Seattle Real Estate Market Update | November 2021

Now is a great time to sell a home! We are seeing low inventory and homes staying on the market for a very short time. In October, the median days on market for homes in Bellevue were 5 days!

Here is last month’s market update – Seattle Real Estate Market Update October 2021. And below is the latest update for the Seattle real estate market:

Video Transcript:

Hey, all. Zach McDonald, your real estate agent with Real Property Associates and this is my Seattle real estate market update for November, 2021. 2021 has been a crazy year so far. We’ve seen tons and tons of growth specifically in price as we’ve seen people moving out of the city into the suburbs over of the last year and a half and we’ve also experienced a decrease in inventory here over the last year and a half with more demand, which has caused prices to continue to skyrocket in the Seattle and Bellevue areas. As we look at this month, we’re getting close to the end of 2021 and looking forwards to the future. I really think that we are primed for continued growth specifically in the first part of 2022. I’ll be sharing my predictions for 2022 here in a separate video, probably in a month or so, but just kind of a primer to that, a little precursor to that, I think this year we’re going to finish out the year really strong, and we’re going to head to 2022 with a lot of momentum.

As we do in every update, we start off with a client story, we talk about the market stats, and then we talk about some practical application for buyers and sellers in the Seattle, Bellevue area. We are going to start with a client story. This month we’re going to focus on not one particular client, but a couple clients that both met us through this YouTube channel. And for all of you that are watching, I super, super value your attention and the fact that you watch these videos on a regular basis. So if you ever want to connect and actually talk about buying and selling real estate in the Seattle, Bellevue area, I am a real real estate agent. I don’t just talk about the stats.

And both of these clients were different. One bought a condo in Seattle and another one purchased a house over in [inaudible 00:01:52]. And the price range was between $500,000 condo and almost $2 million house over on the Eastside. So lots and lots of variation and we love working with people from this channel. So if you see yourself in those stories and you want to talk about what it looks like maybe to buy a house before the years’ end, or even in 2022, please feel free to reach out.

As we transition to the stats, I want to remind you all that we’re starting to add Bellevue stats into these market updates. So if you’re thinking about the Bellevue or Eastside markets, we’re definitely talking about those and staying on top of those markets as well. And I want you to just see the contrast here. So the purpose is not to have a Seattle versus Bellevue thing going on here, but I really want you to see the two major cities that we have Westside, Eastside, I want you to get to see the difference in price and the market, and it is similar, but very different actually as we’re looking at some of this data.

So if we look at Seattle’s median sales price last month, up 4.8% year over year. So not very dramatic, $838,000. So all across Seattle, which is the largest city by far in King County, 4.8%. Bellevue, as we’re looking at Bellevue stats, up 30.6%. You’re not hearing me wrong. 30.6%, $1.6 million median sales price. And we are talking about residential single family homes. We’re not adding in condos to these stats. The condo market’s different. But as we’re looking at the median sales price, that’s dramatic, almost double the price for a house in Bellevue than in Seattle. And if we look at King County as a whole, 10.6% is the median sales price growth year over year in King County, which really is, I think pulled down by Seattle.

And I’ve mentioned this over the past few months, Seattle’s really lagging behind the rest of King County and they’re even lagging behind the median. But because Seattle is so large and there’s so many houses in Seattle that are selling, and for perspective, we’re talking about like almost 1000 houses in Seattle versus a little over 100 in Bellevue. That’s a big difference. So it would take 10 Bellevue, all of the Eastside of Lake Washington to catch up to Seattle. So all those [inaudible 00:04:03] they’re getting canceled out, which I think does skew the data in King County a little bit. But if we look at Snohomish County on the north, so the other county that we service, almost 20% growth, 19.3% up year over year in Snohomish County and that’s across the board. And that’s much more evenly distributed across the Snohomish County.

You don’t have as many pockets that are super, super hot and not as hot. A lot of Snohomish County’s experiencing very similar things and there’s a lot more demand out there right now. And we can talk about that when we get towards the end of the video. But my main thoughts there, a lot of it is people’s changing ideals and what they’re looking for in the house. A few more data points as we look at the Seattle, Bellevue real estate market for comparison here. New listings in Seattle, we had, as I mentioned earlier, 911 new listings in the city of Seattle and that’s compared to 96 new listings in Bellevue. Both areas experienced fewer homes coming on the market this last year, but still significantly more, at least in Seattle, than we saw back in 2019. For those that are watching, I think a lot of you look back to 2008 to ’12 as kind of the last housing recession that we’ve had.

But if we look at the actual numbers and the data, back in 2018 we did have a recession and recessions are categorized as two quarters of going backwards in a row. We had about eight months of backwards appreciation in the Seattle Metro Area. And as we’re looking at that, we’re seeing that reflected in the data in 2019, we had less listings coming on the market. And as we look now, we’re actually seeing very similar numbers of listings coming on the market as well as sales. But the big difference is the amount of homes that are available. So back in 2019 in Seattle, there were about 1,237 homes… and not about, there were, that were for sale at the end of October and 195 in Bellevue. If we look to last year, we saw a decline and then this year we see an even steeper decline.

We have about 622 houses for sale at the end of the month, again, in Seattle and 34 for sale in Bellevue. So very, very dramatic decrease. Same number of listings approximately, not two different new listings, but so many more of those are being sold. And this is super easy to see as we look at the close sale numbers. We had 715 close sales in October, 2019. And as we look at October, 2021, we had 917 in Seattle. Bellevue, there were actually fewer close sales, again, 93 versus 115 this year. So we had quite a big difference in the amount of close sales more but similar numbers of listings, which really just means we’re seeing home sell faster. So 11 days, median days on market back in 2019, which is still really fast. Okay. So we’re talking about a recession where homes are still selling in 11 days.

So a little different than what we experienced back in 2008 to ’12, but same type of idea, prices going down. But now we’re back into that six days on market in Seattle, five days on market for the median, the average is a little bit different. The average back in 2019, 28 days on market in Seattle and 43 days on market in Bellevue. We all should have bought a house in Bellevue back in 2019 if we look back at this. And this last month 14 days on market on average in Seattle and 11 in Bellevue. So the closer those averages and medians are, the more similar it is for each house. Some houses are taking longer to sell, some are taking less time. Then if we see the median day back in 2019 as 11 days, then there are a lot of houses sitting on the market a lot longer than that.

And if we’re looking now, the median and the average is a lot closer. So there’s not as much variation in between the days on market for each house. What this equates to is house is selling above asking price. And this last month we saw houses selling 4.2% above asking price in Seattle. And if we look over at Bellevue, 12.2% above asking price. So pretty significant difference. And a lot of that comes down to the number of houses available, number of buyers interested and the money as well that’s in those markets and when there’s less houses and you’ve got people that are really competing over those houses, people are paying 20%, 25%, 30% over asking price. And back in 2015, ’16, when the market was super, super hot, 2017, Seattle was the place where we were seeing a lot of that growth. And we were also seeing crazy numbers, 15%, 18%, 20% over asking price.

That was unheard of, but now we’re seeing even more. We’re seeing 30%, 35% over asking. I’ve had clients offer more than 30% above asking price and not get their offers accepted. And we’re talking about like rock solid, no contingency, super tight contracts. And somebody else is still paying $50,000, $100,000 more. That’s disgusting to me, but that’s what’s going on right now. And that’s a large part because there’s just not enough houses for sale. A little application here. If you are a seller and you’re hearing all this, what that means for you is that you are in the driver’s seat right now in negotiations. Selling your house right now is amazing because you’ve got all these buyers that are competing and there’s no promises or guarantees that can be made that your house is going to have multiple offers. But there are lots of things that we can do to make sure that that happens, or at least give ourselves the best chance.

And the fact of the matter is, the majority of houses are selling above asking price with better terms than they used to back in 2019 as we’re talking, and even 2020 we’re seeing even more and more competition. And I don’t think that’s going to change here over the next few months. I see inventory continuing to decrease, and I don’t even know how that’s possible. [inaudible 00:09:57] like less than half a month’s supply of homes for sale across King County and to Snohomish County. It’s just hardly any house available for people. And what that really means is if houses don’t come on this next week, there’s not going to be any houses left. Like that’s how quickly everything’s selling. So as a seller, great time to be selling and historically we would say, “Oh, the spring’s the best time to sell.” The weather’s great around here, which is a big part of that.

But right now there’s so much competition, it really doesn’t matter if you wait for the spring. We might see, we might see home prices keep going up and that would be maybe a motivation to wait for the spring and hope that home prices are even higher then. I don’t see it getting more competitive though. And if you’re somebody maybe that wants to buy and sell, same time, this might be a great time to make that happen. Historically, the fall is when the buyers that need to maybe make a transition and buy a new house and sell their house, it’s a little bit easier to do that. I don’t know if that’s really the case this year. But if you’re somebody who’s thinking about maybe trying to buy and sell, you might be able to get that process started now. And then when it comes time to selling your house, we’re going to be early 2022, and it’ll be a great time for you to be selling your house.

If you’re a buyer and you’re watching this video, you’re probably a little discouraged and that’s fair. Completely fair to be a little bit discouraged. And I don’t share these stats for you to be discouraged, but I do want people to know and be realistic about what they’re getting themselves into and be able to confront the reality of the situation and that is it’s very competitive market. At the same time, if you want to buy a house and live here in the Seattle area, we can make it happen. So we’re having clients every single month getting into new houses. So it’s definitely possible, but I think it takes a lot of planning and intentionality and strategy. It’s not very easy to buy a house right now. So if you’re somebody who’s thinking, “Hey, I want to buy a house in the next three to six months.”

We need to get started. We need to start having conversations. We need to do a buyer consultation. We need to get you set up for success. We need to make sure that you understand the process, the strategies and the real competitive nature of the market. I think if you’re somebody who’s super aggressive, you have the biggest advantage right now in buying a house because the people that are the most aggressive are the ones having success.

If you’re somebody who really could benefit from some coaching on how to do that and would be willing to, I think, again, great time for you to jump in and be successful. I think there are certain buyers though that maybe aren’t as motivated or aren’t in as much of a need of buying a house, or maybe not even sure, I think it’s time to have a conversation and decide, are you somebody that is really ready to buy a house right now or maybe do you need to wait and look in the future?

So I would say if you’re considering a purchase, even in the slightest, you want to get started sooner rather than later right now, because it’s usually taking a little bit longer for people to buy a house. And that’s just because there’s so much competition for each one. But at the same time, if you have a tight timeline and you’re motivated and competitive, we can make it happen. Thanks so much for watching my Seattle real estate market update for November, 2021.

First off, if you’re watching this video and this update for the very first time, you’ve never seen one of these before, please subscribe to my channel so that you can see these videos on a monthly basis. We post these every month and also, all the other content on the channel. And secondly, if you’re somebody who’s been watching this channel for a long time, I’m requesting one of two actions. Number one, if we haven’t met and you haven’t bought a house before or sold a house and you want to connect, please reach out. I’d love to have a conversation with you and just get to know you a little bit. And secondly, you could also consider sharing it with somebody else who could benefit from it. Maybe social media is a great way to get the word out.