New high in median sale home price for Pierce County recorded in November
History was made in November with area home sales as both Pierce and Kitsap counties hit new highs for median sale prices.
Both counties saw $445,000 as their new record median closed sale price for residential homes, according to a report from John L. Scott Real Estate released Monday.
That’s up from $430,000 in October.
According to data from Northwest Multiple Listing Service also released Monday, Pierce County active listings were down nearly 52 percent from the same time last year, while closed sales were up 27 percent from 2019, with inventory at less than a month’s worth.
The NWMLS November report noted King County’s supply declined about 18 percent from a year ago, while five counties (Clallam, Clark, Island, Mason, and Snohomish) reported drops of at least 63 percent.
Inventory of at least six months is considered a more balanced market.
While pending sales for residential homes were only up 7.47 percent, pending condo sales were up 68.06 percent, with a median closed sale price of $290,975.
Windermere chief economist Matthew Gardner told the NWMLS even though the market is now showing some seasonal slowdown, “activity remains higher than we would normally see at this time of year. This isn’t too surprising given the fact that the spring selling season was essentially canceled due to COVID-19.”
Competition remained high in Pierce County.
“I have been doing this for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Kellie Van Essen, an agent with John L. Scott Tacoma’s University Place office in an interview with The News Tribune in November.
“There’s a lot of people who cannot afford to buy in King County. So they’re moving down to Pierce County, Thurston County,” she said.
She also noted that with the shift of more people working remotely, proximity to work hasn’t been as much of a priority for some buyers.
“I tell my buyers, you just need to be really patient. ... Sometimes it’s the fourth or the fifth house that they’ve made an offer on. And so the main thing is just to be patient. Make sure you’re pre-approved and also underwritten approved.”
“You may have to make multiple offers before you get your house,” she noted.
One of Van Essen’s clients, Olufemi Odaibo, was a first-time home buyer. He put in multiple, separate offers for homes, but kept losing out.
“Every house I did put an offer on ... it would be like we had to get in the offer that day. Just because it was that competitive. So there were multiple buyers just waiting on everything,” he told The News Tribune last month.
Van Essen said she would sometimes go to prospective sites and FaceTime with him while he was at work.
“If a house or a townhouse comes on the market, you’re going to have to go look at it the day it is listed or the next day,” she noted. “And I know it’s kind of stressful, making an offer right away.”
“There were no townhouses I thought I’d be able to get my hands on,” Odaibo recalled. “Somebody would come in with a cash offer and end up getting the house and I’m like, ‘Who the heck has $300 thousand-plus in cash? Why? Why are you doing this?’”
It wasn’t until his final try, a townhouse in the Hilltop/downtown area of Tacoma, when he ultimately won.
‘The very last townhouse we checked out — it had been the best one out of all of them,” he said. “As far as space as far as bedroom, everything in the house was just up to par. Wood was top notch, so it ended up working out perfectly.”
Looking ahead to next year, J. Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO of John L. Scott Real Estate, wrote: “We anticipate the ‘cyclone’ of housing market sales activity intensity will continue at extreme frenzy-level velocity (where about 90 percent of sales activity takes place) through April 2021. Then, sales activity intensity will probably go down one level of hotness to frenzy or surge over the summer as more listings come on the market for potential purchasers.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 5:10 AM.
