Seattle Area Real Estate Statistics for March 2011

Considering that we’re comparing data to last year when we had the tax credit, the housing market is actually holding up quite well. Pending and sold properties increased about 35-40% over February, which is typical as we head into spring. Sold properties declined about 15% from last March but pending sales are about flat compared with last year, which is very impressive. Interestingly, active listings have held flat since February and are down over 13% from last year. It is abnormal not to have a steadily increasing inventory of new listings come on the market going into spring. My theory is that the rainy weather in March might have kept some people from being able to get their homes in perfect shape for listing. Regardless, there are buyers out there so don’t wait until summer time, it’s a great time to be on the market right now.

Prices ticked up a percent or so from February, but that is still off 7-8% from last March. Specifically, the average sales price for all of King and Snohomish counties combined was $382,000 and $176/sqft.

Days on market did continue to increase and is now at 129 days. The “Sales Price as a percentage of the Original List Price” held steady at 91%.

Finally, since the new listings didn’t increase at all, the pop in the pending sales made the months of inventory (based on pending sales) decrease to only 3.6 months. That’s lower than the lowest point reached last year which was 3.7 months in April.

In my opinion, these statistics bode well for activity for the next few months at least. Hopefully interest rates will continue to stay low for a while longer so that more people can take advantage of the ideal combination of low rates and already lower prices.

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