Seattle weekly wrap-up: buyers get more rate relief
Buyers’ Christmas wish of lower mortgage rates came early! We ended the week with the 30-year fixed at 6.35% while the week before ended at 6.64%. This is double what rates were at the beginning of the year but better than the high of 7.37% in October. The other mortgage news is that the conforming loan limit for King County increased to $977,500.
Listings bounced back after the Thanksgiving break with buyers seeing 120 new listings. This was up 75% week-over-week, but don’t be fooled, it was the second slowest week of the year for new listings after Thanksgiving week. Expect 4 to 5 more slow weeks due to the holidays before the rate of new listings improves.
As for buyer activity, buyers put just 103 homes under contract, basically tieing the slowest week of the year (which was the first week of the year.) It will be interesting to see how much bump we see this coming week with lower rates (likely just a small one given seasonality.) Speaking just for ourselves, we had four clients offer on homes this weekend. I can’t remember the last time we were this busy! We were also busy this week giving keys to a buyer we negotiated a big discount for and closed a listing for a seller with minimal discounts.
Want to be in a new home by Christmas? We have a lender who can close in 10 days! Just hit reply and we’ll introduce you.
