Now that March is done, and April 1 fun is done, 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 continued to fall, sales bounced up from February, and inventory might have fallen to another new low. 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:
Sales in King County rose 34.1% from February to March, and were up 23.7% year-over-year.
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 rose 25.4% month-over-month and 16.3% from March 2012.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Both counties are still quite a bit higher than where they were at the same time last year, but the difference keeps shrinking, and King County fell a bit month-over-month.
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 shot up month-over-month (predictable given the spike in notices back in July) and were up 96.7% from a year earlier.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
Last year King County inventory fell 3.9% between February and March. This year it fell 0.1%. Similar story in Snohomish County, where listings fell 1.3% from February to March, not nearly as much as last year’s 9.6% 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.