Seattle single-family April market report: median price just shy of $1m

The numbers for what the Seattle single-family and townhome real estate market did in April are out. The big news is that the median price is just shy of $1m at $995,000 up from $965,000 in March and up a lot since a year ago when it was $862,000.

Looking forward, I expect that the median price for May will exceed $1m as May closes are typically made up of deals that went under contract in April. I do expect though that in the back half of the year that the median price will likely decline as a result of seasonality, a declining stock market (so buyer’s down payments have been reduced), and increasing interest rates (so buyers aren’t able to afford as much.)

Here’s a deep dive into all the numbers.

In April we saw 1,019 new listings in Seattle. Less than last April’s 1,253, but last year was a weird year but buyers saw more than a typical April.

So sellers were busy listing places. What about buyers? Remarkably, buyers put fewer homes under contract in April (828) than they did in March (870). Perhaps increasing interest rates really did slow buyer interest.

Even though buyers put fewer homes under contract than I would have expected, they moved quickly, as the median days on market is still just 5 days, the lowest it has ever been.

It isn’t surprising that we saw more homes for sale at the end of April than we did at the end of March given that sellers put on more listings than when pending. This would also signal that we can expect the median days on market to start increasing.

With the inventory of homes for sale growing, and interest potentially waning, it also isn’t surprising that the months of supply, a measure of how long it’d take to sell all the homes for sale, is increasing. But we’re far from a balanced market! (A balanced market is considered to be 3 months, which we haven’t seen in ten years!)