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July Stats

The July numbers are in and both inventories and sale periods have ticked up a little bit. Volumes did rise some though. The sale price averages in all market also fell a little bit. Looks like the buyer will only pay so much for now as prices appear very sticky without much upside momentum.

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July Stats Coming Soon

Some of you have been wondering when the July Stats would be posted. I am running a little late on this but they should be up tomorrow. Overall the trend will see stablized prices with a little more inventory coming to market and an uptick in the overall months of inventory available; except for East Bellevue which is headed down to under 5 months.

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Distressed Inventory Report 8-8-09

Well the numbers have climbed a little. From the table accessed from the link below you will see that the new notice of Trustee Sale jumped up to ten this week. The previous week was only two and the week before that was three. While volumes have been up prices have not increased enough to take care of the underlying debt. It looks like we will be stumbling along.

In addition the number of short sales on the MLS has climbed from 27 to 30.

I have posted the table in a link below. Next week there will be a month’s inventory and I will start graphing the numbers so you can see the trend visually. In addition the July numbers should be out Monday.

East Bellevue Foreclosure Report 8-8-09

Tags: bank owned, Distressed Inventory, Foreclosed, inventory, trustee sale
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Weekly Scorecard 8-3-09

Well things seem to keep marching onto to the same tune. The lsitings for this week continue their gradual decline with 272 listings compard to 279 last week. This is the first meaningful drop under the 280 number thast the listing inventoryit seemed to be hovering at for the last couple of months.

Now here is the real story there was a whopping 21 homes which showed as sold and in that group there was no listed bank owned homes or short sales. I checked this number a couple of times to make sure I had not accidentally entered the wrong dates or double counted. The price per sq. ft. sales price was $228 a decline from last weeks $240 dollar plus number but given the volume a really respectable number. The average sales price was $528,607. Again this average is solidly above $500,000 indicating some of the more expensive homes are selling and closing.

Six homes went pending this week at a per sq. ft. price of $232 again a little less than last week but well above the $220 where it had been stuck at. The average listing price for a sold home was the highest yet at $615,567. Also it appears that the new construction inventory is starting to get depleted with two of the pending home sales being presales on unfinished homes. As we discussed earlier the builders cannot get credit to build and many of the new homes under $1,000,000 have sold in the last couple of months.

The big question is if demand stays the same how much new inventory will come on? If not a lot of new inventory comes on, particularly bank inventory, there will be continued upwqrd pressure on prcing if the present demand remains constant but that is the question is if the buyer will stay in the game as prices move up.

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Distressed Inventory Report 8-1-09

Below is the updated inventory report. There appears to be no rise in distreesed inventory and a couple of homes have sold. There were no new forclosed homes and only two new notices of Trustee Sale. In general everything balances but in 98005 there were no new foreclosures but the foreclosed homes jumped by two.
                                         Â
` Aug 1-09 July 26-09
98005
New Foreclosure 0 0
Foreclosed 9 7
New Trustee Sale Notice 0 2
Trustee Sale Notice 24 28

98007
New Foreclosure 0 0
Foreclosed 1 1
New Trustee Sale Notice 1 0
Trustee Sale Notice 15 15

98008
New Foreclosure 0 0
Foreclosed 7 10
New Trustee Sale Notice 1 1
Trustee Sale Notice 27 26

Total New Foreclosure 0 0
Total Foreclosed 17 18
Total New Trustee Sale 2 3
Total Trustee Sale Notice 66 69

Ratio of foreclosed/trustee sale 0.2576 0.2609

MLS 530 Bank Owned 3 2
MLS 530 Short Sale 27 21

Sorry for the funny formatting but still working on cutting and pasting XL into the blog format.

Tags: Bank, Distressed, Foreclosed
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What Now

Well all the numbers seem to be stabilizing. I doubt that we will see any significant increases in pricing until the overall economy gets better but at least from a seller’s point of view you know what price you need to sell at. The main issue for East Bellevue is to keep a handle on the amount of foreclosed and short sale inventory. If you see overall distressed inventory rising it will put downward pressure on prices. The farther outlying areas of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties are still seeing foreclosed and short sale inventory growing so it looks like there is at least one more leg down. However East Bellevue has one of the lowest ratios of distressed inventory to overall inventory of any market.

If you are a buyer you may be somewhat frustrated in East Bellevue as most of the good homes under $400,000 are pretty well picked over. So expecting to get a great deal on an under $500,000 home may not be realistic. However East Bellevue is a great location and over the long term if you have to pay up a little bit to get in it is probably worth it. The name of the game for the under $500,000 buyer is to now get the best home with the most upgrades and the least work. The reason for this is that it is hard to get a good enough deal now to justify a lot of repair so go for the home that has had a good long term owner with a low mortgage balance and the owner has done a great job of maintaining and upgrading the home should be the ones you are focusing on.

The area where there is still deals is the new construction over $750,000 and the more expensive homes, particularly waterfront. I have seen prices on some nice West Lake Sammamish Homes water front homes that I havne’t seen in almost 10 years.

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