In the chart below you can see that at the very end of 2008 these homes were selling at an average of 91.8% of the new 2009 Assessed Values. I removed the high and the low % and averaged the remaining 8 homes.

The homes that closed, in the same area, At the end of March and early April, which would reflect actions taken for the most part AFTER the $8,000 Stimulus Credit was passed, the prices jumped to an average of 100% of the 2009 Assessed Values.

More on this in the next post showing the closings between these two time periods, and just before the credit was passed.

(required disclosure) Information in charts is not compiled or verified by NWMLS.

Over on Rain City Guide I posted the stats for King County.  With so many people tracking the real estate market to see where the market is headed in 2008, I'll be posting stats for King County at RCG on Sunday nights and do a different City each week over here.

The housing stats become much more meaningful when you break them down into the City and price range you are buying or selling in.

For Example, let's look at Kirkland all together both single family and condos in all price ranges.

The orange portion represents the 1,604 properties sold in Kirkland in 2007.  If you divide the number sold by 12, you get an average of 133.66 sold in a month.  If you divide the number of homes for sale of 616 by 113.66, you see that there is a 4.6 month supply on market.

That would be a moderate buyers market.  BUT if you are looking to buy a condo for over a million dollars, you would be in a very strong buyer's market as shown below in the graph for condos over a million dollars.  As you can see, the green portion of the pie is more than the orange portion, meaning the number currently for sale exceeds the number sold in the entire year of 2007.  Much more bargaining power if the seller needs to sell and sellers should not be overpricing their homes given this absorption rate of current inventory of over a year.

The median price for all condos sold in Kirkland in 2008 was $329,000.  The median price for all condos for sale right now is $415,000.  So if property is not selling, it could simply be because sellers are asking to much as a whole and you should be very careful to make sure you are buying the few that are priced well. 

If you look at the state of the condo market for sale at that median price of $329,000 or less, the outlook is completely different and it is not a strong buyer's market.  But it's not a seller's market either.  If you are looking to buy a condo for under $250,000, the odds that the seller will need to negotiate strongly are less than if you are buying one for $650,000. 

81 condos in this price range is about a 2.8 month supply if you do the math as shown above.

SINGLE FAMILY HOMES IN KIRKLAND

Let's jump to single family homes and look at the strong buyer's market for homes priced over $1.5M.  Not quite as bad as sellers of condos priced over a million dollars, but still a strong buyers market for homes priced over $1.5 million.

The median price range for all single famil homes sold in Kirkland in 2007 was $590,000 and the median price of all single family homes for sale today is $799,000.  Again, the high inventory can be at least partially blamed onthe fact that sellers are pricing too high and higher than the comps from previous sold property.  So be very careful to only consider the few that are priced well.

Not a strong buyers or sellers market for the homes priced at the median sold price of $590,000 or less though.  Condition and Location are the most important factors in this group as to whether or not the asking price is a good value.

I'll try to do stats every Sunday and pick a different City or Zip Code each week.  Next week I'll do Bellevue and highlight 98005 and 98007 unless someone has a special request for another area.