Market Update - April 2020

In the latest episode of Market Update, Aaron Janus sits down to give you an informational look at the current state of the Seattle real estate market. Aaron discusses median home prices in Seattle, on the Eastside, and throughout King County, as well as housing inventory, mortgage rates, and the current impact of the coronavirus on the Seattle real estate market in April 2020.

Below is a rough transcript of the video, which consists of a presentation by Seattle Realtor Aaron Janus.

Video Transcript

Aaron Janus, Seattle Realtor:

If you knew then what you know now. Welcome to your April Market Update. 

Question, if you knew then what you know now... if you knew that there was a chance for a pandemic or that you'd be locked at home for a month or more, what different choices would you have made in the purchase of your home? I would love to hear from you. Drop us a line or put a comment below wherever you're seeing this video. I'd love to hear what different choices you would have made based on what we know now.

Alright, so speaking of what we know now, let's jump into some numbers. For our April Market Update here. We like to look at a few different metrics the first one is median sales price. People like to know that. So let's start with Seattle. We're looking at $725,000 as your median sales price. That's up 3.7% year-over-year. If we look at the Eastside, we're just under $855,000 ($854,950 to be precise) for a median price and that is up about 3.6% over the same time last year. Now, if we look at King County as a whole we're looking at $645,000 median sales price, which is also up 3.6%. 

The next number that we like to look at are inventory levels as it relates to pending sales. So if we look at inventory year-over-year: if we look at Seattle we're down 30% in terms of the active inventory on the MLS. Now, these are March numbers and Governor Inslee's Stay Home, Stay Healthy order went into effect about mid-march, so we'll be really interested to see as we get farther into April what those numbers look like but looking at March we're seeing a 30% drop in active inventory in Seattle. Pending sales in Seattle are down 16%, so while we have a big drop in inventory, it's the drop in pending sales is not as significant. So that's interesting. And just 1.19 months of available housing inventory on the market in Seattle right now. If we look on the Eastside, we're down 40% in terms of active inventory and pending sales are down 26%, so we've got 1.23 months of inventory on the market. If we look at King County we're down 34% in terms of active inventory. Pending sales were down 17%. Across the county 1.15 months worth of available housing inventory.

Another metric that we like to take a look at every month during our market update our mortgage rates and if we look at the numbers that Freddie Mac put out -- this is for the week ending April 16th -- our 30-year fixed-rate average is 3.31%, historically low, just a phenomenal rate. It's actually down 0.86% from a year ago at the same time when rates were 4.17%. So you see, a phenomenal time to get purchase money and a refinance as well. There's a lot of really great programs out there and this is just helping to drive the market.

As for buyers, we see a lot of buyers that are actively looking. A lot more buyers are wanting to do virtual tours, which is great, and something we certainly offer our clients. But there are some buyers that are out there looking. Actually, we went on some buyer tours over the weekend, which was nice, and we're very safe and sanitized. There's still buyer activity and I think here in the Seattle area, we're somewhat insulated with the employment base that we have. 

The question is: if you're in the market to buy or sell, what's right for you? And there's not a one-size-fits-all solution. So if you do have questions about your particular situation, obviously, we would love to help and we can walk you through what's happening out there in your particular neighborhood, and we would love to do so. Thank you so much for joining us on this Market Update. And again, to circle back to the top, we would love to hear from you. Any stories you have about your home and what changes you might have made if you knew that this was happening when you purchased your home. We're interested to hear from you.

I also just want to take a moment to thank all of our first responders and all the essential folks that are out there in the economy, whether they are working at a grocery store or at Costco or any number of essential businesses that are here serving the rest of us while we're doing this. I just wanted to thank you very much for what you do and we really appreciate you, so thank you. 

We look forward to seeing you next time.

House Goals Realized. JanusGroup at RE/MAX Integrity. It's a tooth.