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Apologies for the absence! I’ve been having some computer issues lately, plus I had a few very busy weeks of my other obligations in life. Here’s your NWMLS data!
August market stats were published by the NWMLS on Wednesday. Here’s an excerpt from the NWMLS press release:
Housing market still active, with overall direction “positive””
“The market remains just as intense as July,” observed J. Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO at John L. Scott, Inc. “The best opportunity for homebuyers to find a home will be in the next 60 days,” he suggested, explaining the number of new listings coming on the market is likely to drop by 50 percent each month between November and February. “We expect a repeat of conditions from last winter when every available home that came on the market in areas with a shortage of inventory received quick action.”
Always be closing, Lennox. Always. Be. Closing.
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):
| August 2016 | Number | MOM | YOY | Buyers | Sellers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Listings | 3,418 | -3.8% | -2.1% |  |
 |
| Closed Sales | 2,789 | -0.5% | +8.3% | |
|
| SAAS (?) | 1.21 | -9.4%% | -3.8% | |
|
| Pending Sales | 3,195 | -0.1% | +7.5% | |
|
| Months of Supply | 1.23 | -3.3% | -9.6% | |
|
| Median Price* | $550,000 | -0.9% | +10.0% | |
|
If the last few months had been showing some tiny signs of hope for buyers, August certainly snuffed those out. Both pending and closed sales were way up while listings were down. The only thing that was at least not extremely negative for buyers was that prices were basically flat month-over-month, and up “only” ten percent from a year ago.
Here’s your closed sales yearly comparison chart:
Closed sales fell half a percent from July to August, and were up 8 percent from a year earlier.
Pending sales fell just slightly in August, but were up 8 percent year-over-year.
Here’s the graph of inventory with each year overlaid on the same chart.
We had a tiny year-over-year increase in July, but in August we went back in the red.
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).
Everything’s moving in sellers’ favor, currently.
Here’s the median home price YOY change graph:
The one tiny glimmer of hope for buyers is that home prices “only” rose by ten percent from a year earlier, the smallest gain in about four months.
And lastly, here is the chart comparing King County SFH prices each month for every year back to 1994 (not adjusted for inflation).
August 2016: $550,000
July 2007: $481,000 (previous cycle high)
Here’s this month’s article from the Seattle Times: Seattle home prices slow their climb, but shortage of inspectors raises anxiety