Now that November 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:
As they do every November, both listings and sales continued to drop. However, year-over-year, sales dipped into the red for the first time in over two years, and inventory continued to rise. Foreclosure notices were down again from a year ago.
Next, let’s look at total home sales as measured by the number of “Warranty Deeds” filed with King County:
Sales in King County fell 22.8% from October to November, and were down 4.1% year-over-year, the first year-over-year sales dip we’ve seen since early 2011.
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 19.2% month-over-month and were down 5.6% from November 2012.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Foreclosures in both counties dropped month-over-month and year-over-year. King was down 46.6% from last year, and Snohomish fell 43.0%.
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 dropped by nearly a third from October, and were down 19.4% from a year earlier.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
Same trend as last month with inventory continuing its seasonal decline while remaining above last year’s level.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.