Finally! More homes are coming on the market and inventory levels are slowly starting to go up. As of this morning we have a whopping 75 homes available for sale in NW Seattle. Obviously, this is still a pretty low number of homes available for sale. In the past two weeks we had 117 new listings come on and 83 homes go under contract. The vast majority (90%) went under contract in under 10 days. This should be no surprise to anyone who’s been reading our Market Updates.
A trend we’ve been seeing for the past three weeks, is that closed homes have been selling on average for over $600 sq/ft. They’ve ranged from $621 – $642 a sq/ft. That is a big jump! I scanned back over the nearly two years of tracking the stats on a weekly basis and we only went over $600 once and that was in November 2021. For most of 2021 the sold price per sq/ft was in the mid to high $500s. I believe in the next few weeks that sold price will most go even higher. We know several homes in the past few weeks have sold in multiple offers, which of course, drives up the price.
Another milestone that is also not good for Buyers is that conforming rates are now above 4%. I receive weekly rates from the same Mortgage person at one of the big banks. This is the rate that I use each week, so that I am comparing apples to apples when watching the trend. Jumbo rates are now at 3.5%. Both rates were up a ¼ point from the previous week. This does have an impact on buying power for Buyers. Buyers are feeling anxious to try and purchase a home before rates go up even more. Keep in mind, even with the recent rise in mortgage rates, rates are still historically VERY good.
Thanks everyone – hope you have a lovely Valentine’s Day and week!
