Seattle Washington Real Estate

Seattle WA real estate market again beats the national picture

The latest report, U.S. April S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city NATIONAL home price index down record 15.3% UPDATE, just came out and it is not a rosy scenario. NATIONALLY home prices are plunging! NATIONALLY Home prices are falling the fastest in more than two decades.  This is the sixteenth straight month of yearly declines!  Get it… NATIONALLY. 

Check out the Comparison Chart below for an insight into how National Prices vs. Seattle real estate prices changed over time.

And that is how it is NATIONALLY.  But you don’t live NATIONALLY.  Seattle didn’t experience the irrational exuberance of places like San Diego, Denver and many other large cities.  I don’t know, I guess that we were just slow.  What luck.  You don’t go up so far, so fast.  So I would suspect that you don’t go down so far, so fast.

Last I heard Seattle WA, well, King County WA anyhow, had a price decline, year over year, of 5.3%!  That sounds like a lot to me.  But it also sounds like too much also.  Of course as soon as I write this article another source comes out with 4.8% drop in King County WA.  Numbers are simply coming too fast to keep up.  It seems like an onslaught, doesn’t it? 

So I ran the numbers straight from the MLS

I will get these numbers organized and in a presentable fashion over the weekend, but the results are (drum roll please)…. home prices in King County WA did DROP.  King County WA home prices dropped a whopping 1.3%!  WHAT, how does that work.  Consider this, the 5.3 percent drop considers ALL HOMES, ALL PRICE ranges.  The statistics don’t take into consideration what the mortgage market has done to the JUMBO mortgage market in King County, Seattle WA, Bellevue WA and other cities.

The Jumbo mortgage market in King County was virtually not functional, and still has major problems.  This lack of liquidity for jumbo home mortgages made the market for more expensive homes in King County and the Seattle WA area come to a virtual standstill.  By the way, mortgages for Conventional financing were still available, albeit to fewer people. 

Let’s imagine that there are not any homes where, after down payments, mortgages would never be above the conventional mortgage limit of $417,000.  Higher priced homes simply don’t exist.  What would be the price decline the Seattle Wa and King County area have experienced over the past year.  That would be 1.3%.

If you find yourself looking to buy or sell a home where the home buyer would need a jumbo mortgage you would do well to check out my blog dealing with jumbo mortgages (in this case a 5/1 mortgage, for the Seattle WA mortgage market, of around 5.625% with an APR of 6.058%

Homes which had mortgages of less than $417,000 had a price decline of 1.3%

The point is, you don’t live in a NATIONAL market, you don’t live in China either, so why compare us to China. Come to think of it nobody confuses our market with China’s.  We all need to think LOCAL and ACT local.  Our prices did not drop 15.3%!  Our prices did not drop 5.3%!  Yes, some of our fellow homeowners are having a tough time with their higher priced homes.  But that doesn’t translate into “The sky is falling” for everyone.  in fact the astute home buyer in the Seattle WA market should be looking at making offers on homes because most home sellers are, in fact, listening to the NATIONAL news and not paying attention to the biggest investment in most peoples lives, their Seattle area homes!

For those of you who are looking for a home with less than a $417,000 mortgage this means that if this horrible price decrease continues for another year you may lose another 1.3%, but guess what… that’s almost a statistical anomaly!  I will write that article soon.  You have put your life on hold.  You have not moved on to your dream home and for what?  Most like we all have fallen into the trap of the National news.  Could it be that we look like deer in a headlight?

I am not a Pollyanna (a person regarded as being foolishly or blindly optimistic) and I am not someone who wants you to make foolish decisions.  I actually want to know what is really happening in the market and relate it to you in the hopes that you can make the best home buying decisions possible.  Especially when the analysis of information shows that the Seattle WA, King County WA and surrounding communities are really not dropping as much as we thought.

I will be writing a bit on how the mortgage market for Seattle WA is being impacted by what is happening due to the sub-prime mortgage debacle.  You wouldn’t believe the levels of criminality that has caused this true disaster.

Enjoy my blogs and subscribe to them.  I believe that you will get a lot of good information which you can use in your upcoming Seattle WA mortgage and real estate decisions.  Begin your Seattle WA home buying experience by being pre-approved by my trusted mortgage affiliates, one of whom is my son, Tyler.

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in buying or selling your next property,

please call me, Dick Todhunter, at 206-898-3776

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 What does this chart tell you about the Seattle WA real estate market?

1. The BLUE line is the Seattle Wa real estate market and you can see that we lagged the NATIONAL real estate market over time and in levels of appreciation.
2. The BROWN line represents the NATIONAL real estate market, which started it’s decline from a higher level of inflated prices and it’ precitious decline began significantly before Seattle home prices began their modest decline.
3. You can see how using NATIONAL home price indexes, typically raved about on national and local media sources, is not an adequate representation of our LOCAL market.  Just look at the differences in the peaks and downward slope dynamics.