With the last month of 2013 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:
Following the typical seasonal trend, both listings and sales continued to drop in December. However, year-over-year, the picture continues to get better for buyers as sales in King County were down 8 percent, while listings were up 8 percent. Similar story in Snohomish, where sales were down 9 percent and listings up 35 percent. Foreclosure notices were down again from a year ago in both counties.
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 10.0% from November to December (in 2012 they rose 14.8% over the same period), and were down 8.1% year-over-year.
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 11.5% month-over-month and were down 8.6% from December 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 were down over 50 percent from a year ago. Month-over-month foreclosures increased in King and fell in Snohomish. King was down 51.5% from last year, and Snohomish fell 56.3%.
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 between November and December, but were down 42.8% from a year earlier.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with the inventory data from the NWMLS.
Same trend as the last two months as inventory continues 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.