Seattle weekly wrap-up: mortgage rates, new listings, and homes under contract all down
The big news this week is that the 30-year fixed mortgage rate has dropped to 5.13% (down from a recent high of 6.28% in June) even though the Fed raised its rate 0.75 points. Here’s a deep dive if you want to understand why.
Meanwhile, in Seattle, sellers and listing agents are hitting the brakes on listing homes, with new listings down 15% week-over-week to 281. This is very typical for this time of year.
Buyers are slowing down too, putting just 218 homes under contract last week. Not surprisingly, everyone would rather enjoy summer.
In other news, Bosa (the developer of One88 and Insignia) hit the brakes on Civic Square, a 400-unit downtown condo project citing rising costs and a weak market, and Concord Pacific’s Seattle House, a 1,130-unit building, will now be apartments and not condos.
With just 281 new listings there was a shocking number of interesting listings, reinforcing, that it is now better to be a buyer than a seller. Our faves are a $5.3m contemporary in Madison Park, a new construction home in View Ridge (we toured it, it is great!), a custom home in Green Lake, a remodel by CAST Architecture and a 70s contemporary in Laurelhurst by Jane Hastings.
Midcentury fans can beat the heat with this west-facing waterfront one in Bellevue or with this Federal Way one with a pool, or with a waterfront beach house on Lopez. For those with more modest budgets, we also liked this $1.8m one in Madison Park, one for $1.53m in Leschi, $1m in Meadowbrook, or just $700k in Shoreline.
Looking for something unusual? Here’s a church atop Queen Anne. Or how about this waterfront home for $30k on Whidbey with the catch that you need to move it 8 feet?
Our next home buying class is on August 17th at 4 pm, RSVP.
