October 2009 numbers are in…and the recovery is in full effect.
Even our favorite bear reader, MD, will have to call this glass half full.
Some highlights:
- Pending sales were up 73% over October of 2008 and up almost 25% versus September 2009.
- Closed sales were up 12% over October 2008 and up about 5% versus September 2009.
- Median prices were up 4% over October 2008 and up around 15% versus September 2009.
Congrats to buyers and sellers. Buyers, you should feel confident you're not trying to catch a falling dagger and know that the market is already moving up (not just going to move up). Sellers, the buyers are coming back (though don't get greedy, just sell for what the market will bear).
Those are GREAT percentage increases! Can you provide the detail that supports those percentages and actual numbers, excluding any sales from auctions?
Good thing the stimulus is still there to artificially inflate the demand. It’ll be interesting to see how the inventory numbers will play out now that the market is supposedly bouncing back.
i just dont see it, money is still way too tight,until thats resolved, flatline is the name of the game
I ask again… Wendy, can you provide the detail that supports those percentages and actual numbers, excluding any sales from auctions? Also, did these numbers include anything from “bulk buys?”
@MD
The data is from MLS and does not exclude auction sales or pending bulk buys but even if they did, it wouldn’t make a big difference for the reported October numbers since very few auction or bulk buy sales were on MLS in October. Recompiling the data to exclude those few sales would take some time and I’ve been busy working with some clients so I may not get around to doing that.
That said, I can tell you that only 3 out of 44 Gallery auction sales were listed on MLS in Oct. Only 1 home from 1111 E Pike and Decatur bulk buy was listed as pending on the MLS in Oct. As you can see, the MLS reported growth in closed, pending, and median prices was in addition to the big boost in auctions and bulk buys.
Going forward, we will probably see those bulk buy numbers in the MLS data since they have now listed most of their homes on MLS. Even so, sales are sales in my book.
I agree that Sep and Oct certainly have a mini-boom. A lot of good, well-priced listings in 98121 and 98004 (my main search areas) are sold. There is even one or two listings in Bellevue that raised price!
Curious question is whether this will last?
Wendy, but I thought about a month ago you were purposely keeping the auctions out of the numbers as not to skew data (meaning, sales are really not sales in your book). Why now is a “sale a sale?” The problem with keeping auctions and bulk buys in these numbers is that these are limited in inventory. What happens when the remaining inventory is off the market with respect to the auctions? Believe me, I’m not a “bear” as you so often like to say – I’m a realist with respect to where we are in this economy.
@MD
I think you are talking about September’s numbers. Auction sales were not *intentionally* left out for September. The market data I summarize on SCR uses MLS data. In September, most of Gallery auction homes were not listed on the MLS (and yet we still saw a double digit jump for pending sales in September on the MLS sales alone). In general, I don’t think that auction sales should be excluded as a sales. However, if they’re not originally listed on the MLS, I’d only go to the trouble of manually incorporating non-MLS data at the request of a specific client. Hope this makes sense!
MD is hilarious.
The MD is awesome! MD is pretty good at calling people out on their smack and propaganda!
nope, you’re mainly hilarious 😉
MD got too much time in his hands
MD is like Batman, he’s watching over all the propaganda to protect us from being blinded by happy data!
If you look at all condos for the city of Seattle (Sept 09 vs. Oct 09) these are the actual numbers. Please note that the 350K- group was fueled in part by the 1st time buyer credit and the $500K+ was the higher end market.
SEPT 09
Sold at $350K-: 132
Sold at $350K-$499K: 23
Sold at $500K+: 13
OCT 09
Sold at $350K-: 129 (down 3%)
Sold at $350K-$499K+: 33 (up 30%)
Sold at $500K+: 26 (up 50%)
It is positive news to see movement in the mid and upper tiers; however, one month of uptick a recovery does not make. There were also some auction numbers in October reflecting deeply discounted prices. Also, when we are talking about 33 and 26 units in all of Seattle closing for the mid and upper tiers, these are not large numbers. Let’s wait and see what the next few months hold.
Correction on the Sold at 350-499 range for Oct 09 – sales of 33 from 23 in Sept results in 43% increase, not 30% as originally posted. Sorry about the mistype!