Seattle housing market continues to see low inventory and high competition making things hard for homebuyers. Even before the virus hit the region, it was quite evident that if the inventory crunches further, affordability will become a bigger issue in the Seattle real estate market in 2020, especially with homes in the lower tier.
Since then we've seen significantly lower numbers of active listings when compared to the same time last year. October 2020's housing report from Northwest Multiple Listings Service found King County had 3,806 active listings, a 20.84% drop from the same time last year when there were 4,808 active listings.
In Seattle itself, though, demand seems to be cooling off very slightly. Here, the median price of single-family homes fell 2% from September’s all-time high to $800,000, which was still a 3% increase over last year. It had 1,521 active listings in October, a 15.97% increase year-over-year.
Pending and closed sales in King County were both up as compared to the previous year. King County saw a 19.37% increase in pending sales over the same time last year. Closed sales were up by nearly 40% compared to October 2019.
In Seattle itself, it recorded an increase of 39.93% in closed sales and 19.21% in pending sales. Most homes on the market sell within a week, according to Redfin. Pending sales are outpacing new listings and inventory continues to shrink. There are far more buyers than there are available homes for sale.
To summarise the last month's statistics we can say that All King County & Seattle remains a seller's real estate market with only 0.99 months of inventory — still well below what is required to meet the volume of buyers right now. While we may see sales cool down over the coming months from an unusually hot fall season but things could be extraordinary hot in the spring of 2021.