Monday NW Seattle Real Estate Market Update | March 8th, 2021

Video Transcript:

So far Sandra in 2021 we’ve been talking about what a super hot market it is for sellers, well that didn’t change for this past week. We are now in week 52 of our Monday market update it has been going on for a year.

Yeah it’s been kind of a crazy year but I actually want to talk about February. The stats are in, and in northwest Seattle we had 95 homes available for sale at the end of February and we had 206 new listings come on the market. Believe it or not, that’s actually a really high number for new listings in February. We had to go all the way back to February 2010 before we saw new listings above 206.

So the issue right now isn’t that we have lower levels of new listings, the issue is that we’ve a flood of buyers in the market and inventory just isn’t keeping up but that actually changed this last week.

Yeah, inventory levels are up this past week. We ended up at 115 homes which is really great news for buyers. But also this is the first week in several weeks where new listings coming on the market did not keep up with homes going under contract.

So we had 70 new listings this past week and 51 homes went under contract and we had 38 homes that closed.

But the interesting thing about those 38 is that only 47% sold above asking, which I would have thought, you know, you and I have talked about this

100%. We would have thought 100% of the homes sold at or above.

It feels that way, right. But it’s not!

It does.

Yeah, so 53% of the homes that closed last week sold for at or below list price, and actually 21% sold below the list price so I think that’s I thought that was interesting.

Yeah, but that tells us this last week was a slightly better market for buyers than the previous week and I think we can expect each week to get better for buyers as sellers bring their homes to market because we know that springtime is the time that most sellers want to list their homes for sale.

Right, and you and I talked about over the weekend we actually feel that there’s a lot of shadow inventory out there and so what I mean by shadow inventory is those are homes that will eventually come on the market they’re just not on the market right now.

During the downturn, shadow inventory referred to foreclosed properties that would be hitting the market. Thankfully now shadow inventory refers to would-be sellers how are first needing to buy a replacement property before listing their home for sale so depending on where those people want to live that could be easier said than done.

Right, making that transition from one home to another is really tricky and it really depends on the financial capabilities of the individual. If you can afford to purchase your new home before selling your old home you have a lot more options available to you but if you need to sell your current house before buying your new house well your options are definitely more limited. So if you’re trying to navigate that transition and you just kind of want to talk that through definitely give us a call because it is really tricky.

Yeah so if you’re an older person like Sandra and I this can be even more challenging. A lot of times we’ve lived in our homes for decades so the thought of moving can be really overwhelming .

Yeah I think it’s challenging for any age but I think yes as you get older it’s definitely more challenging but we have an amazing workshop that’s coming up in a couple of weeks it’s called “Housing options when downsizing” and so we can kind of walk you through that transition. But it will be March 25 from 5:30 to 6:30 so if you’re interested in attending just click the link and sign up and we will be happy to see you. And I think that’s kind of it for this week did you have anything else you wanted to chat about?

I just want to invite people to watch our next week’s Monday market update, we do this every Monday.

Thanks everyone.