Seattle Greenlaker January 29, 2016 6:30am

Kris Murphy and Daniela Dombrowski are Seattle Greenlaker sponsors and real estate brokers who live and specialize in the Wallingford and Green Lake neighborhoods. They practice out of the Keller Williams Greater Seattle office located on the corner of Stone Way and N 45th St.

For the last few years when writing our annual review of the neighborhood real estate market we have been talking about rising prices, bidding wars and the shortage of inventory. Well, 2015 was no different, if anything there are even less homes for sale and the competition among buyers has intensified even further. Below find the 2015 numbers and charts based on hyper-local data capturing only Green Lake and Tangletown as outlined in the map above. The numbers are split into single family homes including townhomes, and due to popular demand, we are also providing the condominium stats this time around.

Statistics in the tables below are based on home sales in the area outlined on the map above and are derived from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service data. In this forum, we will focus on Green Lake numbers specifically so that you may get an idea of how your investment may be impacted by the current boom.

Year over Year Comparison 2014 to 2015

Single Family Homes

38 fewer homes (or 16% less) were sold in 2015 because of a severe shortage in inventory. This is almost exactly the same percentage we were down last year which means our housing shortage crisis is only becoming more severe. The median sales price rose 8.9% last year with the average sales price landing 3.1% over the list price, and escalations at more than 20% over the list price for certain properties with as many as 30-40 offers for one listing! Seattle values were up 5.4% in 2015 so we are 3.5% ahead of the game compared to the city as a whole. Average days on market were down 28% from 18 to 13 days, another indicator of our fiercely competitive market.

Condos 

In the condo market, the number of units decreased 24% in 2015 from 34 to 24 units. Average days on market decreased 45% from 20 to 11 days. The price appreciation for condos was 9.4% and on average condos sold for 5.4% more than asking. This shows that the condo market has now more than caught up with single family homes and is experiencing the same inventory shortage, and multiple offer phenomenon.

What the Trends are Telling Us

The following charts capture Green Lake (area as defined by NWMLS data) real estate trends for 2014 and 2015. This bar graph tells us how many homes were available for sale (light green), how many went under contract (red line) and how many sales closed each month (dark green). We can see with the light green bars there were clearly less homes for sale this year, yet buying activity was strong throughout the year (see red line). Actual closed sales (dark green) are lower than last year due to the lower supply in active listings. Even more intense bidding wars and price increases are how these statistics played out in the marketplace.

In the chart below, the yellow bars represent the average number of days a home is on the market. There is a clear trend that days on market were lower in 2015 than 2014. This number would be even lower, except that real estate brokers hold a home on the market for about a week before entertaining offers from potential buyers. The line at the top of the chart represents the relationship between average sales and list price. In 2015 you can see that sales prices for most months were well over 100% of list price with April and May showing about 10% higher sales than list prices, June and July about 5%, then a little slowing to 100% sales to list price ratio in the summer and another surge to 5% in October and November before a seasonal slowdown during the holidays.

Finally, this chart illustrates months of inventory. It is derived based on a calculation dividing the number of active homes for sale by the number of homes that closed in a given month and attempts to project how many months it will take for the entire available inventory to sell. Anything under 2 months of inventory represents a sellers’ market. In 2014, most of the time, inventory was around 1 month and went as low as 0.4 in December 2014 which translates into a “crazy sellers’ market.” Fast forward to 2015 and we have all months falling below 1 month of inventory.

And there we thought the market could not possibly get more competitive! However, the continuous stream of “Silicon Refugees” attracted by 50% lower home prices, overall lower cost of living, a healthy and growing tech industry as well as foreign investment and empty nesters seeking out the cultural offerings of our Emerald City continue to drive up housing demand like never before and new arrivals continue to flock to the shores of our lake(s).

As reported by the Puget Sound Business Journal, according to Aaron Terrazas, the senior economist at Seattle online real estate company Zillow (Nasdaq: Z, ZG), Seattle home values will continue to increase this year – as will rents – as people look for the region’s growing number of jobs and opportunities.

Kris Murphy and Daniela Dombrowski are Seattle Greenlaker sponsors and real estate brokers who live and specialize in the Wallingford and Green Lake neighborhoods.  They practice out of the Keller Williams Greater Seattle office located on the corner of Stone Way and N 45^th St.

Kris Murphy & Daniela Dombrowski
Kris@key2seattleRE.com / Daniela@key2seattleRE.com
www.Key2SeattleRealEstate.com

Keller Williams Greater Seattle
1307 N 45^th St, Suite 300
Seattle, WA  98103