Flurry of offers?

pumpkin

Hi everyone- I'm wondering if you all noticed what seems to be a flurry of houses going STI the last four weeks? I've been noticing houses suddenly going STI that had been on a while before. I'm looking in-city north of the cut, 98103, 98105, 98115, etc (yes, I'm Jess on the blog, had a brain fart when I signed up with a different name on the forum). Could this be in relation to interest rate drops, new consumer confidence (I doubt that), the market, the sun/moon/stars, plate shifts under the Pacific? I know that all we can do is offer theories, but I'm curious what you all think.

Thanks! :?

Markor

My theory: In many buyers' minds the Spring market really starts on Jan. 2nd. The early birds are picking over the good deals now, while sellers are weary and before their Spring competition hits. Lower interest rates are helping.

deejayoh

I think you are dealing with small sample sizes.

The front page of Estately shows you every day how many listings have been added, and how many were sold that day. I have yet to see a day where the new listings were not 6-8x the sold volume.

Seems a pretty good gauge of the market.

pumpkin

Thanks for mentioning Estately -- I had never really looked at it before. Is there a way to get those "new listing/sold today" figures for specific areas? Knowing that Bothell or Kent's cups runneth over with houses on the market doesn't really help those of us concentrating on close-in neighborhoods. Thanks again!

deejayoh

pumpkin wrote:

Thanks for mentioning Estately -- I had never really looked at it before. Is there a way to get those "new listing/sold today" figures for specific areas? Knowing that Bothell or Kent's cups runneth over with houses on the market doesn't really help those of us concentrating on close-in neighborhoods. Thanks again!

Two options I can think of for you
1) you can set up a custom search on a windermere.com which allows you to have an RSS feed of new listings and also gives you the ability to track inventory levels. However, this takes a little effort and it does not show sales volume
2) If you are serious about buying, you can subscribe to report from altos at the zip code level that will show listings, sales, trends for quartiles, etc. Not sure what they charge, but I know they have options for buyers that I think are reasonable.