With the month of September now 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 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: As it does every year, King County inventory dropped in October, but not by anywhere near as much as it did last year, thus moving year-over-year inventory into the black. Foreclosure notices were down big from a year ago, and sales were up both month-over-month and year-over-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 increased 1.4% from September to October, and were up 13.1% year-over-year, the smallest year-over-year sales increase we’ve seen in over a year and a half.
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 0.2% month-over-month and were up 18.2% from October 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 County fell between September and October, and were down 43% from a year ago. Foreclosures in Snohomish inched up just slightly from September, but were still down 41% from a year earlier.
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 bumped back up above September’s level but still came in at the second-lowest point of the year. Last year at this time Trustee Deeds fell dramatically, so year-over-year they are currently up.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
It took about a month longer than I expected, but it looks like we will definitely close out 2013 with year-over-year inventory gains in King County. To give you an idea of how quickly the inventory situation is improving, we’ve gone from -45% year-over-year in January to -10% in July, to +7% in October. Looks like next year should have a lot better selection for buyers.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.