Eastside condo June market report: median price & new listings increase but pending sales decline

The numbers for how the Eastside condo market did in June are out. Unlike the single-family market, median sales price (excluding new construction) for condos increased in June to a new high of $667,500. To be honest, this surprised me after median price was relatively flat in May and interest rates were rising. I expected this number to drop as June was also the biggest month for new listings on the year.

Looking ahead, I’m expecting median price to drop in July. June saw 293 new listings but over the last 9 years, July has usually been the month with the most inventory hitting the market. This is good news for buyers as pending sales dropped dramatically from May (223) to June (158). With fewer buyers on the market, we’ll see much less competition and this should cause prices to decline.

Also declining, median price per square foot fell to $555. As a buyer, I’d be encouraged by this despite median sales price increasing. If price per square foot is trending downward, you’re buying a larger condo. In June, a $667,500 condo works out to 1,202 square feet versus the same priced condo in March , when price per square foot peaked, was 1,110 square feet. And any condo owner will tell you that an extra 100 square feet is huge!

The other signs of a white hot sellers market continue to decline. Median days on market remains at 5 days but I expect we’ll see this increase over the next couple of months as buyers continue to re-evaluate the new normal of higher interest rates and being more patient for prices to decline.

The marker that will make buyers the most excited is that homes were typically selling at list price as indicated by the median percent over list price. This measures competition for the same listing so, on the flip side, sellers will be disappointed to see this drop dramatically. Make sure your agents are pricing correctly for today’s market and not the market from a few months ago!

With 293 listings in June and only 158 under contract, it’s no surprise that we ended the month with more condos still for sale since October of 2020 when everyone in the region was trying to sell a condo at the height of the pandemic.

With more homes left for sale at the end of the month, it shouldn’t be a surprise that months of supply, a measure of how long it’d take to sell all the condos for sale, continues to increase. We’re just over one month of inventory now which is great but still a far cry from a balanced market. A balanced market is generally considered to be 3 months of supply. The last time we saw a balanced market for condos on the Eastside was September of 2012!