May. 24, 2009 - King County Home prices peak and beyond

Let me explain this graph a bit, as I was looking for some specific trending into that is set up in the previous 3 or 4 posts about Median Home Prices by School District. One, I was looking for peak prices and each area peaked as to price at a different time. Since the question of current price as a relation to peak is relevant in many discussions about home prices, it's important to know when the area peaked,.

For those who didn't read the previous posts before getting to this one, parameters are no lake or mountain views and homes sold for less than a million dollars arranged by school district, but only to the extent that school district is in King County.

The beginning is December of 2006 through October of 2007.  The next number "PYOY08" is the price a year from peak for each area.  So for Bellevue School district that number is July of 08 to compare with the peak of July of 07.  For Federal Way that peaked in March of 07, it's March of 08.  For those that peaked in June, it's June.  Wherever the one year point fell from peak, that's where the value is struck YOY one year after peak.

At the end I struck the median of Jan and Feb of 2009 and April and May of 2009.  So where you see an increase in the previous posts for May of 2009, and don't see the same result here that is because I combined April and May closings to date. None of the May stats are for the whole month of May closings, obviously, because it is not yet the end of May.  So to get a larger sample, I included all of April with May.

As usual, the final post on all of this work that I have been doing, will appear in Sunday Night Stats on Rain City Guide. Though I may have another here that shows each area's % change from peak to now and from 3/2005 to now from the first group of data and the high and low point. Those may appear in charts vs. graphs so you can more readily see the actual Median Price Per Square Foot numbers.

required disclosure Data is not compiled, verified or posted by NWMLS