Weekly Score Card 6-22-09
Here we go again. Interesting week. Antidotally in talking to other agents it seems the market has quieted down a little bit and that traffic was down at the open houses. East Bellevue had a pretty good week. The number of listings were up slightly from 289 to 295. Inventories have been increasing in other areas at a much greater rate. However there only appeared to be five sales this week as opposed to 9 last week. Also in this batch of sales was one bank owned home and two short sales. The per sq. ft. averages were awful with the average per sq. ft. price at $185.33 versus $220 per sq. ft. last week. The averages were pulled down by the bank owned home and two short sales. The bank owned home went for $118 per sq. ft.   However this week there were 10 pending sales versus four last week and only one listed short sale in that group. The interesting number was the per sq. ft. average sale price was $237.09 versus $241 dollars. Again this is the second week that the average pending per sq. ft. price was above the sold price. In addition at only one short sale it makes wonder if the distressed inventory is getting cleared out. I should probably do some research and start getting a handle on that question. The average sale price was higher at $536,685 vs. $498,566.
It is really interesting to see more short sales and bank owned homes in the sold homes as opposed to the pending sales. Usually it is the other way around since many short sales get signed and posted as pending but never close. The other number again this week is that the sold per sq. ft. number was lower than the pending sale number. Again this is usually the opposite of what happens since many pendings again are short sales and get thrown in at a low price.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the weeks ahead as rates look to be heading up and other areas are seeing increasing inventories and decreasing sales volume.