Sellers No Longer King In The Northwest
Inman News has this on Washington. “Home sales in western Washington fell 9.1 percent in March from a year ago. NWMLS members added 12,639 new listings to inventory last month, edging out the year-ago total of 11,808 new listings. The additions include 10,786 single-family homes and 1,853 condominiums. With those new listings, the total inventory at month-end rose to 23,533 listings. Compared to the same month a year ago, the inventory grew by 15.9 percent.”
“‘People are taking a bit longer to decide and even with the increase in inventory, there hasn’t been a reduction on selling prices,’ said NWMLS director Dick Beeson in Tacoma.”
The MLS site doesn’t provide prior monthly stats, but does show pending sales down 8 in King County and listings up 26% in Pierce County. Listings climbed 52% in Grays Harbor and 82% in Thurston.
Builders slowed down in the west. “Construction was down in all parts of the country, led by a 15.5 percent drop in the West. The Commerce Department report provided further evidence that the nation’s five-year housing boom is quieting down.”
And CNN had this report on realtors. “If the secret worries of real estate professionals are any indication, home prices could be heading for a swoon. Brad Inman recently gave real estate agents the opportunity to blog about market conditions, they almost uniformly described them as bad, and getting worse.”
“‘Normally, brokers and agents tend to sugarcoat the news; they don’t want to affect consumer confidence,’ says Inman. ‘By letting them post anonymously, we gave them a way to really share their thoughts.’ Most responded with tales of high inventories, slow sales and languishing prices.”
“Here’s a sampling of their comments: ‘Portland, Oregon is mixed, more inventory, sitting longer. Sellers no longer king.’ ‘Some Realtors, Mortgage Brokers & some clients have been more testy than in months previous. Something is in the air.’ Posted by S. Crowe.”
Thanks to the readers who sent in the CNN link. I wonder if S Crowe is the same person who posts here. From Washington state, I believe.
Yes, and to answer many requests about why my handle is spelled ‘S-Crow’ vs. escrow, it’s a family story. When my mother talked about our business with friends, she thought Escrow was a type of bird (therefore we were in the bird business of sorts). I’m not joking. ie…the ‘Crow’ part. So I’ve kept the legend going. For those few close friends that know, it’s a very funny story. Today though, she does understand the business is involved with ‘homes.’ So, we just leave it at that for her.
How’s your market?
Homes are sales are plugging along but there is a difference in market “tempo” compared to last year. There are more list price reductions taking place and we still have multiple offers occuring in select neighborhoods. Inventory is rising as you see in the Inman piece. That will be something many will watch as we continue forward this year. Our small company closing volume has increased quite a bit over the last several weeks, but my sense is that much of this may be somewhat short-term due to a sense of urgency on consumers locking in rates. The 10% or so decrease in overall sales though is a clear indicator that a market shift is underway, the extent of which we will have to monitor as this Spring moves forward. The Bond market rate tick up will continue to put pressure on rates which in the Seattle Metro area are at about 6.5%+ for 30yr fixed. We are still closing refinances, stand alone-2nds, HELOC’s and many more I/O fixed-for-10yr products which seem to be a favorite among some of our mortgage brokers. As rates head towards 7%….I can’t think that it will not have a major impact here on purchasers.
LOL… the silence is deafening. They are still not talking about it in Sonoma other than the occassional realtwhore denying and lying.
“Here’s a sampling of their comments: ‘Portland, Oregon is mixed, more inventory, sitting longer. Sellers no longer king.’ ‘Some Realtors, Mortgage Brokers & some clients have been more testy than in months previous. Something is in the air.’ Posted by S. Crowe.”
Those houses are not sitting because prices are about to take off. This is the calm before the storm.
Nice to hear that Portland Oregon is starting to see some signs of the big pop.
I move from San Diego to Portland to start my new job on the 27th of this month.
Have been reading this blog for ages. Thought I would let you all know that at least one economist, Merrill Lynch’s David Rosenberg, has been calling for major problems for a long time. His morning comment was, “housing is in a full blown bear market”. We all saw it coming and at least one economist was right!
sacrementoLanging blog has a post quoting a letter from a realtor looking to go back to her previous job as adminsitrative assistant. good reading.
My department’s administrative assistant was a RE agent.
She was hired about 6 months ago just when so cal market volume begaan it’s inexorable march south.
LA foreclosures up 63 percent over 2005
Foreclosed houses for everyone
REO condos for everyone!
It’s simple math. There is not enough money to pay these prices.
Don’t let the Fed hear that!
There was plenty of CREDIT to pay those prices, just not enough MONEY.
Or maybe enough SAVINGS!
From the Inman article: “Inventory growth helps lift home prices”?
Also, I like the phrasing of this statement: “Home sales in western Washington fell 9.1 percent in March from a year ago, as prices posted another month of double-digit gains, according to the latest figures from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service”, implying that prices went up double digits in one month.
desidude: what blog was that again?
http://sacramentolanding.blogspot.com/
Thanks!
Over the past several months I’ve become convinced my wife and I made a wise decision by not becoming first-time home buyers in Los Angeles in 2005. Be that as it may, I’m still not getting excited about all this. It just seems way too early to get excited. The downside will be long, deep and with many casualties.
The more carnage, the better.
Time to light these marginal homeowners up like a carload of Islamic terrorists!
Death spiral you are WAY off the beam! Can’t help but laugh tho.
Death_Spiral is an awesome handle and your comments are right on!
I had a co-worker several jobs ago that was nicknamed death spiral and he was hilarious.
Even when describing our personal experience with the ultimate death spiral.
We’ve been in the “calm before the storm” phase for months now in this area.
Honestly, I don’t know what it takes for people to “get” that a market is turning.
Up to a while back in Seattle, you could not put a property on the market WITHOUT it being bid up. It was like some kind of insanity had taken hold. People were paying top dollar for places with basements that flooded just because they were in a cool neighborhood. And I’m talking people who couldn’t afford the price of the home to begin with, let alone the major plumbing and foundation work the property came with. The whole scene was just plain nuts.
So last fall, stuff started sitting on the MLS for months, people started reducing prices. By February, 80% of stuff in a desirable neighborhood was being sold under asking price. But people would latch on to the 8 houses out of 60 that got bidded up and proclaim: “They’re still bidding up!!! The market’s still HOT!!!” It’s pathetic.
Watching the market go down in Seattle has taught me exactly why people say it is “hard to time RE markets”. They are not hard to time if you are looking unemotionally at the facts, or looking at all. Or looking with an open mind. But if you leave all of these kinds of “looking” out then yeah, they are imposssible to time.
Pricedrop - That you “can’t time the market” is industry lingo in real estate, Wall Street and everyplace else that feeds off sales commissions. In plain English, it means, “give us all of your money right now.” It’s that simple.
If you are trying to make money, you MUST time your investments, by definition, if the name of the game is buy low and sell high. ‘Nuff said.
“We’ve been in the “calm before the storm” phase for months now in this area. Honestly, I don’t know what it takes for people to “get” that a market is turning”.
July 15 is around the last date to buy to be moved in for the start of school. After that there’s no urgency. Not only will people not need Detrol, all the Viagra in the world won’t fix the softness.
Into the fall, facing a winter - that’s when the opposite of bidding wars will start.
But that’s the point, Portland mainer, the bidding wars have, for all intents and purposes stopped. Months ago.
By August, even the most dull-headed among them will know it is really and trully over.
Personally, I cannot wait til Fall.
I wish we could find stats so easily a mere 2 hours drive north in Vancouver B.C. Finding info re: inventory etc. is like trying to find out what was what behind the Iron Curtain circa 1956.
i love the comment from inman that “normally, realtors tend to sugarcoat the news because they don’t want to affect consumer confidence”…I think that one could be archived for the classaction some day..sure, he didn’t exactly say that realtors lie to the consumers of *their* services, so perhaps only when asked to comment on the local market for a media outlet do they “sugarcoat”, but if they actually gave the real deal to their very own consumers it might affect their confidence as well, no?
How is this okay? That you need to have them be anonymous to tell us how the market is going?
Can you imagine anyone being okay about stockbrokers needing to be anonymous to give their “real” read on the markets?
sellers are no longer king in the midwest either…though the banner in the business section of the MI newsgroup website was that MI’s rating for ‘economic velocity’ (I am ignorant businesswise mostly, but i can give a good guess what that indicates) has improved because other states’ economies are starting to decline!
on monday there was a business column:
http://www.mlive.com/columns/aanews/stefanie_murray/index.ssf?/base/business-0/114531000870250.xml&coll=2
titled “listings rise, sellers must adjust”
for anybody interested in the numbers (i really think some of them are far rosier than reality actually…many reports had detroit inventory at 14 months, the realtor quoted here claims 7..i think it varies quite a lot from specific town to town in the msa),
but the columnist had to admit that even her own granny really needs to change her thinking if she wants to sell her house. Exemplified how even people who outright own and paid off 20 years ago won’t come off their price expectations, and think that buyers should just buy at the price they ask and expect to fix up the house themselves…makes a person sorta not care if her house gets sold or not since apparently she doesn’t.
I am tired of the new trend…that if you admit there is something up with being able to sell houses, its really just the inventory that’s a problem. it’s just that with all the choices buyers can be picky…it’s not that people are asking too much money, and it would be too much money even if there were only 3 houses on the market. yes, i know, supply and demand is important, but even in MI where they explain the increase in listings as a function of people leaving the state, losing jobs, downsizing, etc. and not speculator dumping, there is the obvious issue of affordability for those who are still interested in buying…