"Statistics not compiled or published by NWMLS." I hand calculate all of my stats, I compile them and I publish them. I note the source as NWMLS, as that is the system I use to get the raw data.
Using a 180 day rolling basis to track the market in this zip code. 97 condos sold. 188 homes sold.
Let's separate by Property Type within these two categories.
Starting with the first graph and noting For Sale as comparison to Sold.
Now to For Sale as Comparison to Sold by Type.
True, inventory is low...but it's far from non-existent. given the # of homes sold in a full six months shown at the beginning of this post, the amount for sale does not seem extraordinarily small by comparison.
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Required Disclosure: Stats are not compiled, verified or published by The Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
Dec. 26, 2011 - 2011 Home Prices in Lake Washington School District 2012
A Quick Update on Single Family Home Prices in The Lake Washington School District. The median price has been pretty stable at $500,000 to $525,000 for the last three years. A little up in 2010 and back down in 2011 but still only 2% off from 2009. Not much change at all.
The mix has changed a bit with 75% of all sales falling between $302,000 and $775,000. 12% are less and 12% are more.
Inventory is very low in most price ranges, as the graph below indicates. Since we are not quite at the end of 2011, I did the below charts based on the last 365 days vs. Year to Date.
There is almost no price range where there is plenty of inventory. The dark blue line represents homes for sale and the lighter blue represents the number of homes sold in the last 365 days. The lower end may dry up at some point if short sales and bank owneds work themselves through.
Total number of homes sold has been increasing every year, so the lower end drying up may not have an impact on the $400,000 to $700,000 market. In fact some of those under $300,000 sales may have been sold again as flips in the higher price range, accounting for the increase in sales due to some being sold twice in the same year.
2012 Home Prices in Lake Washington School District will have a lot to do with Supply and Demand. Appraisers have been pretty strict in not allowing for a lot of growth in prices. So even if Supply continues to fall short of Demand, don't expect to see that having any great affect on prices, unless you see a lot of buyers willing to pay the difference between sold price and appraised value in cash. I don't see that happening...so expect 2012 to be similar to 2009 through 2011.
The median price may take a hit, but likely only because the builders have run out of inventory for the most part. That may give resale homes a boost. We should see a shift making it easier for owners to compete with builders, and that has not been the case for a long time.
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(Required Disclosure: Stats are not compiled, verified or Published By The Northwest Multiple Listing Service.)
Dec. 1, 2011 - Redmond WA Home Prices - Education Hill
The charts below show the price changes in Abbey Road on Education Hill in Redmond from the time the first home was sold in 1990 to present. There are 205 Homes in Abbey Road - Six different sub-divisions.
Sep. 28, 2011 - Redmond WA Homes Sold 88% of 2001 volume
At first glance one would be elated to see that Homes in Redmond Washington appear to have recovered as to volume sold at 88% of 2001 "pre bubble" levels.
That is indeed good and healthy for Redmond generally, but not necessarily great news for people who are trying to sell their homes.
If you look at the breakdown of homes sold by age of home you will see that a high percentage of homes selling were built since 2001, and still being built right now. The light blue represents the # of homes sold in that age group in 2001. The dark blue shows the number of homes sold in 2010.
A huge drop in volume sold for all but the newest of homes.
When comparing that to areas like Federal Way that do not have as many new homes, the volume drop for homes built prior to 2001 is more comparable and the new homes are driving the Redmond Market as to volume sold and median home price generally.
Looking at the weaker lower tier price market in Federal Way, it's easy to see that the new homes in Redmond are what are propping up both the Redmond stats and the higher tier of home prices.
Given the choice between new or old...many choose new. If there are not enough new homes for people to buy, the sales stats languish. I guess we need more teardowns. But to get there, land prices would have to go down considerably.
Maybe if all the new houses run out? Right now most people are staying on the sidelines if they can't get what they really want.
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(Required Disclosure - Stats in this post and graphs are not compiled, verified or published by The Northwest Multiple Listing Service)
If you are looking at stats for "King County Prices" in 2011, you need to ask "Which part of King County?"
In Redmond 2011 Year to Date, 86% of all sales were NOT Bank Owned or Short Sales.
In Federal Way, only 42% of all sales were not bank owned or short sales.
That is not a huge change for Redmond. But it is a huge change for Federal Way from 2010. Maybe the remaining months of 2011 will settle things out a bit?
How is all that impacting prices? As to median price, that puts Federal Way back in 2001 to 2002 pricing while Redmond is still sitting at 2005 pricing.
BUT a lot of that has to do with the fact that so many of the homes sold in Redmond in 2010 and 2011 did not even exist in 2001.
More on that in the graphs in the next post.
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(Required Disclosure - Stats in this post are not compiled, verified or published by The Northwest Multiple Listing Service.)
Sep. 28, 2011 - 2011 Seattle Area Home Prices - Price Tiers
Below is the raw data showing how and why some Cities in King County are at 2005 levels while others are at 2001 to 2002 levels.
Basically it has to do with the % of the total market that are Bank Owned or Short Sales, and how far from the median price those are from the median price of non-distressed properties in the same area.
I will be turning this information into graph form with more commentary Basically it's a response to why the lower tier markets are suffering more than the higher tier markets. The graphs will be included in a separate post, and will put the link here when I am finished.
Basically the lower tier market on the left is a degenerative market that is more than half distressed property sales, and the higher tier market on the right has fewer distressed properties by far. Also the Bank Owned properties in the higher tier have become only those homes that can't sell as short sales, for the most part.
In 2010 there were good properties, excellent even, that were bank owned properties, albeit only a few. In 2011 most of the bank owned properties were nowhere near the same quality of home as was available in 2010. Mostly because the new construction bank owned properties were sold off and only the older resale homes that couldn't sell short were left in the mix.
More on this as I complete the information in graph form.
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(Required disclosure: Stats in this post and graphs are not compiled, verifed or published by The Northwest Multiple Listing Service)
Aug. 14, 2011 - Seattle Home Prices 2011 Fair Market Value
I am still writing the explanation of these numbers, along with some other graphs I am posting on Rain City Guide. Just parking it here for now to use as an example in a discussion over on Seattle Bubble.
Required Disclosure...Ardell personally hand calculated all of the numbers in this chart. They are not copied from numbers that are published, verified or posted by The Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
Aug. 12, 2011 - Do Home Prices Double Every 10 Years?
I was posting this as a comment over on Seattle Bubble, but I think there were too many links for it to pass through the spam filters. Posting it here so I can put it there as a single link response.
**update** my original comment there appeared, so I removed this link from SB but kept the post here.
Of course you can't strike ANY 10 year period and find a doubling no matter when those 10 years fall. But below are some stats for actual sales in 2011 tracked back to the earliest purchase price I could find.
The winner was the Split Entry in Medina sold for 7.31 times its 1985 price.
It helps when you buy in the best location with the best schools…vs “the prettiest house you can find”.
I was looking at it from the multiple of the earliest purchase price, as if one person owned it the entire time and looked at their sold price in comparison to their purchase price.
May. 16, 2011 - Lakeview Elementary School Kirkland Home Prices
Lakeview Elementary School is a great choice, but does not necessarily come with the best options as to housing. Let's take a look at the breakdown of property in this defined area to determine Supply and Demand factors, before looking at the actual pricing. Basically this is everything in 98033 South of Central/85th and West of the 405. Always check with the School District to determine which school the house services before buying a home, as school boundaries change from time to time.
The Lakeview Elementary School area has a lot more condos than houses. Of the 150 properties for sale, 83 are "condos" and 50 are "houses".
In the last 365 days, 250 properties have "sold" of which 198 have closed escrow. Of those that have closed, 76 are houses and 122 are condos. Add back the pendings and 101 are houses and 147 are condos.
The median price (based on closed sales) for:
1 bedroom condo $205,000
2 bedroom condo $400,000
3 bedroom condo $590,000
3 bedroom house $650,000
4 bedroom house $730,000
The primary issue becomes one of availablility of good product vs median price. Only 14 homes have sold with 3+ bedrooms for $550,000 or less. Another 15 sold between $550,000 and $650,000.
One of the primary differences when buying a home here than in some other areas is the value of the land. Consequently you get less house for the money.
Let's see how that impacts Sold Price to Assessed Value in the $650,000 or less market for Single Family Homes. For the charts below I am tightening up the time frame to sold within 120 days.
There are only 3 homes of note priced under $610,000, so I'm leaving the bottom 3 for comparison sake in the next grouping.
My client bought the first one which had the best balance of good house and good value. So I'm going to throw 1.2 to 1.25 out there for the reasonable ratio. With 60% to 70% attributed to the value of the land, it's harder to get a good house for less that doesn't need a lot of work.
I can post the picture of that house, because my client purchased it. A 2 story house in this area in this price range built in the 90s is a rare find. We were lucky it popped up in our timeframe and the offer was made and accepted within 24 to 48 hours of it hitting the market.
The hard part about buying in this particular area is you have to know a good house at a good price quickly, or someone else that does know that will snap it up while you are still thinking about it.
The DANGER of that is overpaying, so having a good handle on the AV relationships will help you evaluate more quickly when the property comes up for sale.
Apr. 14, 2011 - Home Prices Recover in Kirkland 98033
Home Prices in Kirkland 98033:
The median price for a Single Family Home in Kirkland 98033 reaches February 2006 levels of $605,000.
Number of homes sold is up 68% from 1st Quarter 2009 levels and down 42% from 1sgt Quarter 2006 levels.
When you consider that 42% of the sales were Bank Owned and/or Short Sales, that is a significant increase. The median price for the 44 homes that were not "distressed" properties was $646,000, but with that many distressed properties it really is not appropriate to segregate the stats that dragged the median price down from $646,000 to $605,000.
Clearly a significant recover for this segment of the King County Single Family Home market.
Also of considerable note is that 50% of the non-distressed homes sold in 90 days or less. 18% sold in a week or less and 23% sold in two weeks or less.
Jan. 24, 2011 - Price of a 1 Story Home - Rambler - Ranch Style - Single Story
The One Story Home
3,070 of these One Story Homes sold in King County in 2010 at a median price of $259,000.
The median age of these sold homes was exactly 50 years old. Median Year Built was 1961.
The median square footage was 1,370 sf so $189 median price per square foot.
A 50 year old one story house basically looks something like this:
First let's compare that to 2005 data, since it is generally believed that King County Home Prices are at 2005 levels. Let's see if that holds true for this particular style of home.
6,599 of them sold in 2005 vs 3,070 in 2010. Median price was a bit higher in 2005 at $270,000 vs $259,000. Median Square footage was 1,250 vs 1,370 so on a price per square foot basis you're looking at $216 per square foot in 2005 vs $189 per square foot in 2010.
Let's compare to 2004. 6,369 sold in 2004 at a median price of $236,000 and same 1,250 median sf = $189 a square foot same as 2010, so looks like we are at 2004 prices vs 2005 prices for this style of home.
Lets look at some of these homes in the most popular School Districts and top Elementary School Areas within those Districts.
Lake Washington School District
When I look at the top rated Elementary Schools in Lake Washington School District, I get a median price of $400,000 for these homes both in 2005 and in 2010. When I look at the lower rated schools, I get much cheaper pricing for the homes at $340,000 as the median price, but not much change from the 2005 pricing of $335,000.
Interesting is that on a price per square foot basis, the lower ranked schools did better, meaning the lower priced homes did better. From 2005 to present, the higher ranked schools decreased 8% from $271 per square foot to $250 per square foot while the lower ranked schools went down 6% from $250 a square foot to $234.
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Required Disclosure: These stats are not compiled or published by The Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
Will Home Prices in 2011 be going UP or DOWN? If you are a house-geek like me, you have spent untold hours in the last three days working through volumes of data to pinpoint where we have been and where we are heading.
First the scary news. People are overpaying for houses...again. I don't mean prices are UP. I mean people are simply OVER-paying for houses AGAIN! Which also means some appraisers, even with the new stricter guidelines, are allowing that to happen. The bright side for people who aren't buying houses is that most of those people stand to lose their own money, given the over-payers all have a substantial down payment.
That also tells us that the appraisers are a lot more careful when it is the Bank's money at risk, than when it is the buyer's money at risk. We have pretty much always known that...but "we" are the house-geeks, and apparently NOT the average buyer of a home.
This is seriously appalling. Let's look at what I'm talking about. Keep your eye on the Purple...and then move to the next chart.
I have color coded the prices to show home buying decisions ranked from "really great deal" to "OMG, who paid THAT!" Smack in the middle of "great deal" lighter GREEN and "OMG bad deal" RED, is PURPLE. Look at the charts below.
Purple deals were the norm at PEAK in Summer of 2007 and even Summer of 2008. But by August of 2008, PURPLE deals disappeared. People were doing their homework and being cautious all the way from August of 2008 until...wait for it...March of 2010?!?!
I first ran into this a couple of days ago when I wrote"Are You Over-Paying For A House." which was about overlooking the misappropriation of square footage and other value factors like Land Value vs Value of the Structure. But when I saw people paying 1.36 X CURRENT Assessed Value, something I had not seen since Summer of 2008, it sent me on a two day study of every piece of data I could get my hands on! Talk about "Stop the Madness!"
The really cool thing about the housing market is there's always one person who can get a super deal when no one else is. That's why you see a couple of GREEN decisions in 2006, and even one at PEAK in Summer of 2007. You also have a handful of people in RED that paid "OMG you better die in that house" price. Every market offers a chance for someone to outsmart it, and for some people to get totally buried in it.
But please, please don't be buying into the "Now Is a Great Time to Buy!" nonsense, as if you don't have to know which house is selling at a great or at least fair price, and which ones are overpriced. I will write more about that in a post over on Rain City Guide in a week or so, as it involves further study of the first chart. I also want to capture all of the end of December closings. But first let's look at where we REALLY are right now, as it is HUGELY different than the 24/7 Newscycle Hype would lead you to believe.
The Chart above gives you THREE YEARS worth of where we have been.
The Chart below shows you that myBottom Call that made Front Page News in early 2009, is still holding. Even though during the whole time since that time you have read horror story after horror story about diving home prices and foreclosures and Double Dips ad nauseum...well, look at the numbers. Not a freakin' darned thing has happened since I called the market slide STOP in early 2009. EXCEPT some people apparently listened to the frenzied stories, and assumed that they were getting a great deal, when they were in fact getting a deal so bad, that no one had done it for almost TWO YEARS!
Be Careful Out There. EVERY house for sale is NOT a great deal!
Review: Above in the RED BLOCK is my Bottom Call. Home Prices Have NOT been LOWER since, contrary to popular news stories by Journalists who don't help people buy or sell houses for a living. Also contrary to the Bubble Blog that waits for the market to go UP by 5% so it can call a WHOPPING 2% "double dip decline"! Seriously...don't be running out thinking there is some huge landslide in hope home prices across the board. Look at the numbers...the facts simply do not support that.
The chart below is simply the monthly numbers from above so you can see in a single line format where home prices have been for THREE YEARS. I know, you saw some Whopping Decline Chart somewhere that made you think prices were so low that they ALL represented some kind of Super Deal.
Sorry...that's like a guy on a date with a magnifying glass in his pocket...things are not as LARGE as they appear! Nothing to get so overly excited about and run out and OVER PAY for!
To drive this point HOME better...LOOK AT THE TWO YEARS IN THE CHART BELOW. Does that look like some Double Dipping, Foreclosure Driven, Frenzied DOWN hill Price Slide to YOU!?!? It looks mighty FLAT as a pancake to me!
Back to the original question, are home prices going to go down? Yes. But after going through all of the data since I wrote my thoughts about the market decline back on June 22nd, I see no change in my position. We're probably looking at 5% down before we head into Spring Bump when it will come back up and over "bottom".
When we got to $1,000 over "bottom" in October, I thought I had undershot the decline of 5% in the 4th Quarter. I really did. Super Funny that Dec 29th articles are only now reporting what I said on October 26th! Talk about a lag time.
When the market took the full amount of my expected 4th Quarter hit in October, I was prepared to be wrong about that 5% down call for the 4th quarter. But...the market popped back in November and December to make the 5% call "spot on". Prices went from $395,000 3Q to $375,000 4Q (see quarterly graph picture third down above), exactly 5% and still above the March 2009 "bottom".
January should be lower by up to $10,000 or so. 1st Quarter 2011 should be lower than 4th Quarter 2010. But only if people pay closer attention...and stop buying in that PURPLE Zone!
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Required Disclosure - Stats in the post are not compiled, verified or posted by The Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
Oct. 5, 2010 - Home Prices to Fall - Data & Graphs
Home Prices to fall...and why is a companion post to THIS ARTICLE I wrote on Rain City Guide this morning. For the general story, hit that link above.The short of it is volume is down by 40% YOY...so prices will fall. Pretty simple stuff.
This post is to provide the detailed info on the data used in that story and some basic description of the modifications. The chart below gives the raw data used for the graphs.
For Price Data I used King County Single Family Homes converted from Median Home Price to Median Price Per Square Foot by dividing the price by the median square footage shown in the final column. The 2010 median square feet is not available via methods previously used, so I held a constant for those last two figures of 1,975.
The final value of $392,000 for September for 2010 excludes townhomes. From here forward, given townhomes outside of Seattle do not appear in single family home data, but with the condo data, I will be excluding townhomes in Seattle as well. Townhome data to be reported separately with condo data to keep the Seattle numbers and The Eastside numbers on an even keel.
To show the directional flow and pattern of King County Home Prices to general macro market conditions as noted by changes in The Dow, I converted to a 3 digit system. The dark blue line is the Median King County Home Price per square foot of living space. The 3 digit DOW number just knocks back to 3 digit max, so 11000 would be 110 and 9825 would be 98. The high of 138 in this graph in September of 2007 would be 13800 and the low in March of 2009 shown as 72 is 7200.
These are NOT the absolute highs and lows of The Dow or King County Home Prices, they are the strike points of March and September of each year.
Volume, as shown in the first graph as # Units Sold is the RED line and simply knocks off the last digit to show the directional flow in one 3 digit max graphing and the red line ends at data available for September 2010 as of October 5, 2010 (yesterday). The YOY drop in units sold is about 40%.
The Graph below has a lime green line I call # of Units Baseline showing where the red line WOULD be if there were in fact a RECOVERY. As you can see, the tax credits of early 2009 created a brief return to the lime green baseline of 1,600+ or so units established from the first chart as of March of 2000. It is my contention that for there to be any kind of sustainable recovery, volume would have to get back to at least the 2000 level and with some kind of consistency for a sustained period of time.
Seems reasonable. Pre-subprime. No extreme conditions in 2000 to suggest we could not get back to that volume level AND it has been proven in recent history (via the tax credit) that there ARE qualified buyers to get us to that level without exotic financing. So Volume BELOW that year 2000 level of roughly 1,620 units (adjust for seasonal variance) will result in prices moving down. Any trend back to that volume will be the first signal of a price and overall market recovery.
The graph below includes one additional line in dark green noted as Median Square Feet. Due to the conversion of the mls system from Locator to Matrix in 2010, I can no longer track the median square footage of the median priced home sold. But as you can see from the raw data in the first chart, and the tiny changes in the green line up and down...the median square footage of a home sold has not changed very much in the last 10 years. So holding the number as a constant when calculating median price per square foot should not alter the data and direction.
In fact there is more of a case to be made for keeping the square footage at a constant, than for changing the price indicators due to a slight variance in the size of home sold from 1,975 to 2,000 or 2,060 square feet.
Again, for opinion and conclusion regarding future home prices, refer to the original post HERE.
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(Required Disclosure: The statistics used in this post and its charts and graphs are NOT compiled by, verified by or published by The Northwest Multiple Listing Services. All are hand calculated by ARDELL and the information for September of 2010 reflects data available as of yesterday, 10/5/2010.
Home Price changes lag the volume changes in the market.When volume dropped off in the early part of the 3rd quarter of 2007, the corresponding price drop(s) took many months, and many months in a row, to catch up to where they would be due to that decreased volume.
The volume drop was immediate...the price drop was gradual.
I'm not here to re-hash "peak" to present...quite the contrary. I'm suggesting we need to apply what we know to the NEW decreased volume aspect of this "after the homebuyer tax credit" housing market.
It is very important for everyone to understand that today's volume of homes sold is lower than well before peak pricing AND lower than before "loose and exotic" lending standards came to be, on a large scale, in late 2003. (in Seattle Area - other markets may vary as to when zero down became "popular")
Many are searching for a clear signal of A Housing Market Recovery. My caution is that while we may appear to be in an L-shaped Recovery that is not true until volume gets back to 2001-2002 levels.
I prefer to use 2001 as the "base point" when tracking volume, as I do not think it is unreasonable to expect the Seattle Area Market (which lagged the Country on the upswing) to get back to those levels before any type of "recovery" can be claimed.
There is a HUGE difference between prices stabilizing and the market recovering.
The graphs below are somewhat self explanatory.
In the graph below we see 1st Quarter 2009 (pretty much the lowest point of both price and volume) at only 47% of 2001 level. The housing credit was in a "break period" during most of that time, and reinstated before the beginning of the 2nd Quarter. So this is an excellent point to track from, from here forward.
1st Quarter 2010 "recovered" to 72% (vs 47%) of 2001 volume, with the DOUBLE housing credit. One for first time buyers AND a slightly reduced credit for move up buyers. That basically means we can see volume dropping back by 25% and that is what we need to track over the next several quarters.
The initial volume count immediately after the expiration of the housing tax credit, will likely be lower than the longer term result, as 1st Quarter borrowed volume from the 2nd and 3rd Quarter sales. For me...the most important next statistic will be 1st Quarter 2011, when we will come back to this post for comparison.
Combined condo and Single Family Home Sales
It is very important that we TEST our perceptions and not rely on perception vs actual data.
My perception was:
1) That the single family market was doing better than the condo market as to volume.
2) I questioned whether one or the other, condos vs single family homes, was shifting differently in volume, due to changing preferences vs. market conditions.
That is why I broke the numbers down and also added them together. Some interesting results.
Single Family Homes
Single Family Homes
Condos Only
I'm not going to draw "final conclusions" on the data in the graphs, because the main point of this post is that volume is expected to dramatically drop from here. The question is...by how much?
These graphs are mainly to show where we were at the end of the housing tax credit, so that we can better track the impact of NO TAX CREDIT on volume...and eventually price as a result of that volume reduction.
(Required Disclosure: The data in these graphs and this post were hand calculated by ARDELL and not compiled, verified or posted by The Northwest Multiple Listing Service.)
ARDELL DellaLoggia on Seattle Real Estate process and market including Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond, Green Lake and most areas around the top of Lake Washington North of Downtown Seattle.
Phone: 206-910-1000 - Mailto:ARDELLd@gmail.com
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I am still writing the explanation of these numbers, along with some other graphs I am posting on Rain City Guide. Just parking it here for now to use as an example in a discussion over on Seattle Bubble.
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