Downtown Seattle Condos | Blog & Reviews by Wendy & Marco

Washington State adds 10,200 Jobs in June

The Seattle area's unemployment rate fell to 7.2% compared to over 9% at the end of last year.  In fact, the state added over 10K jobs in June mostly in professional and business services.  We're not out of the woods yet though with just about 1/2 of the jobs lost in the recession regained.  Here's the full report.

Seattle Condo Market Update: Jun 2012

June numbers are in and the Seattle condo recovery story appears to be an encouraging, if slightly boring trend (much like our national economy).  

• At a macro level, after a more sluggish 1Q12,  the Seattle condo market is clearing it's fairly modest inventory quite regularly.
• Sales were up slightly every month for the year 2012 including June 2012.  
• Median prices were as steady as a rock holding between $260-$270k for the last 3 months (though this was up considerably over our Jan-Feb median price of $200-210k).  
• Inventory has also been steady at around 600 listings since March (though down over Jan-Feb inventory of around 700 units).
• At a neighborhood level, there aren't any big outliers either.  Every place seems to be following the same pattern (slow 1Q12 and now steady 2Q12).

I suppose this is the new normal :-)


 
 

Seattle Bank Owned & Short Sale Condo Properties

More than 14 months ago we looked at the inventory and sales levels for short sale and bank owned properties. Today, let's see how that market is looking and as a seller, could we be expecting more bank-owned inventory coming on the market?

Here are a couple of data points worth noting:

• Fourteen months ago, we had about 264 short sales and bank owned properties on the market, as of last week, it was only 124 units, a pretty significant drop in terms of units but as a percentage against the total inventory level, it's only a drop of 3.8%.
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• Listings sold over the last six months on the other hand has actually increased from 173 to 315 units. As a percentage against all sales, it's an increase of 6%.
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• Bank owned inventory has dropped by more than 60% from April 2011 and short sale condo sales have gone up by almost twice as much. 
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• Short sales and bank owned condos still made up about 30% of all sales.