King County Home Prices Grow $100,000 In A Year For First Time; West Bellevue Jumps 41 Percent

The median King County home price has grown more than $100,000 in just a year.

Following up on a record-breaking spring, the county’s real-estate market had its hottest month of July since such monthly records began in 2000, with prices rising 18.6 percent from a year ago.

The new median price is $658,000, or $103,000 more than last July, according to monthly data released Monday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Just a down payment on the median house costs about $20,000 more than a year ago. So first-time buyers who didn’t save up that much in the past year are further from buying a house today than they were a year ago.

George Moorhead of Bentley Properties in Bothell said his office is working with 60 first-time homebuyers right now — and it’s been a struggle to find something for any of them.

“First-time homebuyers are really feeling the pinch. Some of them have been looking for a home for almost two years,” Moorhead said. “They have to keep going further and further out just to find something that’s worthwhile. It’s just slim pickings out there.”

Trade-up buyers are dealing with a similar crunch. One-third of homes across the region sold for at least $1 million this past month, according to John L. Scott Real Estate.

“Anything between $900,000 and $1.3 million, you’ll still find yourself in a multiple-offer situation — six to 10 offers,” said Lori Holden Scott, a John L. Scott broker who deals with pricier homes.

While prices have been going up for so long that increases might seem inevitable, this month’s surge is actually a bit unusual.

Median prices in Seattle ($749,000) and the Eastside ($860,000) did dip slightly from June’s record highs. Both were still up about 15 percent from a year prior.

West Bellevue had the county’s biggest price jump — up 41 percent from a year ago, to a new median price of $2.3 million, the priciest region in the county. Areas that saw prices zoom up more than 20 percent in the past year include West Seattle, Sodo/Beacon Hill, Central Seattle/Capitol Hill, Shoreline, East Bellevue and Redmond.

Countywide, the annual price increase in July was the largest ever in terms of absolute numbers. But the 18.6 percent growth was a bit slower than in some previous months.

“I don’t think anything is slowing down,” said Laurie Way, a managing broker at Coldwell Banker Bain in Seattle.

Both Moorhead and Way think the market has to cool a bit eventually; it’s just unclear how long that will take.

The very-long-running trend of declining inventory continues, as fewer people put homes up for sale while those properties that do hit the market get snatched up in about a week, on average.

And Moorhead said more repeat buyers are choosing to rent out their old homes, banking on getting steady rental income while knowing they could sell the home later — perhaps at an even higher price. He said his last four homebuyers all rented out their old homes.

The number of homes for sale across King County dropped 18 percent from a year ago and is at the lowest point on record for this time of year. Sales were down slightly, as well.

One bright spot for buyers: Condos across the county cost a median 5.7 percent more than a year ago, the second-slowest growth in the past two years.

Downtown Seattle, where condos are the only homebuying option, actually saw prices drop a tick from a year ago. Enumclaw was the only place where single-family-home prices decreased.

Elsewhere, Snohomish County surged to a record median price of $453,000, growing 11.9 percent from a year ago.

Both Pierce and Kitsap counties dipped a bit compared with last month’s record prices, but they still were up significantly from a year ago. Pierce’s median price is $312,000, up 9.6 percent from a year ago, while Kitsap reached $322,000, an extra 11 percent from this past year.

~Mike Rosenberg, Seattle Times

Another Record Month for the East Side Market

It was another month of record-setting home prices in June as the area yet again took the prize for the hottest real estate market in the country. In a bright spot for buyers, the number of new listings added in June was the highest total for any single month since May 2008. While inventory is still low, the pace of sales is slowing and the number of multiple offers are down, suggesting that we may soon see a slight reprieve from the last year of rapid-fire growth.

For the full report see: East Side Market Review

Market Update – January 2015

February Market Update – Seattle/King Co/Eastside

King County Home Prices Jumped!

King County house prices jumped almost 20 percent over year

The median price of single-family homes sold leapt in March to $392,000. A severe shortage of homes for sale is driving the jump.

The median price of single-family homes sold in King County leapt in March to $392,000 as buyers, many waving all-cash offers, bid up the region’s tight inventory.

With 40 percent fewer houses for sale than a year ago, March’s median closing price was 19 percent higher than the previous March and up 7 percent from February, the Northwest Multiple Listing Service reported Thursday.

It was the biggest monthly percentage gain since April 2012, when King County’s median home price started rising after 19 months of decline.

A severe shortage of homes for sale — with listings equal to only about a month’s worth of pending sales — is driving the jump in prices. Generally a supply of four to six months is considered a balanced market.

“Where are the listings?” asked Glenn Crellin, associate director for research at the University of Washington’s Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies. Crellin said the inventory over the past four months is the lowest he’s seen in the 15 years he’s been tracking it.

“That’s going to be a real problem now that we’re heading into the prime buying season, and there is just so little product available for sale,” Crellin said.

About a quarter of buyers are paying all cash for homes, said OB Jacobi, president of Windermere Real Estate in Seattle. The rest are putting down, on average, between 20 and 50 percent cash, he said.

“I think that is pretty shocking,” Jacobi said. “It’s crazy.”

Foreclosed properties are drawing an even higher rate of all-cash offers. Seattle real-estate broker Keith Brown, who sells only foreclosed homes, estimated that roughly half the offers on a property he lists are all cash.

“I’m not quite sure where everyone is coming up with all this cash, but there’s definitely been a huge increase in the last few months,” Brown said.

All regions in King County saw a lift in median prices:

In Seattle, the median price of single-family homes sold rose 17 percent to $462,375, the MLS reported. The median for condos was $292,500, almost 25 percent higher than a year ago.

On the Eastside, the median sale price of single-family homes also jumped 17 percent to $552,415, but condos didn’t rise as much: an 11 percent increase to $234,000.

Price jumps happened at every tier of the housing market.

In middle-class West Seattle, the median sale price on more than 100 homes sold in March was $365,372, almost 30 percent higher than the previous March.

Meanwhile, in affluent West Bellevue, the median sale price on the 34 homes sold last month was nearly $1.3 million, 23 percent higher than a year ago.

Snohomish County mirrored the price hikes in King County: The median selling price for single-family homes rose 17 percent in March to $287,825, and for condos, $149,500.

Experts say the spike in demand will draw more sellers into the market.

For one thing, banks that were sitting on foreclosed homes last year amid allegations of improper foreclosures are starting to sell that inventory, said Brown.

“We have 50 percent more properties in our inventory than we did six months ago,” he said. Rising home prices also should encourage some homeowners to sell, brokers say. And homebuilders are ramping up production in response to demand.

In the Seattle metro area, building permits were issued in January and February for more than 1,300 single-family homes, a 41 percent increase over the same period last year, according to the latest census data.

Homebuilders are struggling to find enough laborers and subcontractors because so many left the industry during the Great Recession, said Allison Butcher, a spokeswoman for the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties. Municipal permitting staffs, which were slashed during the recession, also are playing catch-up, she said.

Perhaps the biggest question is how long the run-up in home prices could last, stoked by ultralow interest rates and a shrinking supply of buildable land. The state’s growth-management act puts many areas off-limits to development.

Mark Mason, CEO of HomeStreet Bank in Seattle, said the tight home inventory and insufficient supply of land approved for development will affect the bank’s business. “We’re concerned that most potential borrowers will not be able to buy homes,” he said. “If that demand is not satisfied, we can’t write mortgages.”

The frenzied home market has had one benefit for the bank: A flood of prospective borrowers have come the past three months to get prequalified on a home loan — nearly three times last year’s average, Mason said.

All of which could make this spring buying season the busiest in years, if inventory remains tight and more buyers enter the market.

“My guess is it’s going to be frenzied at least through the summer,” Jacobi said.

~ By Sanjay Bhatt, Seattle Times

More Buyers/Few Sellers push up King County home prices

Home sales in November outpaced new listings, helping push prices up.

On the last day of November 2011, 158 houses were listed for sale in Bellevue east of Interstate 405. And on the same date this year? Just 62, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. Inventory — or a lack of it — is driving King County’s residential real-estate market, brokers and industry observers say. Statistics released Wednesday by the listing service underscore the impact. Countywide, just 3,720 houses were on the market as of Nov. 30, 14 percent fewer than at the end of October and 43 percent fewer than a year ago. Inventory always dips in winter. But it hasn’t been this low since at least 1999. Closed sales in November, however, were up 19 percent year-over-year. There were 16 percent more closings than new listings last month.

 “We’re not replacing what we’re depleting,” said Kathy Estey, managing broker in John L. Scott Real Estate’s Bellevue Main office. “If you did that at the grocery store, pretty soon you wouldn’t have anything left.”

 The imbalance between demand and supply helped push the median single-family sale price for November to $385,000, tops for the year. The previous high, $380,000, came in June.

 “We’ve been in this same place all year — sales are up, but inventory is down,” said real-estate blogger Tim Ellis of Seattlebubble.com. “At some point, you can’t have any more of a sellers’ market.” Why aren’t homeowners putting their houses up for sale? Ellis, Estey and others offer several explanations:

 Many homeowners bought just before the market crashed and still owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. If the owners sold, Estey said, they’d most likely have to rent, and rents are rising. “They might as well stay in their homes and make their payments and take their [mortgage-interest] tax deduction.” Other homeowners may not be “underwater” on their mortgages, but prices still haven’t recovered enough to motivate them to sell, said George Moorhead, branch manager at Bentley Properties in Bothell. “They’re saying, ‘I want to try and recoup that 30 percent that I lost,’ ” he said.

Buyers outnumber sellers in part because more people are buying second homes for investment or retirement, but not selling their original residences, Moorhead said.

 Another factor in the lack of inventory: Little new construction is coming to market. Builders stopped building when the recession hit, Estey said, and only now are gearing back up.

 So will supply increase anytime soon? Yes, but probably not until spring, said Glenn Crellin, associate director of research at the University of Washington’s Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies. Rising prices mean fewer homeowners are underwater, he said, but many don’t want to be bothered with listing their properties during the holidays, or when it’s wet and nasty outside. “They’re going to use that time to make their properties ready for the market,” Crellin said. But sellers may find fewer buyers, he cautioned, if the “fiscal cliff” results in widespread tax increases or pushes the economy back into recession.

 Other gleanings from the listing service’s November report:

•King County’s median single-family sale price of $385,000 was up 20 percent from November 2011. But that’s somewhat misleading: The median fell to post-crisis lows last winter, but has been in the $370,000-$380,000 range since June. The year-over-year increase also reflects a change in the makeup of houses being sold. Bank-repossessed houses accounted for just 6.6 percent of all sales last month, according to online brokerage Redfin, down from 18.5 percent in November 2011.

•While closed house sales were up 19 percent countywide compared with the same month last year, they soared nearly 41 percent in Seattle. Closings were up 91 percent in Queen Anne and Magnolia, 49 percent in Ballard and other northwest neighborhoods. Crellin said he’s not surprised: “Look where the employment growth has been. It’s all been in downtown and South Lake Union.”

Buyers are more selective now about where they want to live, Ellis added, and more are choosing Seattle.

 •King County condo inventory fell even more steeply than the single-family supply. It was down 56 percent from November 2011. Condo sales volume and prices rose, but more modestly than houses. Closed sales were up 10 percent year-over-year, while the median sale price, $204,500, was up 7 percent.

 •Single-family sales volume in Snohomish County was flat, with just three more houses changing hands this November than last.

 The median price, $271,000, was up 11 percent.

Eric Pryne: epryne@seattletimes.com

  

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