Seattle single-family February market report: median price sets new high at $900,000

The numbers for what the Seattle single-family and townhome real estate market did in February are out.

The big news is that the median price set a new high at $900,000. The previous high was $893,500 in May of last year (so most likely based on homes that went under contract in April) but then declined to $775,000 in January (so homes that went under contract in December), so this was quite the jump! But not surprising given the bidding wars we were seeing in January. I would wager that the median price will increase from here for a few months, likely hitting $1m, before declining in the back half of the year like it typically does.

Median price per square foot, has also been on a tear:

Buyers put 695 homes under contract in February, less than last year’s 740, but more than 2020 (617) and 2019 (532). It sure felt buyers would have put more homes under contract this February, had there been more homes for sale (and see the next chart, there were a lot of new listings).

We saw 790 new listings in February, more than February 2021’s 733 and certainly more than a “typical” February when we usually see 600 or so.

Those new homes didn’t last long, the median days on market dropped to an all-time low of 5 days.

At the end of February there were 269 homes for sale. Up a bit from the December and January lows, but not enough to satisfy buyers.

Months of supply is a measure of how long it’d take to sell all the homes for sale. It is up a little from its all time low – in theory it’d take just 9 days for all the homes in Seattle to sell if nothing new hit the market and sellers had reasonable prices.