local real estate news, statistics, and commentary without the sales spin.
County-wide statistics.
With the dramatic increase in mortgage interest rates that we’ve seen over the last few weeks, I thought that it now would be a good time to take another look at what the affordability numbers look like. As a reminder, the affordability index is based on three factors: median single-family home price as reported by…
Time to take look at what share of the monthly sales are being distressed sales—bank-owned and short sales. In June 2012 9.4% of the sales of single-family homes in King County were bank-owned. In June 2013 that number was just 5.7%. We’ve now matched the low of 5.7% set in November. Short sales bounched back…
June market stats were published by the NWMLS this afternoon. Here’s a snippet from their press release: Northwest MLS brokers say market stays "extremely competitive;" some industry experts believe "housing affordability may never be better". Current market conditions — including rising mortgage rates, tight inventory and declining unemployment — are driving even more buyers into…
The relatively large gains we’ve seen in active listings over the last few months have reversed a nearly three-year trend of ever-shrinking inventory. I thought would be interesting to see how long it will take us to get back to a respectable level. Here’s what inventory will look like if the April to June trend…
Now that the month of June 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,…