Let’s take a look at regular monthly “preview” charts. Now that June is in the past let’s take a look at the local housing market stats for the month. Short story: Inventory bumped up slightly, but is still in the gutter. Sales are still very strong.
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:
Listings are still very scarce, but at least they’ve bumped up quite a bit from the all-time low. Sales are strong, and hit their highest point since sometime before 2009 in Snohomish County.
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 ten percent between May and June (a year ago they rose 19 percent over the same period), and were down two percent 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 increased eleven percent month-over-month (vs. an eight percent increase in the same period last year) and were up six percent from June 2016.
Next, here’s Notices of Trustee Sale, which are an indication of the number of homes currently in the foreclosure process:
Foreclosure notices in King County were down 34 percent from a year ago and Snohomish County foreclosure notices were down 39 percent from last year. At some point soon we’ll stop seeing big year-over-year declines, as the number of foreclosures levels off at the bottom.
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 were down 55 percent from a year ago.
Lastly, here’s an update of the inventory charts, updated with previous months’ inventory data from the NWMLS.
Inventory rose 22 percent between May and June in King County, but was still down 17 percent from a year earlier.
In Snohomish County it was a similar story: Listings up 21 percent month-over-month but down 11 percent year-over-year.
In both counties the month-over-month increase in listings for June was larger than it was over the same period a year ago.
Note that most of the charts above 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.
Stay tuned later this month a for more detailed look at each of these metrics as the “official” data is released from various sources.
