Now that we’ve got a full month of 2013 under our belt, 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 are still up, sales dropped from December but are up from a year ago, and inventory appears to have inched up just slightly, which is a definite improvement over last year’s January performance. 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 34% from December to January, but much of that was just giving up the weird gains that showed up in last month’s preview.
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 fell 15% month-over-month, to end up just about at the level they were in November.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
We’re still seeing big year-over-year spikes in both counties, although from December to January they were fairly flat, so the huge surge we saw near the end of last year may be abating.
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 fell a bit from December, but were still up 40% from a year ago.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
Last year King County inventory fell 2.1% between December and January, a time which usually sees gains of 5 to 10 percent. This year we got a 1.7% increase, which isn’t anything to write home about, but is definitely better than a drop.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.