Seattle single-family January market report: median price nearly $120k off its peak

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

The biggest surprise is that the median home price dropped nearly $50k to $775,000, just $5k above January 2021 and well off the May 2022 high of $893,500. That the median price dropped isn’t necessarily a surprise as the January median price is based on listings going under contract in December, and December is a slow time of the year. But the magnitude of the drop is a surprise and a good reminder that pricing, in Seattle, typically drives up in the first half of the year, and drops in the back half – I expect the same thing to happen this year.

Surprisingly the median price is near an all-time high. Most be smaller homes that are selling.

Buyers put 483 homes under contract in January. This is less than last January when 679 were put under contract. The difference is likely explained by the snow that pushed listings out and low inventory. There are certainly plenty of eager buyers out there, just not enough homes.

Median days on market stayed flat at 7 days.

We saw 507 new listings in January. Less than January last year when we saw 717, but last year was a weird year. So ignoring that, January was likely a little below average. This of course lead to crazy bidding wars in January as there were a ton of eager buyers.

At the end of January there were 198 homes for sale, the lowest we’ve ever seen.

Months of supply is a measure of how long it’d take to sell all the homes for sale. It is now at an all time low – in theory it’d take just 6 days for all the homes in Seattle to sell if nothing new hit the market and sellers had reasonable prices.