Weekly Scorecard 8-31-09
A big drop in inventory this week it came in at 267 homes. This is the first time it has broken substantially under 280. Before this number was fluctuating between 280 and 290. 10 homes came through as sold again a large number. The average sales price was $599,800 well above the usual average of around $500,000. What brought the average up was a $1,100,000 new construction sale. However the per sq. ft. price was $222. No matter what seems to happen this per sq. ft. sales number seems stuck around $220 per sq. ft. Other than the one new construction short sale there appeared to be no bank owned or distrssed inventoryin this group of closings.
The Pending number was also larger than usual at 8 homes going pending including one waterfront listed for $1,980,000. Even exclusing the waterfron the per sq. ft. price of the pendings was $259. A big jump. If you remember when the marker was tanking the pending per sq. ft. price was always lower than the average sales price of the sold homes because of the bank owned and short sale inventory continue to press the market down. The Pending home sale price became an indicator of future market directiopn. It appears that in East Bellevue as the distressed inventory keeps declining then maybe the per sq. ft. number will move up. It will be interesting to see when these pending sales close what the per sq. ft. numbers are and if this market is getting ready to get off of it $220 per sq. ft. bottom. The average list price of the Pending sales was $518,500, without the waterfront, about normal for what we have seen.