Archive for February, 2009
February 27, 2009
Open House Date & Time:
Sunday, March 1, 1-4pm
4115 Midvale Ave N
Seattle, WA 98103
Seller Comments
Coffee Shop of Choice:
Starbucks on 45th
Favorite Restaurant in the Area:
Tutta Bella
Favorite Places to Go:
GasWorks Park, Guild on 45th, Tweedy and Pops, Wallingford Center, Trophy Cupcakes, Burke Gillman Trail
Best Features of the Home:
Great curb appeal, cozy and light-filled, quiet street, great neighbors
Favorite Room:
Media room in finished basement
What’s in the neighborhood?:
GasWorks Park, Guild on 45th, Tweedy and Pops, Wallingford Center, Trophy Cupcakes, Burke Gillman Trail, Joule, Tilth, Smash Wine Bar, many other restaurants! QFC, Bartells
What you will miss most:
Vibrant, walkable community, neighbors, great restaurants, easy access to all points
February 27, 2009
1) Queen Anne
1803 Bigelow Ave N, Seattle $1,715,000
Open Sunday, March 1, 1-4pm
2) Montlake
1824 24th Ave. East, Seattle $799,950
Open Sunday, March 1, 1-4pm
February 25, 2009
We’ve all been reading about how foreclosures are dragging down home-prices across the country. But what effect have foreclosures had on the Seattle market?
To answer this question, Redfin stats man Mose Andre took a look at the percentage of single-family residence homes for sale that are being sold by a bank, also known as REO (Real Estate Owned) listings.
Across all the markets we serve — Seattle, San Francisco, Orange County, San Diego, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington DC and Chicago – that percentage has increased from 3% in April 2008 to 11% as of Monday.
Seattle has also seen an increase, but it has been on a much smaller scale, from .3% of single-family listings to 1.3%.
Foreclosures Have Had a Small Effect on the Seattle Market So Far...
To assess the effect that foreclosures were having on the remaining inventory, we graphed in green the average asking dollars per square foot for listings on the market, excluding bank-owned listings. Since we measured price changes in terms of average dollars per square foot, we excluded any listings where the square footage was zero.
The Eastside has also seen an increase, but on a very small scale.
Foreclosures Have Had an Even Smaller Impact on Seattle's Eastside
To get a sense of how different a market can be, compare our markets to what is happening in San Bernadino, where nearly half the listings are being sold by a bank:
The San Bernadino Real Estate Market is a Blood Bath
This explains why Seattle prices have declined 13% year over year, while Southern California prices have declined by 26% year over year.
How do we identify bank-owned listings? Well in Seattle as in many other places, the local broker database doesn’t identify bank-owned listings as such, but we obtain our own supply of REO properties by scanning bank sites, and we search all other listings for terms like:
- REO
- foreclosure, foreclosed (but not pre-foreclosure)
We also search for a combination of:
- lender
- bank or banked
- corporate
and:
What this means is that comparisons between regions are odiferous; any database that explicitly identifies REOs will have a higher detected incidence of REO properties. But what still seems clear is that bank-owned listings are less common in Seattle that elsewhere, but their prevalence is rising.
February 24, 2009
It’s time once again for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI).
For an explanation of how the Case-Shiller data is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. – December data is released in February).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Seattle area* as of December:
December 2008
Month to Month: Down 3.6%
Year to Year: Down 13.4%
Change from Peak: Down 16.7% in 17 months
The following chart shows the Seattle HPI scaled such that the July 2007 peak is 100% on the y-axis. Data on the x-axis is scaled to display the last time (pre-peak) the Seattle HPI was at or lower than it was in the latest data (September 2005).
According to the Case-Shiller index, as of December home prices in Seattle have “rewound” a little over three years.
Here’s a chart of Case-Shiller HPIs for all the markets that Redfin serves, so you can compare Seattle’s performance to other areas across the country:
And here’s our final chart, in which we line up the peak Case-Shiller HPI value for each of Redfin’s markets, so we can see how long each market has been declining, and how much it has dropped from the peak.
Although home prices in Seattle have been declining for less time than most other cities, the price drops off the peak here have been relatively severe, bested only by Los Angeles in Redfin’s 7-city sample. For some perspective, home prices in Seattle have fallen more in 17 months than they have in 39 months in Boston.
*[Case-Shiller defines Seattle as the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties.]
February 21, 2009
Open House Dates and Times:
Sunday, February 22nd, 1-4pm
17930 NE 90th St
Redmond, WA 98052
Seller Comments
Coffee Shop of Choice:
I like the French drip coffee you can get at the local Than Brother’s Pho noodle restaurant.
Favorite Restaurant in the Area:
Whole Foods and PCC Natural Markets are very close by. They’re convenient when you don’t want to cook. They have nice delis and you can get food that’s not so greasy.
Favorite Places to Go:
Bella Bottega theaters are close by. The Proclub and Gold’s gym are very close as well.
Best Features of the Home:
The home is well laid out, there’s no wasted space. The heater warms up really quick, even when it’s cold outside. Most of the living area is on the second and third levels make it a comfortable space to be in.
Favorite Room:
Living room. It’s just a comfortable place to be, with light toned wood.
What’s in the neighborhood?:
Conveniently close to Microsoft, major name stores, restaurants, theater, post office, Marymoor park not far way either.
What you will miss most:
The amount of time saved because it’s close to everything. Also, since the unit is on Avondale close to 520, even when traffic is bad, it’s doesn’t take much time to get where I want to go or get home from work.
February 20, 2009
1.) Queen Anne
1803 Bigelow Ave N, Seattle $1,715,000
Open Sunday, February 22nd, 1-4pm
2.) Maple Leaf
1018 NE 97th St, Seattle $499,950
Open Sunday, February 22nd, 12-4pm
February 20, 2009
Let’s take our monthly look at which cities and towns have the most price reductions.
The following charts show the percent of MLS, FSBO or REO listings that were price-reduced at some point before leaving the market (either sold or removed unsold from the market) in the past 90 days. Cities/towns or neighborhoods in which the number of homes taken off the market was too small to provide believable estimates are excluded from ranking.
For those that are interested, I have uploaded the full data set in Excel format here. The downloadable Excel file also includes charts showing the top ten cities/towns/neighborhoods with the least reduced-price listings.
First up are the top ten cities with the most price-reduced listings:
Of the 128 cities/towns we ranked in the Seattle area this month, 95 (74%) had price-reduced ratios of fifty percent or more. Moving up from #2 last month to #1 this month, the town of Brier not only wins the distinction of having the greatest percentage of price-reduced listings in the Seattle area, but also managed to have the largest percentage of any city in all eight markets Redfin serves (by a full 5 percentage points). Um, congratulations?
Getting a little more granular, let’s look at the top ten Seattle area neighborhoods for price reductions:
Of the 104 neighborhoods we ranked in the Seattle area this month, 51 (49%) had a price-reduced ratio of fifty percent or more. Only #1-ranked Fauntleroy carried over from last month’s top ten to this month.
There is definitely some consistency in the number of homes seeing price reductions month to month in the cities and neighborhoods around the Seattle area. If finding a good deal on a home is important to you, these neighborhoods might be a good place to start, as higher ratios of reduced-price homes indicate sellers that need to sell and are willing to lower the price to do so.
February 11, 2009
Redfin’s own Seattle-based agents have always served the Kitsap area, but now we’re partnering with two more agents in Kitsap to provide even better, more local service for our customers.
Many Applied, Few Were Chosen
We put our partners through the ringer by conducting interviews and requiring at least three customer referrals; the average Kitsap partner has completed over 30 deals. All of our partner agents have embraced Redfin’s transparency ideal: you see every transaction and every customer review, good and bad. Just like with Redfin’s own agents, there’s no obligation. In addition to getting great service, you’ll also save money — usually around $1,000-$2,000.
Learn more about our partner agent program by reading Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman’s blog post.
If you’re an agent and you’d like to become a Redfin partner, please get in touch.
Sign up to be notified when we come to your area because in the next three months, Redfin will be adding partner agents in south and east Pierce, north Snohomish, Thurston, and east King Counties.
Partner Agents Serving Kitsap
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Beth
Serving the Kitsap Peninsula
Homes Closed: 30+
Experience: 10 years
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Sam
Serving the Kitsap Peninsula
Homes Closed: 25+
Experience: 6 years
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February 7, 2009
Let’s have an update on where buyers are currently getting the biggest discount off the asking price. Our goal in sharing this data is to help potential buyers to know which neighborhoods are softer in terms of sale price discounts off list price, to better equip you when making an offer, and help you know where to look for potential bargains.
In the charts below, we have taken all sales data from the last two months in Redfin’s Seattle service area and sorted it by zip code. We calculated the overall difference between the sale price and the list price. Note that this reflects the final list price, after all price drops in the listing. Any zips with fewer than ten sales are excluded from the top and bottom ten rankings, but interested readers may download the full data summary in Excel format (xls).
Here are the top ten zip codes with the largest overall discount:
There continues to be a general trend of more expensive zip codes showing the largest discounts in Seattle. Of course, every trend has exceptions, and the #1 zip code 98424 in Tacoma is definitely a good example, with an average selling price of just $269,116.
Here are the ten zip codes with the smallest discounts:
15 of the 120 zip codes we ranked came in with discounts under 2%, indicating that either buyers are more willing to pay asking price or sellers in those regions are better at pricing their homes appropriately to the market in the first place. Only 98002 (Auburn) and 98387 (Spanaway) had homes that sold on average for more than asking.
Only one of the top 10 zip codes that are selling for low discounts or over asking had an average list price above $400k (98056—Kennydale).
Of the 3,370 sales we tracked in the 2-month period, 50 homes sold for 20% or more off the asking price, while 426 homes sold for more than asking.
