Eastside condo September market report: median sales price down more than $100k from peak

The numbers for how the Eastside condo market did in September are out and, similar to the single-family market, the headline is that median sales price continues to fall. How much? Prices have dropped more than $100k to $543,000 (or 16%) from the peak back in May and June when it topped out at $657,000. Some seasonality is at play here but this is primarily the impact of 7% interest rates and a struggling stock market shrinking the budgets and down payments of many buyers.

Here’s a deep dive into all the numbers:

Sellers put 230 new condo units on the market in September. This is a 19% increase month-over-month from August which is typically the slowest month of the year and there’s usually a post-Labor Day pop in new listings. We’re expecting this to tail off for the rest of the year given the scarcity of buyers.

Speaking of scarce buyers, we only saw 138 units put under contract in September as many buyers have been putting their searches on-hold due to interest rates. Given that there were more listings in September than August, listing agents are going to be advising their sellers to wait until the spring of 2023 to not compete with the sellers currently on the market.

Sellers competing with each other? We ended the month with 290 condos for sale on the Eastside, more than double the number of units put under contract.

As expected, with homes not selling as fast, median days on market increased to 17 days.

For the second month in a row, condos sold below their list price.

Months of supply, a measure of how long it would take to sell all the condos on the market, increased closer to two months. However, even though buyers are scarce, we’re still not at a balanced market which is generally considered to be three months of inventory.