Homes in Bellevue area "expensive" neighborhoods

Bellevue_Dad

I've been looking through redfin at some of the high end neighborhoods in the Bellevue area - Medina, Clyde Hill, Lakemont, etc. According to the stats and trends graphs on redfin, all of them display the same behavior: over the last year and half, the number of homes for sale has tripled or even quadrupled, but the average listing price per square foot hasn't budged.

See Clyde Hill for example:




Is this behavior typical of all neighborhoods? Or do the high end sellers typically not need to sell, so they can sit on their houses forever? (Or perhaps the small sample size in these neighborhoods distorts the stats?)

- Bellevue Dad

rose-colored-coolaid

My guess is it's a superiority complex. Medina, etc is such a desirable area that there's no way prices are declining here.

Add in the fact that even in good markets higher priced homes tend to sell slower, and perhaps these sellers do not believe it's time to panic yet.

Markor

In my old fairly-high-end Eastside neighborhood with ~80 homes, there are now 7 houses for sale at peak 2006 prices, some for 6 months now. I don't understand it either.

Ubersalad

Markor wrote:

In my old fairly-high-end Eastside neighborhood with ~80 homes, there are now 7 houses for sale at peak 2006 prices, some for 6 months now. I don't understand it either.

Those homes are targeting the rich GOPs that live amongst us.

deejayoh

I think you are missing something, which is that the range on the chart makes it hard to pick up the magnitude of the price drop that has been seen Clyde Hill. Eyeballing it, the $/sqft has dropped from ~$500 to just over $400 since July, and from $600 since peaking last fall.

33% off in a year, 20% off in just the last 4 months. What part of that is "not budging"?

Of course I am looking at sold prices - asking price trends don't mean much in a changing market.

check the Zillow neighborhood report for Medina - off 10% in the last year

http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/WA-Medina-home-value

Charles Dean

Only those who really need to sell will sell. It's a case of not being realistic about what house prices really are.

If someone needs to sell, they'll cut. If they don't, they'll sit sit sit. Then eventually come off the market, or rent it out.

Bellevue_Dad

deejayoh wrote:

I think you are missing something, which is that the range on the chart makes it hard to pick up the magnitude of the price drop that has been seen Clyde Hill. Eyeballing it, the $/sqft has dropped from ~$500 to just over $400 since July, and from $600 since peaking last fall.

33% off in a year, 20% off in just the last 4 months. What part of that is "not budging"?

Of course I am looking at sold prices - asking price trends don't mean much in a changing market.

check the Zillow neighborhood report for Medina - off 10% in the last year

http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/WA-Medina-home-value

True - but I was posting about the listing prices not budging, which is also pretty clear in the graphs (in fact, in Clyde Hill, listing price per sq ft is just about at its peak over the last 18 months)... to your point, it is even more stark to see listing prices stay stable when selling prices are dropping as well as when inventory is going straight up!

When will the listing prices drop too? They have to, right?

- Bellevue Dad