Seattle weekly wrap-up: prices up 8% year-to-date!
The big news last week is that the numbers for April are out! The Seattle Times headline is that the Seattle-area housing market kicks off spring season with a whimper, which is true, activity and prices are both down compared to last year. But when we look at what prices are doing since the beginning of the year, the median price for a single-family home in Seattle is up 8% from January, and on the Eastside they’re up 18%! Why are prices up with mortgage rates in the mid-6%s? The likely reason is that the demand for homes for sale is exceeding the number for sale, and there just aren’t that many for sale right now (sellers don’t want to lose a low mortgage rate when they sell), but as you’ll read below that is slowly changing so we expect that prices will increase, just more slowly.
Now what happened with Seattle real estate last week?
Sellers put 295 new listings on the market, up 6.5%, but below the 302 we saw two weeks ago. While buyers put 223 homes under contract, down 9% week-over-week.
With more new listings hitting the market each week than are going pending, inventory is up four weeks in a row.
Last week we were excited to show the Mari sales gallery to a number of clients helping five clients reserve condos (in other condo news, Graystone dramatically cut their prices). We were also excited to hand off the keys to two buyers who found us via our Youtube channel – S&K closed on their first home in Hawthorne Hills beating out three higher-priced offers, and we negotiated a 7% off the price of a condo at Belltown Towers for M&J.
What caught our eye? An updated midcentury on Mercer for $2.4m and another for $3.6m. Oh, and a loft in Madison Park is already pending after just 3 days.
Matt
P.S. Our next home-buying class is in-person! RSVP here. (We have a Zoom option too.)
