Seattle

Residential Housing Statistics in King County December 2009

I was just asked this week how is the Real Estate Market in King County since I mentioned earlier about Snohomish County. Well here is information which was requested about King County. Northwest Multiple Listing Service (MLS) reported as following statistics for Dec 2009. Jan 2010 stats will be published in the coming weeks. We still got 21 months of inventory in King County while Snohomish County got 19 months of inventory of homes for sale.

UNITS	ACTIVE		PENDING		SOLD
DEC 09 UNITS	6,918		1,413		1462
DEC 08 UNITS	8,707		911		929
Total Unit +/-	-1789		502		533
Difference DEC %	-20.55%		55.10%		57.37%
YTD 09 UNITS	33,744		23,019		16,022
YTD 08 UNITS	38,889		18,895		15,991
Total Unit +/-	-5145		4124		31
Difference YTD %	-13.23%		21.83%		0.19%

As seen above chart, Residential active listings units dropped 20.55% from 8707 units in 2008 to 6918 units in December 2009 while Pending Residential units increased 55.10%, as Dec 09 pending listings were 1413 units compare to 911 units in December 2008.  There is a huge increase in sold units at 57.37%, 1462 units closed in 2009 vs 929 units in 2008.  Snohomish County Sold Residential unit increase is at 89.02% when compared to 2008.

MEDIAN PRICE	ACTIVE		PENDING		SOLD
DEC 09 MEDIAN	$425,000		$349,000		$380,000
DEC 08 MEDIAN	$495,000		$374,900		$403,500
Price +/-	-$70,000		-$25,900		-$23,500
Difference DEC %	-14%		-7%		-6%
YTD 09 MEDIAN	$479,950		$370,000		$380,000
YTD 08 MEDIAN	$509,950		$424,950		$429,950
Price +/-	-$30,000		-$54,950		-$49,950
Difference YTD %	-5.88%		-12.93%		-12.0%

As seen above chart, Median Price declined all across for Active, Pending and Sold Listings.  For December 09 sold median price was $380,000, dropped 6% compare to Dec 2008 while year to date Median price dropped further to 11.62%.

DAYS ON MARKET	ACTIVE		PENDING		SOLD
DEC 09 DOM	131		89		83
DEC 08 DOM	128		87		84
Days +/-	3		2		-1
Difference DEC %	2.34%		2.30%		-1.19%
09 YTD DOM	109		77		78
08 YTD DOM	93		75		73
Days +/-	16		2		5
Difference YTD %	17.20%		2.67%		6.85%

As seen above chart, the other important indicator to watch is “Days on the market” (DOM). There isn’t a significant difference, as little as 1.19% for Dec 09 and 6.85% for the year.

Over all, Inventory of homes dropping while sold home units are increasing. December 2009 Market Trend is showing a promising future for buyers and sellers. Yes, values are declining as there is activity out there…..

If you would like more personalized information for your area, please contact me via emailSebnem.oden@exprealty.com or visiting my website www.ProKeyRE.com

Wishing you a prosperous real estate future….

Seattle

Seattle Rated #1 Smartest City

I ran into a website called Smarter Cities, a project of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The website provides rankings and great informational pieces on environmental progress/sustainability in large, medium sized, and smaller cities in the USA.

Really it’s no surprise that Seattle was ranked at the top of the large city list…Seattlites are certainly aficionados of Green living! We’ve also been ranked the ‘healthiest city’, ’smartest (intelligence wise, as well; we do have Bill Gates and co., Boeing, Amazon…beat that, other cities) city’, and ’strongest real estate market’ in the nation, oh, and, (haha,)  ironically, ‘most sunglasses owned/bought per capita’!

Here are the stats by criteria; San Francisco followed us overall at #2.

Overall ranking: #1
Standard of living: #4
Green building: #1
Air quality: #1
Environmental standards and participation: #9
Transportation: #5
Recycling: #3
Green space: #2
Energy production and conservation:#1
Water quality: #4

To view these stats in more detail, visit their site!

Thanks to Gabe who referred me to this!

Amy Kizaki
Buyer’s Agent
206.384.7169
amy@seattlepowersearch.com

Seattle

Scoot About in South Lake Union

There is another way to get around Seattle. Of course walking is great, taxis are convenient, cars are always flexible (except when you’re trying to get on I-5 from downtown at 5:15 p.m.), and the buses in the Pioneer Square Ride Free Area are… free! But have you considered a scooter?

Seattle

Tales from the trenches, a short story about short sales.

So far this year I have had three short sale listings, all 3 of which I sold.  Sounds great, doesn’t it?   However, of those three I was only able to close none of them…  that’s right, NONE OF THEM!  Why?  You ask?  Because the banks keep finding ways to get in the way…

My most recent deal collapse was just this Tuesday!  The bank representative (loss mitigation specialist) called me and told me that the bank had sold the property to HUD at a foreclosure auction 11 days prior!  This came as a shock to me, since I’d had multiple offers on this property since May, and had just received an “approval to participate in a shortsale” document package from the bank only 7 days before!  So, you can imagine my disbelief when I found out the bank had sold the property and THEN issued the approval to participate!!! 

It is important to note that the statistics are showing only 10% successful closing rates on short sale properties in general (of course it depends on whose stats you like).  So, I knew upfront that it was going to be a challenge. 

I don’t mind challenges, but I do expect organizations to apply logic to their problems when they are trying to solve them and I do expect that these organizations deal in honesty and good faith.  If you have no intention of honoring an offer then why put everybody through the wringer in the first place?  Is it a requirement of TARP money that you give the “appearance” of helping the consumer?  Also, who does it benefit to actually take the proerty back in house?  I know it doesn’t benefit the bank…

I had another fail when the second/third lien holder refused a payoff of about 23% of what they were owed.  Their reasoning was that their paperwork showed a 38% amount of equity available in the home!  So they actually bought the house at the foreclosure auction, paying the first lien their entire balance owing of 229K dollars!!!  Then they decided to sell the house themselves to get that other 15K they thought was in there…  long story short…  the house eventually sold for 236K!!!  So, not only were they out the settlement I offered them when I had it sold, but they were also out their costs of sale (approx another 20K) in addition to the absorbed internal costs of bringing in a house as REO, and holding it for months as a non-performing asset (which increases their reserve requirements with the FED)!

I am pretty confident that short sales can and do occur when they benefit everybody involved, it is just that recently I haven’t seen it happen (I successfully closed a couple last year).  If you plan on trying for a short sale property be sure to have an agent that has worked the system before, because this battlefield is tricky, full of mines and they keep changing the rules!

As always, I love hearing from you!  So drop me a note if you have any questions  bryan@seattlepowersearch.com.

Seattle

Amy Kizaki Bio Video…first in Seattle more to come!

Hey there! We’ve been talking about making agent bio videos for a while so our consumers can get to know us better…so here’s the first!

Call me if I can assist you with your real estate needs. Interest rates are down, there’s so much inventory on the market and it’s a super fantastic time to buy!

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