local real estate news, statistics, and commentary without the sales spin.
July market stats have been published by the NWMLS. Let’s dive into the numbers for July.
Prices keep climbing as listings are still scarce. What more is there to say? So far this year we haven’t seen any movement in the trends that point to some kind of change coming soon in the market.
Let’s take a look at regular monthly “preview” charts. Now that July is in the past let’s take a look at the local housing market stats for the month. Short story: Inventory edged up again but is still at historic lows. Sales are slipping slightly year-over-year but are still quite strong. Here’s the snapshot of…
Redfin’s long-awaited IPO went well for the Seattle-based technology-powered real estate brokerage this morning. They priced the IPO at $15 per share last night, raising $138 million for the company. When shares started trading on the open market this morning under the ticker symbol RDFN they opened at $19.56.
Let’s have a look at the latest data from the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. According to March data that was released this morning, Seattle-area home prices were:
Up 1.8 percent April to May
Up 13.3 percent year-over-year.
Up 17.7 percent from the July 2007 peak
Over the same period last year prices were up 1.4 percent month-over-month and year-over-year prices were up 10.7 percent.
Home price growth in Seattle as measured by Case-Shiller show no signs of slowing. Seattle leads the nation yet again in month-over-month and year-over-year home price growth. Thanks, Amazon.
By request, here are a few alternative takes on recent home listing activity. Since one of the biggest issues driving the current crazy market is a lack of enough home listings, we can get an idea of whether or not there is any relief on the horizon for buyers by looking at listing activity.
First up, here’s a chart I just created: New listing absorption. This is a simple look at the ratio of pending sales to new listings. If more homes are going pending in a month than there are being listed, this ratio goes above 100 percent, which is obviously not great for buyers.
…what’s interesting to me about this chart is that just last December we saw new listing absorption an all-time high of 159%, while as of June it has fallen to almost the lowest level since the market bottomed out in 2011. However, this is obviously a very seasonal metric, and the low point for the year usually comes in June or July, so it would not be surprising if this is the lowest level we see this year.