FEB 2020 NW Seattle Real Estate Market Update
Curious what happened in the NW Seattle Real Estate Market in the past month? Let us, your Ballard to Broadview experts, fill you in. This will help you make important home Buying and Selling decisions.
February was another Seller’s Market. House Inventory remained low, with high Buyer demand. We’re starting to see escalations on homes, so we expect pricing to rise.
*Note* Open Houses are not currently happening. If you are interested in seeing a home, contact the agent directly.
As always, but especially during these confusing times, feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions about the market or your specific situation. We’re always available to help.
Last month we talked about how the low housing inventory was reviving a seller’s market here in North West Seattle. While February numbers are in and it’s no big surprise that the low inventory levels are a recurring theme for February.
If you’ve been thinking about selling later in the spring, you may want to try and move up your target list date and take advantage of the current hot seller’s market. Hi, I’m Steve Hill.
With the stock market and real estate, it’s really hard to time the market perfectly. However, if you’ve been thinking of selling this year, and you have the ability to move up your list date, selling earlier in the year will most likely pay off for you. Right now we are seeing multiple offers and most new listings have review dates, meaning they’ve set a date that they will review any and all offers.
In 2019, we had a more balanced market. We typically had about 5 weeks of inventory. Meaning that if no other homes came on the market, pretty much everything would sell in five weeks. And I know that sounds really fast, and compared to other parts of the country, that is really fast. In December, we noticed that the market was starting to shift. We saw that homes were selling much faster, often in a week or less. And some were getting multiple offers. But for the most part, the final sales price was at or just slightly above the list price, so no crazy escalations.
We are now starting to see some of those infamous crazy escalations that Seattle’s experienced in the past. It would be really interesting to see final numbers for March. Because of all of the multiple offers in February, we are now expecting prices to go up. In February, we didn’t see the average price per square foot go up from January. In fact, it actually came down a tad, from $466 a square foot in January, to $459 a square foot in February. However, we already know that March will be a great month for sellers. In just the first 10 days in North West Seattle, there were 40 homes that closed, and 65% closed for over asking. Compare that to the first 10 days in February, where we had 29 homes close and only 27% sold for over asking price.
So you can see why we are encouraging all of our sellers to come on as early as possible. We know what the current market conditions are like right now. We don’t know what the market will be like later in the spring or summer, when more homes come on the market. People are also wondering how the coronavirus is affecting our local market. And so far, it’s not. Open house attendance has been really good, and homes are still selling quickly. That may change though, if the stock market continues to tank. But I think if it does have an effect, it will be just more of a pause. And remember, when the stock market goes down, large institutional investors tend to switch over to the bond market. And when that happens, interest rates come down, which helps with buyer confidence.
We put out our market update for North West Seattle each month. If you’ve missed any, or want to make sure you don’t miss future reports, you can find them on YouTube, Instagram and our Facebook page.
And if you’re ever curious how the current market conditions affect you personally, just reach out to us.
We are Steve and Sandra, Elevated Service, Elevated Results.