Home Prices in 98103 – There’s hardly a person in the industry, or who is thinking about buying and/or selling property in King County, who isn’t asking the question: “Where are home prices right NOW?” There’s a lot of speculation about the impact of the end of the Tax Credit on home prices. But what we need are real facts in real time.

We also need to know if there are any indicators, be that a Zillow Zestimate or a Tax Assessed Value or other valuation tool, that will help the general public know within a reasonable degree of certainty if a home is “priced well”.

This will be a series of posts in an effort to answer that question. The stats will be for closed sales within the last 30 days, so the number of properties will differ by the volume of sales in each given category.

In the Chart Below we are looking at:

Sales closed within the last 30 days – currently recorded as such in the mls
Type of Property is “Townhome”.
Area is Zip Code 98103 Specific neighborhoods per the listings are Green Lake, Fremont, Phinney, Greenwood. (Note “Green Lake” is a loose term, as the townhomes shown as Green Lake are actually further north into Licton Springs/Northgate in this sampling)

Are properties selling for closer to the Zillow Zestimate? The current Tax Assessed Value OR the previous year tax assessed value? Maybe it’s the Redfin AVM price or eappraisal? If any are close enough to be considered “right”, they are noted in blue.

We will study all info available to the public and see if we can come to any conclusions regarding accuracy, as compared to what the home actually sold for, within the last 30 days.

This is a modest sampling, and we will need to review many more statistics in different places geographically and different styles of property to form any real conclusions.

Surprises? I was surprised that the one Bank-Owned sale was not more of a screaming deal (notes as B/O in the right margin). From my persepective, I am not necessarily looking for who is “right” as much as I am looking for a source that buyers may have decided is most credible when making an offer. I will need to do at least a dozen of these posts to form any real conclusions on that.

(required disclosure: The stats in this post and in the graph are not published, verified or compiled by The Nortwest Multiple Listing Service.)