With April 2013 in the history books, 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 fell again, sales rose some more, and inventory looks like it actually made a decent month-to-month gain. 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 14% from March to April, and were up 25% year-over-year, which is a slightly larger year-over-year gain than in March.
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 17% month-over-month and 31% from April 2012.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Same story we’ve seen all year: Both counties are well above their respective 2012 levels, but both also experienced a month-over-month drop. It’s the third straight month of declines in King County. Unless foreclosures experience a sudden spike, we’ll probably be seeing year-over-year drops by July, possibly even June.
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.”
Since Trustee Deeds are on a delayed cycle from notices, they rose month-over-month, to a 19-month high.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
Finally some good news for buyers. Last year King County inventory fell 1.0% between March and April. This year it rose 6.6%. Similar story in Snohomish County: last year listings fell 3.1%, this year they were up 5.1%. Here’s hoping it’s the start of a positive trend for inventory.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.