Now that November 2012 is no more, 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:
Summary: Foreclosures inched down, sales began their usual seasonal slide, and inventory hit a new low point. 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:
Salse in King County fell 9% from October to November, which is on par with what you would expect for this time of year. Even with the dip, November sales volume came in higher than September.
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.
Deeds in Snohomish actually increased a bit month-over-month and came in 9.4% above last November’s level.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Month to month decreases in both counties, although it was barely a decline in Snohomish, where notices dropped from 537 in October to 535 in November.
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.”
Trustee deeds moved up, hitting their highest point since last December. This spike is just what we would expect, coming a few months after the July spike in Notices of Trustee Sale.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
As predicted last month, November saw a new low for inventory in both counties. Expect more of the same next month.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.