3 KEY INDICATORS

We like to take a close look at these 3 indicators to answer the question, how is the Seattle housing market November 2022?

1. % of new listings that go pending within the first 30 days of being on the market – 44.5%
2. Current interest rates – 7.09% (mortgage news daily)
3. Housing inventory levels – 2.2 months

How’s The Current Market? This Month’s Seattle Real Estate Market Report

Seattle Housing Market Report Video

“FOCUS ON EACH NEW LISTING

Although a lower number of homes are going under contract and fewer new resale listings are coming on the market, the Sales Activity Intensity™ for new resale listings going under contract within the first 30 days remains resilient. There is strong intensity for new resale listings up to $500,000 and healthy intensity above $500,000.”

J Lennox Scott, CEO of John L. Scott and 29th Most Influential Person in Real Estate

Video Transcript

Hi I’m Jason Fox at John Scott real estate and this is the Seattle housing market report for November of 2022. allright would you be shocked if I told you that the average sales price for a residential resale home in Seattle Washington is actually increased over the last two months yeah so was I well let’s take a look at what is causing that how you’re probably thinking but Jason I’m seeing the reports the home sales are down the interest rates are up and yes both those things are true and while that does suck for me the real estate agent uh for home Sellers and even home buyers which I’ll discuss herein a minute it’s not that bad why are home prices actually able to increase when it feels like everything is going down well the biggest factor is inventory but let’s take a look at the three key indicators that determine the health of the Seattle housing market allright the first key indicator we want to take a look at is the sales activity intensity and that is the percentage of new listings that onto the market that go into a pending status or means they go into contract within the first 30 days of hitting the market that’s a really good indicator of how things are moving along so we’re at 44.5 of new listings go pending in the first 30 days right now so if we look at the scale that’s down below we can see that’s a strong market and we’re at 45 percent we’re actually at a very strong market so we’re bordering on strong to very strong so that’s a good thing the second indicator we want to take a look at is the inventory level and so the inventory level right now it’s at 2.2 months Supply in Seattle and that’s considered low and at two months or below that’s considered a shortage so we’re right on that shortage to low side and so while it there are a lot more listings and as a matter of fact then you know there’s about eight times more listings than what we had gotten used to over the last couple of years but as I keep saying in these reports what we got used to over the last couple years is outside of the scope of normalcy that was sort of a once in a lifetime thing so now we’re back to you know what are actual numbers uh based on you know all the years of data and so we’re at a low to shortage supply of inventory so when you you know obviously it’s a supply and demand thing as you don’t have as much inventory out there than When Buyers do come along there’s more Demand on it so homes are selling pretty quickly because there’s not a whole lot of Supply out there now the third key indicator is that interest rates which this is well documented and everybody is really aware of what’s going on the areas of the time of this report we were at 7.09 but uh this morning it looks like we took a a big dip down so that’s good news as we learned in the our John Scott convention this year as we listened to the National Association of Realtors Economist Dr Lawrence Yun there is a resistance point with the interest rates at seven percent and then again at 10 so right now if we’re hold tight at this seven percent you know High six is low sevens that’s a good thing we might hold there for a while but if we do breakthrough that we might keep going until10 so seven percent is not so bad now the big deal is is that if we can get those aforementioned seller credits then oftentimes what we can do is we can use those to buy down your interest rate both permanently and temporarily and I’m not talking about an armed mortgage perse although speak to your lender that might be a good option for you I’m talking about a 2-1 buy downs and permanent buy Downs where we can just literally get the seller to fund us getting a lower interest rate to helpmeet our debt to income ratio and then as we sit on a good investment that is hedging against the inflation that we’re seeing right now we can wait until those interest rates come back down and then refinance and we’re in really great shapes.