Now that the month of July is 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 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: Inventory increased for the fourth consecutive month, while sales jumped back up. Foreclosure notices continued to fall, coming in well below last year’s level.
Next, let’s look at total home sales as measured by the number of “Warranty Deeds” filed with King County:
Sales in King County increased 12.9% from June to July, and were up 38.6% year-over-year, surging back from last month’s dip.
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 8.5% month-over-month and were up 22.2% from July 2012.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Foreclosures in King and Snohomish County both fell again, dropping well below last year’s level.
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 rose slightly from a month ago. I still expect Deeds will fall to year-over-year negative by November or December.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
Four months of increases in a row. Last year King County inventory fell 0.4% between June and July. This year it gained 8.5% over the same period. Similar story in Snohomish County, where inventory fell 3.3% a year ago but rose 8.9% this year.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.