Bellevue Real Estate » pendings

Monthly Numbers

George Thurtle — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 01:37:38 +0000

The monthly numbers for Bellevue are now posted. Inventories are starting to rise a bit, but the sales were also very strong. Prices remain stable. The per sq. ft. sales numbers are very stable. West Bellevue is a little misleading because there were two large waterfront sales in those numbers. If you look at the trend line it is at $300 per sq. ft. for the baseline for west Bellevue. The blips up reflect one time large sales. All of the per sq. ft. sales graphs are very stable. The price averages move around as the size and style of the homes change. When the per sq. ft. prices start moving up it is a sign of appreciation.

Sellers seem to have seen the increased sales volumes and are starting to bring property to the market. It appears that as sales occur more inventory waits in the wings to be brought to the market and the market is in a churning mode.

Here is the link for the Stat: http://eastbellevuere.com/index.php/category/statistics/monthly/

Weekly Scorecard 3-29-10

George Thurtle — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 14:25:44 +0000

Sales are staying fairly steady but inventories appear to be creeping up. South Bellevue has gone from 308 homes to 366 homes. East Bellevue in February bottomed at 211 homes and now has 248 homes listed. West Bellevue went from a low 192 homes and is now at 210 homes. This is typical action for the spring where new inventory is often brought to the market. The sales are staying steady but as inventories go up the volumes should also gradually rise as a general trend through the end of May but as we have seen nothing has been typical about this market for the last two years.

Here is the spreadsheet: Weekly scorecard 3-29-10

Weekly Scorecard 3-22-10

George Thurtle — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 01:23:56 +0000

Well it finally started happening. The inventories have started to increase. Sale remain at pretty good levels but at some point in time with sales volume remaining fairly brisk new inventory needed to be brought to the market.

Also of note this week the upperend seems to be coming back to life. So far this month two waterfront homes have sold on the point. One for over $7,000,000 and one for over $11,000,000. In addition a survey of the individual sales shows that properties are being purchased for building it looks like the tear down cycle is starting again.

The spreadsheet is here: Weekly scorecard 3-22-10

Weekly Score 2-1-10

George Thurtle — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:52:16 +0000

The news this week inventories are steady or declining and sales volume is up. EB had 11 homes sold, WB had 8 homes and SB had 12. The pending were not as high but all except for WB which had just one pending still had good volumes. what is interesting is that this time of year you usually have rising inventories as seasonally more homes are brought to the market. It is hard to tell what the sales volume is since the sold homes still reflect December sales and the amount of pending sales in January converting to sold homes has not worked its way through the system

Here is the apreadsheet: Weekly scorecard 2-1-10

Weekly Scorecard 1-18-10

George Thurtle — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:39:41 +0000

The numbers in West Bellevvue (WB) and East Bellevue (EB) were thin this week and as a result hard to get any meaningful trend but a couple of observations. In the solds for EB the very large waterfront pending from last month has closed. This home went substantially over $5,000,000. I left that home out of the sold averages for EB. WB had only one sold home and the home was a small older fixed up 2bd., 1ba. home that sold for $400,000. However the pendings continued to support an on going trend in WB that the properties being sold are mainly being acquired for their land value. That is why you see low sales prices but high per sq. ft. prices. This is starting to look like a real trend in WB. The reason as we discussed earlier is the depeletion of new construction inventory and lack of financing and econiomic support for new speculative homes.

South Bellevue (SB) was where all the action was. There were 15 solds homes in SB. A couple of bank owned homes and a number of short sales were in this batch. There was one waterfront townhouse in Barbee Mill and that townhouse was left out of the stats. The number of pendings was pretty healthy at 6. Also another non-waterfront townhouse went pendintg in Barbee Mill. It appears that Barbee Mill is starting to get some movement.

The spreadsheet link is here: Weekly scorecard 1-18-10

Weekly Scorecard 10-5-09

George Thurtle — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:43:55 +0000

The big news is that the inventory in East Bellevue continues to drop. It is now at 234 homes it hasn’t been this low in years. Traditionally this has been a 300 home market. It appears that a lot of sellers are taking their home off of the market because they are not able to get their desired price and will probably try again next year. In the past this trend was offset by increasing amounts of distressed inventory filling the void but as we have seen in the “Distressed Inventory Report” those numbers are headed down. Now distressed inventory comprises less than 5% of the market in November of 2008 it was almost 30% of the market.

A whopping 15 homes sold this week and of those 4 were waterfront homes. Only one was a bank owned home. The average per sq. ft. sales price was pretty low at $212 per sq. ft. The week before we saw a bonce off of the prevailing $220 per sq. ft. but that did not happen this week. The number of pendings was also larger than usual at 10 so it appears inventory continues to move out the door. There were two new construction sales and the average per sq. ft. sales price was $285 per sq. ft. We will see what the closed prices are but it appears that in the next month the average per sq. ft. sales price should continue to move up given the trend of the pendings.

Falling inventories is the big news. At some time with less distressed inventory and falling overall inventories there should be some upward pressure on pricing. The Altos graphs show pricing recovery for all zip codes except 98008. For some reason this zip code has had the most distressed inventory and also continues to experience some downward pressure on pricing.

Weekly Scorecard 7-27-09

George Thurtle — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:53:46 +0000

The trends continue. For this week the number of listings was 283. This is at the low end of the range which cycles between 280 and 300. Last week was the low at 279 so a bit of a bounce.

The sales continue to march on with 5 closed sales this week. Again at the low end of the range. However where the numbers get interesting is the per sq. ft. average was $243 per sq. ft. This is a signifigant increase over the prevailing $220 per sq. ft. average where the number had been stuck at for almost three months. Again this could be due to the fact that it appears there was no bank owned homes or short sales in this batch of sales. The depletion of the listed bank owned inventory seems to be playing out in pricing. The average sale price was $518,000 and the average sq. ft. was 2,190. It appears the buyers are digging in their heels going for smaller homes in order to keep the price down.

The pending sales were at 8 for this week but in those numbers was one bank owned and one short sale. The bank owned and short sale homes drew the average per sq. ft. price down to $211. With the bank owned and short sale home going pending for $175 per sq. ft. and $196 per sq. ft. respectively. The average listed sale price was $570,743. In the last three months we have seen the average listed pending price and sold price move up almost a $100,000 as the low end inventory looks to be getting cleaned out and more expensive homes are selling now that Jumbo financing is available.

It looks like declining volumes and a slow move up in pricing if the distressed inventory remains low.