local real estate news, statistics, and commentary without the sales spin.
Six months after home prices in the Seattle area began declining from their July 2007 peak, the annual report from the NWMLS led to a series of amusingly rosy stories in the local press in early 2008. Here’s a typical example from the Seattle Times: ’07 home prices not so bad after all With all…
Let’s take an updated look at how King County’s sales are shifting between the different regions around the county, since geographic shifts can and do affect the median price. In order to explore this concept, we break King County down into three regions, based on the NWMLS-defined “areas”: low end: South County (areas 100-130 &…
I haven’t posted this in a few months, but here’s a chart that I keep of the share of sales in each NWMLS region that were bank-owned. In this chart I’ve grouped zip codes into their approximate NWMLS regions, which break South County into SE King and SW King and display Seattle and N King…
As promised last week, it’s time to check up on median home sale prices broken down by distress status: Non-distressed, bank-owned, and short sales. As of March, the non-distressed median price for King County single family home sales sits at $432,000, up 6.7% from a year earlier and up 1.6% from February. Not much of…
Many articles, papers, and opinion pieces have been written about the detrimental effects that foreclosures can have on a neighborhood. For example, foreclosures in your neighborhood allegedly lower home values, increase crime, and make refinancing harder for homeowners who live nearby. While these studies and stories may be technically accurate, their focus is too narrow…