Tag Archives: housing

Watching trends in the daily market watch of the MLS

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I’ve been keeping an eye on some of the daily trends in the MLS and have noticed for several weeks now that price reductions have now outnumbered new listings on an almost daily basis.  In past years, when almost all houses were selling fairly quickly, we noticed that a small percentage of houses required drops and there was usually a decent number increasing their prices.

Now, it seems that as days on market have increased for many sellers we are finally getting that reality check in place that was needed.  Granted, it does seem that the majority of these price drops are in the outlying areas of our MLS region, but the inner-city urban spots are not without their own new reality.

What I like right now is that we’re getting a nice balance of buyer and seller activity, which, for my own personal business/team, means that we’re likely going to be growing our business over the next year or more with some very nice results.

Sunday Night Stats – Where's the market heading?

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Tonight I want to get an idea of where the market is heading as we go into July, as to prices.  I’m going to bulk together some Zip Codes that I personally follow, to have a large enough area to be meaningful, and yet zero in on local at the same time.

I’m getting the data as I am typing, so I have no idea how the numbers will fall.  We’ll find out together.

First Group: 98033, 98052, 98004, 98005, 98007 and 98008 on a combined basis.

Residential:

In January of 2008: median Asking Price of homes sold was $652,450 and the median Sold Price of those same homes was $625,000.  Median days on market of those sold homes was 68 days and 27.66% sold in 30 days or less.  Median Price Per Square Foot = $267.66

Lets jump to May 2008 and see where the market went by that time from the beginning of the year.  Median Asking Price $643,500.  Median Sold Price $630,000.  Median Days on Market 41 and 38.28% sold in 30 days or less.  Median Price Per Square Foot = $272.72

June 2008: median Asking Price $710,000.  median sold price $690,000. Median days on market 61 and 33.58% sold in 30 days or less.  Median Price Per Square Foot = $277.10

July month to date: Median Asking Price $650,000.  median sold price $639,000.  Median days on market 50 and 30.92% sold in 30 days or less.  Median Price Per Square Foot = $253.57.  Median type of house was a 4 bedroom 2 1/2 bath 2,520 sf home.

Some pretty large homes are in escrow with the median square footage of all homes in escrow at 2,660 and a medain price per square foot of $262.20.  Of course that $262.20 is asking price and not sold price, so prices are trending down from July 1 to present.

Let’s compare that to June of 2007: Median Asking Price $699,000.  Median Sold Price $685,000.  Median days on market 21 and 61.09% of homes sold in 30 days or less.  Median Price Per Square Foot = $292.73.  Median type of house was a 4 bedroom 2 1/2 bath 2,340 sf home.

Interesting July stats so far.  The size of home is larger, the price is lower.  More home for less money as I said last week.  Very Interesting.  But the numbers are so different from May and June. Fewer houses sold quickly.  This data is worth tracking week to week, especially as we head into fall.

Second Group Seattle 98115 and 98103 on a combined basis excluding townhomes (townhomes on Eastside automatically not included for the most part, as on The Eastside townhomes are condos and not residential). Trying to keep this apples to apples.

In January of 2008: median Asking Price of homes sold was $540,000 and the median Sold Price of those same homes was $522,500  Median days on market of those sold homes was 51 days and 29.57% sold in 30 days or less.  Median Price Per Square Foot = $253.64

Lets jump to May 2008 and see where the market went by that time from the beginning of the year.  Median Asking Price $595,000.  Median Sold Price $580,000.  Median Days on Market 20 and 61.97% sold in 30 days or less.  Median Price Per Square Foot = $277.51

June 2008: median Asking Price $550,000.  median sold price $546,000. Median days on market 29 and 54,02% sold in 30 days or less.  Median Price Per Square Foot = $265.04

July month to date: Median Asking Price $567,450.  median sold price $553,450.  Median days on market 23 and 56.90% sold in 30 days or less.  Median Price Per Square Foot = $261.67.  Median type of house was a 3 bedroom 1 3/4 bath 2,115 sf home.

Let’s compare that to June of 2007: Median Asking Price $567,000.  Median Sold Price $569,500.  Median days on market 13 and 75.93% of homes sold in 30 days or less.  Median Price Per Square Foot = $273.79.  Median type of house was a 3 bedroom 1 3/4 bath 2,080 sf home.

The median asking price of all pending sales is $535,000 and the median square footage is 2,085.  Looks like better “deals” are in escrow as we speak at $256.59 MPPSF as to ASKING prices with that number to be pared down further as to sold prices.

Stats not compiled or published by NWMLS. (Required disclosure)


Unless someone asks for the regular weekly King County Stats, I’ll post them over on my blog tomorrow.  It’s been a long, back-breaking day for me.  I was more interested in finding out where the market was heading, than posting overall King County since last Sunday.  But I will post them on my blog tomorrow for the benefit of those who have been charting them on Excel Spreadsheets.

Goodnight!

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You can find the regular weekly stats here.

Join me for a Housing Market Conversation with Lawrence Yun

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I don’t normally cross-post between 4realz.net and Rain City Guide, but tomorrow I’m having a conversation with the Chief Economist of the National Association of REALTORS that I think will interest many people in the Rain City Guide community.   We’re going to be talking about the effect that the recent news associated with the FDIC bailing out IndyMac and the Treasuring providing support to Freddie/Fannie will have on the housing market.

I fully expect this radio show to be interesting, lively and informative and welcome you to join.   As with Rain City Radio, there’ll be an associated chat, and I’ll be picking out questions from the chat room.   Please consider joining us!

A class act… Screen for Success via Rental Housing Association

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I’ve been a big fan of Tamara Simon and her landlord focused classes for some time. She’s been kind enough over the years to provide slimmed down versions of them for my clients and other public classes I’ve sponsored over the past 5 years. So, today I’m giving her a plug for an upcoming class she is doing for RHA where she has been involved in the education committee for years. She’s a top educator in this field and a darn good business woman and property manager.

Anecdotally, in my own RE business I’ve seen an uptick in interest in rental housing purchases (MFH) as prices have softened in that market area (read dumb money leaving the market! :)) so if you’re one of the people looking to own rental property, and especially if you plan on self-managing, this is a class to attend.

Presented by Rental Housing Association of Puget Sound

Screen for Success
Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Speaker: Tamara Simon, owner of Koss Property Management and a licensed Real Estate Broker since 1983.

Location: RHA Conference Room
529 Warren Ave N
Seattle, WA

Time: 3:00pm – 6:00pm

Cost: $45 for members

Come learn practical useful information on how to screen and select the winners from the losers. This class is more than learning to read a credit report. It helps you from knowing how to effectively advertise and show your rental, to the final step of renting it to your new tenant!

Sunday Night Stats

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So far it looks like sellers have a 50% chance of selling vs. last year.  I’ll keep tabs on that as we go.  You were twice as likely to sell your house last year as this year, if you put it on market.  For those of you who think it’s a new year and if it didn’t sell last year it’s time to raise the price…I’d rethink that.  Hopefully low interest rates will improve the stats moving forward.  But I wouldn’t count on the improvement being more than a 66.6% chance of selling.  We’re not talking about selling at the price you want.  We’re talking about selling at all.  Not a good time to be stubborn or overly optimistic.  You have until 4/1/08 to get real with your pricing, or possibly be back on market in 2009.  Stop pricing off what other people are asking.  Stick close to the comps this year.  No more than 5% over the comps is a good rule of thumb.  And don’t skimp on condition.  Condition will be the MOST important factor in 2008, second to not pricing more than 5% over the comps.

King County – Residential

For sale – 8,508 – UP 132

In Escrow – 1,906 – UP 97 – 6.5% of those are contingent contracts

Closed month to date – 439 – UP 203

 

King County – Condo Market

For sale – 2,929 – UP 59

In escrow – 798 – UP 18 – 2.6% of those are contingent contracts

Closed month to date –  144 – UP 75

UP means over last Sunday’s data.  Sales of single family homes kept pretty good pace against homes coming on market this week.  But still running at about half the pace of this time last year.  Let’s assume 1/3 of the buyer pool is gone and that this year’s sales will be 2/3rds of last year in total number of properties sold.  That’s my prediction based on what we’re seeing so far.

“Statistics not compiled or published by NWMLS.

Sunday Night Stats – King County

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An update to the Property Stats for King County from last week:

Residential – Single Family

For sale – 8376 – UP 279

In escrow – 1809 – UP 27

Closed in Janaury so far – 236 -NEW CATEGORY

Condo 

For Sale – 2,870 – UP 125

In escrow – 780 – UP 47

Closed in Jan so far – 69 – NEW CATEGORY

 

Apologies Sandy, no Bellevue Stats today.  I’ve decided to do them in map grid first, and visit some of the new on markets for commentary on how the new is comparing to old listings, and to track if the new listings are selling at a higher rate than current inventory.

Broker’s Opens are on Thursday.  I’ll report afterward.

“Statistics not compiled or published by NWMLS.

Sunday Night Stats

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I know how much I enjoy being able to check RCG for mortgage rates every Friday, thanks to Rhonda.  I’m going to try to do the same for King County Stats on Sunday nights.  Each week I will also highlight a different City or Seattle Zip Code over on my blog.  Tonight I did Kirkland Stats.

I don’t have any commentary for King County Stats tonight.  But there’s plenty of commentary on the Kirkland Stats.  There’s less than a three month supply of inventory for property priced at or below the median price sold in 2007.  There’s a very strong buyer’s market in the high end of $1M or more for condos and $1.5M or more for single family homes.

I’ll try to post the stats here every Friday night for King County, but until we get a couple of months of sales, or the full first quarter of 2008, commentary would simply be conjecture.  I don’t expect the number of homes sold in 2008 to be dramatically different in the first half of 2008, as they were in the last half of 2007. 

I expect that brown slice of December 2007 closings to change a bit each week as agents post late.  There were even a few late postings for November and October since last week.  I’ll try to update and keep the data as accurate as possible.  As always, and by mls rule, I must disclose that I, ARDELL compiled these stats using MLS as a source only.  The data is not compiled by NWMLS.

[photopress:king_county_condos.jpg,full,alignright]

[photopress:kcsfh.jpg,full,alignright]

“Statistics not compiled or published by NWMLS.

How are condo/home sales being financed?

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve been chomping at the bit to know how people who are buying, are financing these purchases.  It’s a monumental task to wade through the detail on this. I probably should have waited a week to get all of the September closings into the mix from the last few days.  But I just couldn’t wait another day!  The suspense was killing me. 

I used all sales from one city on the Eastside, closings from 8/1 through end of September, purchase prices of $400,000 or less.  For confidentiality reasons, since I am revealing mortgage data, I will not name which city I used.  Too easy to trace some of these to the actual purchaser.  I think it will be important to track over the next 6 months, how these percentages change, particularly with regard to FHA and financing for purchases with less than 20% down.

Here are the results of approximately 60 closings. Another 25 or so did not have the data recorded yet as to the mortgage amount and type.  I’ll pick those up in the next analysis.

1) 41.5% were 20% down or more.  Most exactly 20% down. 

2) 25% were 100% financed. Interesting note: 75% of the ones with 100% financing were done as ONE loan.  No second mortgage. So PMI may be back in a big way.  (private mortgage insurance instead of a high rate 2nd mortgage, for the amount financed representing over 80% of the purchase price.)  unless these programs waived PMI.  In any event, one loan and not two, as has been customary for quite some time now.  Big shift.

3) 15% were 10% down.  75% of those were also done as one 90% loan and not two, as in 80% and 10%.  Again…big shift.

4) 10% were 5% down.  Half done as one loan, and the other half done as two loans.

5) 5% were cash purchases.

6) 3.5% were FHA.  The amount financed on these were both 98.4% of sale price, and not 97%.  Important to note, as we tend to say that FHA is 3% down, but it really doesn’t work quite that way in reality.  One was sale price $274,000 with a financed amount $269,766.  The other was sale price $213,000 and financed amount $209,709.  More like 1.6% “down”.  I vaguely remember this from “the old days” but time for everyone to get up to speed on FHA and review some actual closing statements regarding how FHA really works at the end of the day.  While only 2 of 60 were financed using FHA, we should be seeing many more of these.  So we all need to get a lender in to explain FHA financing to the agents, in minute detail, with real closing statements as samples, NOT GFEs!

The under $300,000 market looks good with a 3 month supply in escrow…but something tells me a lot of these won’t close, due to financing, unless a lot of agents get up to speed on how to finance these really, really FAST!  Inventory also looks OK, with less than twice that amount on market, but if we can’t close out those in escrow, there’s not much hope for the existing inventory either, especially if 2/3rds of those in escrow come back on market…which they easily could.  I say at least 1/3 of these will not close.  I’m thinking it will actually be half to 2/3rds that will not close.  Mainly because in escrow represents three times the average per mo. that closed in the last two months!  So my guess is that many of these are in closing date extensions, trying to figure out how to finance.

The key to the next six months will be everyone getting totally up to speed on FHA and FAST!  If the low end can’t move in the first quarter, because agents don’t understand FHA or alternative financing, 2008 is in big trouble.  Old saying: “As goes the low end (in the 1st quarter), so goes the year.”

I’m pushing all of our agents in that direction, to help the industry and consumers.  Focus on the low end and totally “get” how to finance it, for people with little money down.  The better we handle this, the better the market will be.  Every broker should be having seiminars on FHA and minimum down financing, and not waiting to see how the market does without our influence.  The best agents need to go down to the low end price-wise, and focus on helping this market move, and not leaving the cheap seats to those least qualified to juggle the financing piece of this low end market.

Fewer sales failing on financing in the under $400,000 market will be THE key to Seattle’s holding on to its preferred market position nationally.  Don’t let Seattle down.  Roll up your sleeves and get down there where it really matters.  The first time buyer market.  DO NOT leave that market to inexperienced newer agents, without a lot of support.

It’s a darned shame escrow can’t intervene and help with this too.  Not a good time for them to be “neutral parties”.  They are the ones with first hand knowledge of which lenders are closing, and which aren’t.  I’ll give you a few clues:

Bank of America closed about 20% of the zero down, one loan, 100% financing.

Wells Fargo closed about 15% of the zero down, two loan 100% financing.

Countrywide, First Horizon, American Mtg Network, Choice Lending, Gn Mtg LLC, Mortgageit Inc., Planet Financial, Mtg. Network Svcs., Liberty Financial, Rainland – all of these closed one or more those 100% financed in the last 60 days.  FHA – Wells Fargo.

I’m not recommending these lenders, and don’t even know many of them.  Just reporting who seems to be getting the job done.  I’ll try to pick up the last week of September, those not yet updated in the County records data, in a week or so.

Do the Banks Own Seattle?

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[photopress:bank.jpg,full,alignright] The photo is of the Bank I worked in for twenty years. Lots of memories in there and lots of pranks pulled up on that balcony 🙂

I was perusing The Tim’s blog while writing something on my blog earlier today, and ran into the comments regarding King County median income and median home prices, again. I never seem to draw the same conclusions as other people. So I tested my thinking on the subject. From my way of thinking, at least SOME of the people have SOME money to put down when they purchase a house. So the median income is relative to the median mortgage used in the purchase, not the sale price. Isn’t it? So I calculated some random stats you might find interesting to prove that the Banks and Mortgage Companies don’t TOTALLY finance EVERY home purchase.

First I went to the high end and found that Seattle high end homes were financed at only 36% of value. That includes 40% of the randomly chosen properties sold in the last 3 or 4 months that were bought with cash and no mortgage at all. Mercer Island and high end Eastside, like Clyde Hill and Medina, financed at a higher rate of 49.5%. Both represented about $28 million dollars worth of homes purchased. Seattle financed $9,750,000 of their $28,000,000 purchase prices while Mercer Island, Clyde Hill and Medina financed $13,500,000 of their $28,000,000. Still plenty of equity though, so NO, the banks do not own the McMansions 🙂

One thing I found that was surprising to me up in the high end is that one of the most expensive homes sold was sold all cash…not surprising. The occupant at the time of sale was a tenant! That cracked me up. Why would someone rent a Six Million Dollar house? Oh, well…just a random observation.

Then a went down to the $475,000 to $500,000 price range, more in the median range and pulled through separate market segments. South Seattle was 90% financed. North Seattle was 85% financed and Eastside was only 70% financed. Why would the Eastside have more people with more money to put down on their homes? Easy. Cheap condos. The condo market was really cheap two to three years ago, and is still relatively cheap by Seattle standards. So people who bought those instead of renting 3 to 5 years ago had built up enough equity to put an average of 30% down on their single family home purchases.

Just random stats that I found interesting. The banks own 90% of South Seattle, 85% of North Seattle, 70% of Eastside and only 35%-50% of the most expensive homes. At least the ones that everyone who is reading King County median income/median home price stats are talking about, those bought recently.

Would you lie for God?

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Yesterday’s theme was PreFab, today I’m back to simply providing links to 10 interesting real estate conversations…

  1. Prosper is an online marketplace for people to lend money to other people. Shaun has been playing with Prosper and has some interesting observations.
  2. I don’t agree with Mark’s conclusions, but I think he makes an interesting case that a good time to “upgrade” is in a down market. (via Steph)
  3. For those looking to improve things before they sell, Rory provides some great home improvement links.
  4. If you are going to be upgrading (up market or down), you’d be wise to follow Noah’s advice and sell first!
  5. Will the number of sold homes rise in August as Bill suggests? But I sincerely doubt it.
  6. Todd, since you asked… My take is that if you are going to change domains, you want to do it sooner than later. You’ve still got lots and lots of growth left in your site, but the longer you wait, the harder it will get. Even better, consider getting a hosted version of WordPress that you can put under your own domain. Many hosts have made it so that there is a “one button” install of wordpress and they even manage the upgrades on the backend. (WordPress.org has a list of their “preferred” hosts.) In the long run, this will definitely give you the most flexibility with things like video/podcasts and stat tracking.
  7. Jim’s thinking he wants a sideblog plugin… I’m thinking just take notes and when you get to 10, hit publish. Have you noticed? 🙂
  8. Fran is good for providing a useful tip every few days… Today it is about the importance of the buyer walkthrough.
  9. Jay Thompson (of AZ) gives us a “pick of the week” that includes one hell of a house!
  10. Larry Cragun tells us to watch out for real estate transactions involving religious institutions. Some people are more than happy to lie for God.

I’m actually shocked at the number of emails these lists have generated. Don’t people know I have a job? 😉