Snohomish County Real Estate Statistics Feb 2011 [vid]

Snohomish County Real Estate Statistics.

Snohomish County Homes Trends and Pricing.  Learn where the market is going, what is affecting Snohomish County Home Prices and why.

A class on WA Real Estate Statistics where we dove into Snohomish County Real Estate Statistics and the market.  How the market is being affected by Bank Owned Properties, Short Sales, the Economy, etc.  and When did Snohomish County Real Estate Peak?

 

 

Snohomish County Real Estate Statistics for Feb 2011 Video

Note:  Sorry some of the footage sucks. So I posted the pics of the graphs I am talking about below in the transcript and copies for you to download.

Video Transcription

Anton: Okay. Basically, we’re going to talk about Snohomish County real estate statistics today, how it relates to the market, what’s been going on in the market. Second, we’re going to talk about foreclosures, foreclosure inventory, and then right after that we’re going to talk about any one of your listings and how they need to be priced and what we can do to get them sold.

So I’m going to basically just blast through this stuff as quick as humanly possible. Feel free to interrupt me at any time. We’re going to start basically with the overview. Basically, what’s been going on in our market? (referring to the Snohomish County 2 Year Median Price graph)

Red bars are for your For Sale, blue is your Under Contract, and green is your Sold. This is a two year look at it.

Participant: One more time, the color choices?

Anton: Red is for your For Sale, blue is your Under Contract, and
green is your Sold. What’s the trend that we’re basically
seeing?

Participant: Less inventory, less sales.

Anton: This is strictly price.

Participant: Oh, I gotcha.

Participant: Going down.

Anton: We’re going down, absolutely correct. So right now, in the last two years, our For Sales properties have gone down 17.8%. Our market peaked in June of ’07. Since then, we have come down over 30%, and this is just a two year look. We can look at more.

What’s also very interesting is how come the For Sale inventory has dropped more than the Sold inventory? What is that basically telling us?

Participant: I would say in your relationship it has dropped about the same.

Anton: Actually, For Sale is down 24% and Sold is down 17.8%. If the product that’s on the market in Snohomish County has depreciated more than the product that’s sold, what is that telling you?

Participant: Well, I don’t know if it’s as much a reflection of what’s happening today as much as it is a reflection of what happened two years ago. Two years ago sellers were still in total denial that we were retreating. And so, they were still seeing, oh well, if I just wait. I’m not in a hurry. The market will come to me because I have the coolest house on the market. I have golden nails, and you haven’t seen them yet.

Participant: Does that mean we’re reluctant to sell your homes then?

Anton: It means we may not be realistic in relation to our prices. What you can see is see the differential between the For Sale and the Sold, how it started to get smaller over time? So sellers had started to become more realistic.

The second thing that you see, too, is you see that these sellers, if they would have priced their home correctly would
have netted more money quicker. The third thing you see is because they didn’t, they actually ended up losing approximately 6% or more by waiting.

Participant: They don’t realize that now is the new norm.

Participant: Are you saying the six . . . we only lost 6% in average sales price?

Anton: No. I’m saying that if this seller took two years to sell . . .

Participant: I gotcha.

Anton: . . . he lost 6% in addition to the depreciation of the market just by being behind the market. Basically, what it is . . .

Participant: How do you come up with that figure, Anton? Where does
that come from?

Anton: We’re talking about this. You can see it’s that simple chasing the market down thing. The For Sales are chasing the Solds. We’ve got our market. Our market is basically going down like this. [makes sound] And the seller says, “Hey based on the comps and the data, I want to price my home here, slightly above the market.”

We all know that comps are a picture of the past. They may be 30, 60, 90 days old. They have priced their home here, and then a little more time . . . so this is time. A little more time goes by, and all of a sudden the market’s down here. And they say, “Oh, well, I guess I need to reduce my price.” And then, a little more time goes by, and they say, “I guess I need to reduce my price.”

The moral of the story is it is clearly evident that over the last two years sellers have been chasing the market down. We need to, as real estate agents, educate our sellers on why pricing is the most important thing that they need to do. This, in today’s market, is more important than everything else, because if they’re not priced well, the market will leave them and cost them more money in addition to the depreciation.

Let’s just go quickly into our one year stats. For February 2011, right here this top one you’re looking at overall
Snohomish County, number of units down 13%. When you compare February of 2011 with February of 2010, year-to-date we’re down 4%.

What’s interesting about that? What was happening last February?

Participant: Tax credit.

Anton: The first time home buyer tax credit. Was that a normal market?

Participant: No. No, it was not. It was subsidized.

Anton: Subsidized. The market was artificially inflated. So it’s not surprising that the number of total sales would be down relative to that, because what we were doing when we subsidized the market?

Participant: We basically were grabbing buyers from the future.

Anton: We were borrowing buyers from the future and putting them into homes today. Moving on to average price, for Snohomish County, basically, the average price when you compare February of 2010 to February of 2011, down 11.6%, year-to-date down10.6%. Median price on February 2011, February 2010, down 13.6% and down
10.7%.

If you guys were in the last stats class, why is that majorly significant right now? What is significant about those
depreciation numbers? Overall Snohomish County in 2010 depreciated 8.6%. Snohomish County depreciated 8.6%, which would be around a half percent to three-quarters of a percent a month.

It showed the same thing in January, by the way. But in February we’re down on our average price 11.6% and 10.8% year-to-date. What is that telling us?

Participant: It’s depreciating faster now.

Anton: We’re picking up velocity in a downward direction. We have started depreciating faster in February that we have in the last 13 months. Now, what does that mean coming back to our example of our seller over here? You’re going to talk to your seller, and they’re talking about their home that’s on the market. What do you need to tell them today that was not happening two weeks, 30 days ago?

Participant: We’ve got to price it less and less.

Anton: We have to price it more aggressive now because the market is picking up velocity in a downward direction, and you’re going to lose more money faster. Does that make sense?

Participant: Yeah. Why is it doing that? I mean, we just got news of Boeing. Why hasn’t this started to pick up? People tell me that it’s going to be better now.

Anton: That’s absolutely a great question. Boeing tanker, what is that going to do for us?

Participant: Provide jobs, new jobs.

Anton: Jobs, okay.

Participant: The jobs are already there. They’re just reintegrating the people in a different department.

Participant: There are supposedly, if it’s factual, 11,000 new jobs.

Anton: Yeah. So it’s going to create jobs, and then more important than jobs, what does it create for the local market?

Participant: A stimulus.

Anton: Optimism.

Participant: Confidence.

Anton: Consumer confidence, absolutely. What’s the third thing that it’s going to do? It’s going to be a chain of events. It’s going to create optimism, consumer confidence. It’s going to create jobs. And then, what’s the next thing that’s going to happen?

Participant: People are happy, and they’re buying more property. They’re buying more houses.

Anton: People theoretically will have money. There’s going to be a little bit more in the economy. Theoretically, it should slow down the rate of foreclosures. People have more money. They can make their house payment. Less foreclosures equals less inventory on the market which equals stabilization in prices, and that’s why I think it leads to price stabilization and it will be one of many factors.

Do I think it’s going to stop this? No. Do I think it’s going to help this out? Absolutely. And all we need is a few factors like that. Also, if it helps the overall unemployment rate, which right now in Snohomish County is almost 10%, to go down, these depreciation numbers will slow down. And once they slow down and we start to get the market to stabilize, then they will stop.

But it is one of the first steps in the right direction. That does not necessarily mean it’s going to happen tomorrow. I feel
more realistically you’re still looking at a 12 to 18 month time frame. It’s just a factor that will help to start buoying up the market, and if consumer confidence rises, that will help buoy up the market faster than anything else.

Okay. Just to blast through the rest of the cities in relation to what’s going on, because I also want to talk about the
foreclosures stats. Lake Stevens . . .

Participant: Wow. Look at that.

Anton: Lake Stevens took a beating. Lake Stevens, their number of closed units was down 49.3%. That’s almost a 50% change. The year-to-date closed units is down 37.3%. Once again, going back to your seller, you’re in Lake Stevens, what are you going to say to them? You have half the amount of sales going on right now as you did last year. You need to be priced correctly. Your house needs to look beautiful. You need to shampoo your carpets, whatever it’s going to take to get that home sold.

Average price, we’re down 11.1% comparing February to February and down 11.7% a year-to-date.

Lynnwood, why is Lynnwood looking better than everywhere else?

Participant: Why?

Anton: I don’t know the exact reason. It was just kind of a question.

Participant: That’s where I grew up in Seattle, where life begins and ends.

Anton: It’s probably because it’s closer to Seattle.

Participant: It’s only the unit count that’s up.

Anton: Correct. Prices are still bad.

Participant: All it is most likely is you have, and I’m just guessing, that you have people that have decided that (a) it’s a good time to buy. You have enough inventory and it’s gotten to a price where price and affordability for Lynnwood still works, and there’s enough demand because it’s not so far outside of the commutable distance into major metropolitan.

Anton: Absolutely. I 100% agree. What’s very interesting, too, is this is most likely in relation to the affordability. Your average price depreciated greater than Snohomish County, and so did its median price, which is probably then getting to the affordability issues. It’s now becoming very affordable for people to live in Lynnwood and commuting times.

Stats for Everett are looking pretty much about the same. Your February of 2010 versus February of 2011 are down 6.9% in average price. Year-to-date down 11.7%. Median price definitely taking a beating, down 17.9% in February. Does everyone know what the difference between median and average is?

Participant: Median is just the middle.

Anton: Median is the middle. If the median is depreciating greater than the average, what does that mean?

Participant: You’re in less higher end sales. I mean, that’s really all. . .

Anton: Your higher end sales have moved down more.

Participant: Right. The unit count in the upper end is slowed, and so it’s, yeah.

Anton: Okay. Moving on to Marysville’s stats. Basically, your average price here in the city of Marysville down 19% when you compare February of 2010 and February 2011. Year-to-date, we’re down 12.5% with a median depreciation of 18.4% behind February to February, and year-to-date down 12%.

Participant: That is bad. Last month, we barely changed percentages at all. Average sales price year-over-year moved by 0.1. Median moved by 0.1. Is February an anomaly, or is it a trend?

Anton: We won’t know that until March and April happen.

Participant: What is it? I don’t know because I haven’t looked. How bad was it in December year-over-year?

Anton: It wasn’t that bad. December mirrored most of what had happened in 2010, which was a half a percent to a three-quarter percent depreciation. For some reason, in February we got annihilated.

Participant: Why, Anton?

Anton: I wish I knew.

Participant: Well, we’ve lost about a week for snow, maybe.

Participant: Short month.

Participant: Short month, to begin with, but that’s unit count. That’s not the price.

Anton: And also, it doesn’t matter. It was a short month in 2010.

Participant: Can I propose a theory?

Anton: Let’s rock ‘n’ roll. That’s what we’re here to talk about is just what we think.

Participant: Is it possible that the banks that have too much inventory dumped inventory to prices after the fiscal year was over, actually after the calendar year was over, and put property on the market at more assertive prices. Those sales closed in February, and so that’s a different trend than it was, say, a year ago.

Anton: Possibly.

Participant: I don’t know. You work more with that end of the business than we do.

Anton: We’re going to look at foreclosure stats, and we’re going to talk about how that inventory is rising. And most likely the answer to your question is bank owned properties and short sales based on their total number of volume is dragging down the average price. And so, I can’t say definitively, but I can say most likely that’s one of the reasons.

End of Transcript

 

Snohomish County Real Estate Months of Inventory Available

Overall Snohomish County has 9.2 Months Worth of Supply.  This puts us into a Buyers Market.  A Neutral Market is defined as around 6 months worth of Supply.  Also, another way to talk about Months Worth of Supply is.  …For every one Buyer there are 9.2 Sellers.  Notice how Lynnwood is below the county with 7.6 Months and wow Lake Stevens sticks out like a sore thumb at 14.1Months of Supply.

Please Leave you comments and questions below.  Feel free to contact us if you have any specific questions about a neighbor or area because each has their own specific market.

 

Snohomish County Real Estate Statistics Feb 2011 Handouts

Snohomish County 2 Year Median Price Graph February 2011

Snohomish County Real Estate Statistics Feb 2011

Snohomish County Real Estate Statistics Months of Supply Feb 2011

 

Additional Videos: 

Snohomish County WA Real Estate Foreclosure Statistics Jan 2011