Aug. 30, 2009 - 2009 King County Home Sales

King County home sales are all at once both good and dismal, depending on the area and price range. In subsequent posts you will see that some areas are doing much better than expected, and some others are no where near recovery.

This is important to you whether you are a buyer or a seller of a home. If you are a buyer and think the market is improving, but are buying in an area and price range where it is not improving, you run the risk of overpaying for that home. If you are a seller and think the market is down 20%, but are in an area and price range that is only down 15%, you run the risk of underpricing your home.

Looking at the County as a whole does not do much to assist an individual buyer or seller, except to compare their immediate area of interest to the County norm.  I will post several specific areas today so that you can see how to apply the general method of evaluating in the immediate area surrounding the home you are choosing to buy or sell.

Overall the market gives the appearance of being somewhat in balance with very little variance between the number of homes that want to be sold (yellow) and the number of homes that have sold YTD. However, that is a false positive due to "shadow inventory", that being the huge number of homes that will come on market if and when the market "gets better". There are many would be sellers sitting on the sidelines waiting for a better time to sell...there are also many would be buyers doing the same. That number differs in various price ranges.

What we do know is that the $8,000 credit is keeping that under $400,000 market at a point where there are more buyers than sellers. But it is doing virtually nothing to help the higher price tiers. In past markets the sellers of those homes would be "buying up". In this market many are renting and before you think that means the rental market is robust as a result...not so. Many are opting to move in with relatives and disappearing from the market altogether.

From a buyer's perspective, there is clearly less competition in the higher price tiers, giving you more leverage. BUT the safer bet as to future decline is in the lower price tier, as we do not expect the lending side of things to become as generous as they were in the last few years...ever.

From a seller's perspective, selling in the lower price tier is not an absolute given, and you will see in subsequent posts that in some areas, being priced under $400,00 is not a ticket to a sure sale. 

What we don't know is if the market will change dramatically if the $8,000 credit is not extended and/or expanded beyond the current deadline of closing an escrow on November 30 or earlier. There's a lot of speculation there, but at this point it is anyone's guess what will happen in 2010. Personally I think they will pull the plug and see if the market is still breathing without the credit, before deciding whether or not to bring the credit back in its current or revised form. That is what they should do...what they will do is anyone's guess.

( Required Disclsoure - The stats in this graph and post are not compiled, verified or posted by The Northwest Multiple Listing Service - they are hand calculated by ARDELLd)