Tag: sales

December Stats Preview: For-sale inventory hit an all-time low

Posted on by The Tim

With the close of December, all of 2017 is now in the books. Today we’ll look at our regular monthly “preview” charts, and the rest of this month we’ll update as many of our stats as possible to look at how the whole of 2017 played out.

Short story for December: Inventory hit a new all-time low point in both counties. Foreclosures are still basically zero, and sales were surprisingly strong given how low the inventory is.

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…

September Stats Preview: The Last Gasp of Inventory in 2017

Posted on by The Tim

Let’s take a look at regular monthly “preview” charts. Now that September is in the past let’s take a look at the local housing market stats for the month. Short story: Inventory hit the highest point since a year ago in King County and were just slightly below last month’s high in Snohomish. Sales are still strong, and foreclosures are nearly non-existent.

Sadly I have nothing particularly new or interesting to share about what happened in the market in September. It’s more of the same cruddy market for buyers: Listings are scarce and sales are still strong…

King Co. SFH New Listing Absorption Rate

New Listing Absorption Dropping Rapidly From December High

Posted on by The Tim

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.

June Stats Preview: Listings Inch Up, Sales Still Strong

Posted on by The Tim

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.

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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.