-Even
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NWMLS: Inventory Hit a Record Low in October

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