October Condo Market Report: Sales Down, Listings Down

Wow, our first October condo market report since March! Guess I didn’t want to see how much my real estate has depreciated.

Let’s dive into the condo numbers for the city of Seattle: the median condo price increased 6.0% to $243,250, sales were down 9.0% to 142 sales and inventory decreased 12.7% to 842 condos on the market at the end of the month.

Median Sale Price Increased 6%

The median price for condos in Seattle was $243,250 in October, up 6.0% from $229,475 in September. Year-over-year median price is down 6.4% as at this time last year it was $260,000. The median sale price for $/sq. ft. stayed the same at $285 but was down 15.7% from last October. I’m a little surprised to see how much prices have fallen over the last year.

Sales Down 9.0%

There was 142 sales in October, down 9% from 156 sales in September. Last October there was 122 sales. When we look at the number of business days in October compared to September and take that into account, sales were down 4.6%.

Fewer Condos For Sale

On the last day of October there were 842 condos for sale. On the last day of September there were 964. This is a 12.7% decline. Last October there were 1,246 condos for sale, there are way fewer for sale now.

Months of Supply Dwindling

We’ve also seen the sale-to-list tick up slightly to 96.4%, continuing its trend upward over the past year. Deals are likely harder to get because sellers are more realistic when they put their place on the market. (It was 95.4% in September and 94.6% a year ago.)

Data by Neighborhood

Wondering what your neighborhood or townhomes are doing? Check out Redfin’s spreadsheet with all the details. For many neighborhoods you’ll find 12 months worth of data.

What Does the Future Hold?

As we head into the holidays I think we’ll see the number of homes for sale continue to decline, as well the number of sales, keeping months of supply low. I suspect prices will continue to be soft. The good news for buyers are that mortgage rates at or below 4% for third consecutive week and there are a number of condos under $200k that you could rent out and cash flow (be sure to get one with parking).

What Do You Think?

Have you been shopping for a condo recently? What do you think of what’s available for sale? Made any offers? How did those go?

Redfin has a spreadsheet available if you want to dig into the data for for a neighborhood or city not included here (or for single-family home and townhouse data.) You can also checkout the spreadsheet I have for putting the graphs together.

Disclaimer: I work at Redfin and run the marketing team. This is one of the projects my team works on.