Most of the King and Snohomish county housing market was in “balanced” status in December 2011, according to multiple listing service data mapped out by Windermere Real Estate. You can see the balanced market areas marked in yellow, below. Balanced markets are defined as those with between 4 to 6 months of housing inventory based on pending sales, meaning that if homes continued to go pending at the current rate with no new listings coming on there would be no more inventory left within 4 to 6 months. Of the 35 real estate market areas monitored, 24 were balanced, ten were seller’s markets (with between 0 and 3 months of inventory, marked in red below), and only West Bellevue was a buyer’s market (with over 6 months of inventory remaining, marked in green).
Below is the comparison between Seattle area housing inventory between December 2011 and December 2010. In 2010 no areas were in seller’s market status, and 11 of the 35 were buyer’s markets.
In Seattle the price range with the lowest months of inventory remaining in December 2011 was $350K to $500K (1.6 months), followed by the $500K to $750K range (2.6 months). On the Eastside the lowest range was $500K to $750K (3.8 months), followed by the $0 to $350K and $350K to $500K (both at 4 months). (Note: The price range numbers are based on closed sales, whereas the heat maps are based on pending sales. Pending sales reflect the most recent market activity, however some of the pending sales will not close.)
The total number of homes available for purchase, including both houses and condos, in Seattle in December 2011 was down nearly 31 percent from December 2010. On the Eastside the number of houses and condos available for purchase was down over 23 percent from December 2010.
This is good news for you if you’re planning to list a home in Seattle or the Eastside in 2012, since less housing inventory means less competition, and at this point in time there’s no reason I can see that there would be fewer buyers out there – in fact, the opposite is more likely. Employment and consumer confidence numbers have been improving in recent months, and prices and interest rates are still low.
If you are planning to list a home in Seattle or the Eastside this year, remember to start early. It takes buyers just a few days to be pre-approved by a lender, whereas most sellers think they need to wait until the flowers are blooming or are working through a big to-do list, which can lead to a bottleneck of buyers early in the year. June is typically when the Seattle area real estate market starts to slow down until the end of summer, so if you can list in February or soon afterwards, that’s a great idea.
