Saturday, June 28, 2014

Snapshot of Seattle's Eastside Real Estate market

It's been a wild ride.  This year we continue to see a lack of inventory and an influx of buyers, which pushes our housing prices up.  That's great if you are a seller, but not so great if you are a buyer.  At a recent Coldwell Banker Bain Bellevue agent meeting, our Principal Managing Broker, Thadine Bak shared some statistics I thought were worth repeating.

For the month of May 2014 for the Eastside area including Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Mercer Island, Medina, Newcastle, Sammamish, Woodinville....

71.14% of all properties sold (closed) in the month of May, either at or above original list price.
The average percentage over original list price was 4.94%.
For properties that sold below original list price, the percentage average was 3.05%.

Days on the market for properties that sold above original list price averaged 7.4 days.
Days on the market for properties that sold at original list price averaged 14.1 days.
Days on the market for properties that sold below original list price averaged 25.0 days.
The take-away?  Price too high and you will be on the market longer.
If you have not sold after a month in this competitive market, the market has spoken!
What to do?  Change the price, condition of the property or offer better terms.

What about inventory levels?  How much supply do we really have?  A balanced market is about 5 months supply.
Overall for May 2014 we had 1.3 months supply of homes.
Typically, our 10 month average for the month of May is 3.1 months supply.

What is the hottest selling price range for the Eastside?  $500K to $750K.

The bottom line is this:  our inventory is increasing which is allowing for more pending sales.  High demand and a historically low supply has driven up May's closed sales price by 13% from May 2014 over May 2013.

The bottom line:  Eastside sales are continuing to show us that we have one hot real estate market!