Now that the month of August is in the rear view mirror, 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 fifth consecutive month, while sales slipped slightly month-over-month. Foreclosure notices bumped up a bit between July and August, but by far less than they did over the same period last year.
Next, let’s look at total home sales as measured by the number of “Warranty Deeds” filed with King County:
Sales in King County decreased 4.4% from July to August, and were up 20.2% year-over-year, quite a bit smaller than last month’s 38.6% year-over-year gain.
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 4.1% month-over-month and were up 7.7% from August 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 rose between July and August, but since the increase was much smaller than it was over the same period last year, the year-over-year decline increased in magnitude. King County came in 44.9% below last year’s level, while Snohomish was 52.0% under August 2012.
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 fell slightly from a month ago, and were up just 23.3% from a year earlier—the smallest gain since December.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
We are now at five months of increases in a row, and it looks like Snohomish County actually broke into the black for the first time since December 2010. Last year King County inventory rose 0.7% between July and August. This year it gained 6.8% over the same period. Similar story in Snohomish County, where inventory rose 2.3% a year ago and rose 5.2% 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.