Seattle Home Prices Are No Longer Falling Off a Cliff

Are home prices still declining in the greater Seattle area? Yes.  However, according to  the Case-Shiller Index , they are no longer falling off the cliff. No longer do you need your climbing ropes to hang on, you probably just need some skis to help take you more gently down the pricing slope.  Standard and Poor’s Case-Shiller Index tracks the real estate activity in 20 cities all over the country. The decline in nationwide real estate prices was 18.6% from last February, however, Case-Shiller is based on a survey of 20 cities.  Real estate on the Seattle-Eastside declined 15.4% in value from last February.  We are not the best, but we are not the worst either.

There’s a lot of additional press and additional opinions raised all over the newspapers and blogs.  It’s always interesting to see the kind of  reaction people have to the same story. Here’s the Wall St Journal reaction to the story from their website:

“While the declines in residential real estate continued into February, we witnessed some deceleration in the rate of decline in some of the markets,” said David Blitzer, head of the S&P index committee.

Prices are “no longer falling off a cliff,” wrote Patrick Newport, an economist for IHS Global Insight. “Instead, they are rolling down a steep hill.”

The Seattle Times/Associated Press story written by Drew DeSilva reported:

Seattle-area home prices dropped an annual 15.4 percent in February from February 2008, compared with a 15 percent annual decline in January.

Seattle’s February annual price drop was the ninth-smallest decline among the 20 metro areas in the Case-Shiller index.

Seattle prices fell 1.5 percent in February from January, the fourth-smallest monthly decline among the 20 metro areas. The average monthly decline among the 20 cities was 2.2 percent.

There’s no doubt we’re still in a tough real estate market.  But there are some lights on the horizon in the Seattle/Eastside real estate market.

Inventory is stabilizing throughout King County. Some weeks inventory increases, but in some weeks there’s a drop. It’s at a higher point for the year right now as 13,306 properties are for sale.  However, last year at this time, there were 14,321 properties listed.  We are far from the highest point of inventory which was reached at the end of July, 2008 with 16,618 homes for sale in King County.  The largest number of properties for sale in King County so far this year has been 13,414 back in March.

The number of home sales in King County reached the second highest number of home sales for a week, 560 sales, since July, 2007. Five of the last 8 weeks were amongst the highest number of King County home sales in the last two years.

There’s a definite interest in real estate and buying homes. There wouldn’t be so much press written about real estate if this were not the case.   I’ve written a number of blog posts on the first time home buyer tax incentive and all have had more hits than any of the other posts I’ve written. Previously, my posts on the Seattle Street of  Dreams had received the most hits. But of my top 8 posts, according to WordPress, which is this blog platform, three of the five posts are about the stimulus package and the first time home buyer incentive.  The top post has received 3700+ hits.  I recently wrote about Washington State’s plan to allow the $8000 tax incentive to be applied towards a down payment.  This post, too, is getting numerous hits.  This tells me people are searching for information.  They are searching for information about the options available to buy homes.

Listings are getting a lot of showings. Buyers are out there as the number of showings has increased.

I feel more homes will sell over the next few months.  I do not feel that prices are heading up any time soon.

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