Case-Shiller: Only Seattle’s High Tier Gets a Summer Gain

Before we get going with this month’s Case-Shiller post, I’d like to apologize for the lack of an update last month. Long story short, this particular duty slipped through the cracks while I was out on leave. We heard from a number of readers who were lamenting the missing post. Rest assured, we have heard you and it will not happen again!

It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). The Case-Shiller data is generally considered to be the most reliable measure of overall home price changes for a region, since they only consider repeat sales of homes when calculating their index, instead of looking at all the homes that sold in a given month.

For the full source data behind this post, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website. For a more detailed explanation of how the Case-Shiller Home Price Index 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. – July data is released in September).

Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Seattle area* as of July:

Only two of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw a decrease in their HPI between June and July (vs. none from May to June): Phoenix and Las Vegas. Weirdly, Detroit saw the biggest increase, followed by Minneapolis.

Here’s a look at the latest local tiered data, back through 2000:

And here’s a closer look at the recent changes, with the vertical and horizontal axes zoomed in to show just the last year:

Only Seattle’s high tier was up in July, and then only slightly. Month to month, the low tier was down 0.7%, the middle tier fell 0.1%, and the high tier increased 0.1%.

Read the rest of this entry »

August Insider Report: Seattle-Area Real Estate Market Still Chilled

Greetings, Redfinnians!

We’re working on some new changes to our monthly Insider Reports that will bring together the expertise of our local agents with the unique market insights that we dig out of our vast array of real estate data every month.

In the mean time, rather than skipping out on August’s data entirely, here’s a “lite” version of our monthly report, including our Redfin Heat Index, the heat map, and the hottest / coldest neighborhoods.

First up is our national Redfin Heat Index* ranking table at right. As you can see, not much change for Seattle. With prices down eight percent balanced out by a slightly tight 4.2 months of supply, we’re still on the cool end of the scale, but not dramatically lower than most of the other cities Redfin serves.

Washington DC continues to be the hottest market in the nation, while Long Island is still pulling up the rear with falling prices and a dramatic 11.1 months of supply. Yikes!

Next up, let’s have a look at an update to our interactive Redfin Heat Index map broken down by zip code, based on August data. Note that we only calculate the Redfin Heat Index for zip codes with at least 20 sales in August 2011 and August 2010.

Next, let’s have a look at the hottest and coldest Seattle-area neighborhoods in August.

King County’s 5 Hottest Neighborhoods in August

The only real surprise in that hottest list is Delridge. Perhaps homes in Delridge have gotten cheap enough to drive some heat back into that area?

King County’s 5 Coldest Neighborhoods in August

All righty, that’s it for this month. Stay tuned next month for our new and improved Insider Report!

As usual, you can download our comprehensive spreadsheet and dig into the data for yourself. Inside you’ll find county, city, and neighborhood information galore. You can also liven up the place by posting a comment below.

• MOS = Months of Supply: End of Month Inventory / Closed Sales in the Month
• $YOY = Year-over-year change in the median price per square foot.
• Heat Index = ((MOS – 6.0) * -7) + (($YOY – 5%) * 2) + 75