Eastside condo August market report: slowing pace continued except for pending sales
We’re a little late on the how the numbers did in August for the Eastside condo market (excluding new construction) but better late than never! The broader theme is that the market continued to slow across all measures except for pending sales. More supply, softening prices – it could be a good time to be a buyer despite interest rates. Let’s dive in!
Median sales price dropped only slightly from $570,000 in July to $566,000 in August. Sellers were likely thrilled by that given the big drop from June to July. We’re still above the low point of the year which was January. Median price per square foot also continued its downward trend after peaking in March. Dropping to $515 per square foot (4% m-o-m) in August, that was also nearly back to low point of $501 in January.
August is usually one of the slowest month of the year so it’s no surprise that new listings were down. Only 196 new units were put on the market last month.
Despite August being one of the slowest months of the year, pending sales were up for the second month in a row. Buyers put 170 units under contract – is a return to the office finally happening?
As such, median days on market saw it’s first sharp increase in a long time (mid-pandemic days), jumping up to 10 days on market.
Percent of list price dropped below 100% for the first time this year. This is a measure of how competitive it is to be a buyer. At 98% of list price, buyers were able to negotiate concessions and price reductions from sellers last month. We’ll likely see more of that in the next market report.
We ended the month of August with 256 homes for sale, a slight drop from July.
The months of supply, a measure of how long it’d take to sell all the condos for sale, declined slightly in August. We’re still hovering around 1.5 months of inventory and a balanced market is generally thought to be about 3 months of inventory.
