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What does the real estate market look like in Seattle right now, June 2021? There are more buyers in the market than sellers. More demand for homes to purchase than the supply of available homes to buy means that in many situations there are multiple buyers competing against one another for the same home. What does this mean in the real world? Buyers are submitting offers on homes that are higher than the list price, creating a bidding war that results in more money in the seller's pocket. We have seen this on both sides of the equation this year, representing over a dozen home buyers and sellers throughout the Seattle area. When preparing for our latest Market Update video, we went deep in the MLS, looking for patterns and signs that what we were experiencing was happening across the market.

Our research shows that in addition to the number of home sales occurring in Seattle being up above the "normal" spring levels that we've seen in the last five years, we are also seeing that Seattle homes are selling for wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more than compared to the last two years. For example, in the last 60 days there were 1,992 residential sales in the city of Seattle.

Of those 1,992 homes, 878 of them, or 44%, sold for $50,000 or more over the list price!

Of those 1,992 homes, 560 of them, or 28%, sold for $100,000 or more over the list price!

But how does that compare to last spring, when everything shut down? During the same time period in 2020, there were 1,102 homes sold, about half of the activity that we're seeing this year, but still a healthy number of sales.

Of those 1,102 homes that sold in the same time period in 2020, just 113 of them, or 10%, sold for $50,000 or more over the list price.

Of those 1,102 homes, just 35 of them, or 3%, sold for $100,000 or more over the list price.

So even during the tumult of last spring, there were still buyers and sellers in the market, and still, a full 10% of homes sold for $50,000 or more than the list price, indicating competition for desirable homes in Seattle. But that 10% is a significant difference from the 44% of homes in the same time period in 2021 that sold for $50,000 or more over the list price.

But what about a more "normal" spring of Seattle real estate activity? What happened during the same time period in 2019? Well, there were 1,587 homes sold in Seattle, more than in 2020, but fewer than we're seeing in the spring of 2021. Given the impact of the pandemic in 2020, this is the pattern we expected and assumed we would see. So how were buyers behaving in the spring of 2019? Were they getting into bidding wars? Of the 1,587 Seattle homes that sold in the same time period in 2019, just 213 of them, or 13%, sold for $50,000 or more over the list price. And of those same 1,587 homes, just 75 of them, or 4%, sold for $100,000 or more over the list price. So there isn't a statistically significant difference between bidding wars during the same time period in 2019 and 2020. Buyers were competing for roughly the same percentage of the home sales, indicating that the competition among home buyers was narrowed to around just 10% of the market, likely in the most desirable pockets of the city.

This spring, in 2021, the data show that there were considerably more homes sold AND that with 44% of the homes selling for more than $50,000 above list price, nearly half of all home buyers paid a significant premium to secure their purchase. The fact that 28% of homebuyers in this time period of the spring of 2021 paid more than $100,000 above list price, when in 2020 that happened just 3% of the time, and in 2019 only 4% of the time, shows that we are in an extreme seller's market and if you are thinking about selling your home, there has definitely never been a better time to sell in Seattle.

Past performance in the real estate market does not guarantee future outcomes. We do not know how long the Seattle market will stay this hot.

Have a Seattle real estate question? We'd love to help. Text/call 206.550.3740 today to start a conversation about your house goals.