Market Update - January 2020

In this first episode of 2020, Aaron Janus sits down at his desk to discuss the latest in the Seattle real estate market, including statistics on home prices, mortgage rates, and much more.

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

Video Transcript

Hello. Happy New Year, everyone.

It's time now for the Market Update with Aaron Janus.

Greetings everyone, welcome to the first Market Update for 2020. Thanks for joining us. Let's start by talking about some numbers. These are the latest numbers put out by the Northwest multiple listing service.

Let's start with prices. If we look at Seattle - the median sale price for a home in Seattle is $695,000, which is down half a percent year-over-year. If we look at the Eastside, we're talking about $805,000 is the median sale price, which is down about 1.2% year-over-year. Now if we look at the entirety of King County, we're looking at a $615,000 median sale price, which is actually up 3% year-over-year, which has a lot to do with so much activity farther out at the edges of King County.

Now, let's take a look at housing inventory. If we look at Seattle, year-over-year inventories are down 24.5%, which is significant. Meanwhile pending sales are up 16.8%, leaving us with just about one month of housing supply. If we look at the Eastside, we see that inventory is down 47% year-over-year. Pending sales are up 7%, and there is just under a month's supply - 0.85%. King County as a whole is down 38% with year-over-year, with pending sales up 7%, again, that's a one-month supply.

That's a significant seller's market.

Now taking a look at mortgage rates, this data is from Freddie Mac. This is for the week ending January 9th. The 30-year fixed rate average is 3.64%, which is down 8/10ths of a point from the same time last year. And many economists agree that rates will continue to rise in the coming months, but we'll see. Most economists aren't always right. Are they?

Statistics! Everybody loves statistics. At least 87.7% of you do. But let's look at what's happening right now and into 2020. A lot of us in the Seattle real estate arena believe that there's a real perfect storm brewing that's going to culminate in a very active spring market. So, why is that? Like we just chatted about: interest rates are historically low. We've got very strong job growth. Unemployment in King County is hovering in the low two percent range. Super high demand: lots of people moving here, well- qualified people that want to purchase homes, we've got a lot of demand and still low inventory. So, what does that mean for you if you're looking to buy or sell a home? That's going to depend on your particular situation, but what we do know, is getting out ahead of the spring market is the smart move.

So whether you're looking to buy or sell, your individual circumstances, obviously, are going to vary and it's going to necessitate a specific course of action. So reach out to us and let's talk one-on-one about your circumstances and find out the best course of action for you.

Thank you everyone for joining us for our first Market Update of 2020, we hope you enjoyed it. As always, we'd love to hear your feedback. If you haven't already done so, please check out our website, JanusGroupRE.com, and you can see some of the other videos that we've produced and put out so far this year.

You'll notice this year we're doing something a little bit different. Each month we're focusing on a different client story. So we've got lots of different stories that we're going to tell from luxury home sellers to first-time buyers, first-time sellers. This month, obviously, we're focusing on first-time buyers. We'd love to hear any feedback that you have.

Thanks for joining us and make sure you're following us on social media and subscribing to our YouTube channel, so you don't miss any of this, well, dare I say fantastic content. Thank you. See you soon.