December market stats were published by the NWMLS today. You can find their press release in its typical location, which we’ll get into tomorrow. For now, here are our monthly stats.
NWMLS monthly reports include an undisclosed and varying number of
sales from previous months in their pending and closed sales statistics.
Here’s your King County SFH summary, with the arrows to show whether the year-over-year direction of each indicator is favorable or unfavorable news for buyers and sellers (green = favorable, red = unfavorable):
| December 2014 | Number | MOM | YOY | Buyers | Sellers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Listings | 2,758 | -24.6% | -11.8% |  |
 |
| Closed Sales | 1,982 | +6.0% | +10.5% | |
|
| SAAS (?) | 1.10 | +9.9% | -10.1% | |
|
| Pending Sales | 1,669 | -21.6% | 9.2% | |
|
| Months of Supply | 1.39 | -28.9% | -20.2% | |
|
| Median Price* | $440,000 | 0.0% | +4.8% | |
|
Feel free to download the updated Seattle Bubble Spreadsheet (Excel 2003 format), but keep in mind the caution above.
Those are some pretty huge year-over-year drops for listings and months of supply, especially considering that both of those numbers were increasing November of last year through August of this year.
Closed sales have typically seen a slight decline between November and December over the last decade or so, but not this year.
Here’s your closed sales yearly comparison chart:
Closed sales rose 6 percent from the previous month, and came in 10 percent above last year’s level.
Here’s the graph of inventory with each year overlaid on the same chart.
Inventory increased the velocity of its seasonal slide as the year closed, posting the biggest month-over-month decrease on record. The decline was large enough that it almost makes me wonder whether the NWMLS did some sort of unusual “house cleaning” operation to purge listings..
Here’s the supply/demand YOY graph. “Demand” in this chart is represented by closed sales, which have had a consistent definition throughout the decade (unlike pending sales from NWMLS).
Both supply and demand are took a strong move in sellers’ favor in December, with increasing sales and decreasing listings.
Here’s the median home price YOY change graph:
With flat prices between November and December compared to last year’s slight increase over the same period, the year-over-year change fell a bit from November to December.
And lastly, here is the chart comparing King County SFH prices each month for every year back to 1994 (not adjusted for inflation).
Home prices have still been basically flat since May.
December 2014: $440,000
October 2006: $440,000
I haven’t seen articles posted on the Seattle Times and P-I yet, but I’ll update this post when they’re published.
Here are the articles from the Seattle Times and P-I:
Seattle Times: Slowdown in 2014 home sales didn’t reduce prices
Seattle P-I: Supply of homes for sale falls even more
Check back tomorrow for the full reporting roundup.