Is Pierce County’s housing market still red hot? Here are the sales numbers for July
Some interesting shifts happened in the Pierce County housing market in July, but it’s too soon to tell whether they will continue.
For single home sales, total active listings were down year over year at 9.94 percent. But that’s up from the declines seen in May (41.79 percent) and June (24.47 percent), according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service’s July home sales report.
Pierce County’s median closed sale price for existing single-family homes fell to $510,000, down from $516,000 in June but still up 20 percent from last year.
For condominiums, Pierce County’s median closed sale price was $355,250, down from $369,500 in June but still up 15.62 percent from last year.
Is the market cooling? As always, it depends where you are looking.
“Despite the extreme shortage of inventory and robust sales activity, there seems to be a bit of a leveling off from the market frenzy,” said Gary O’Leyar, broker/owner at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Signature Properties of Seattle, in the NWMLS’ release on Thursday. “In my opinion this is due to a typical mid-summer season market combined with some buyer fatigue.”
As for home prices, housing affordability “has left the building,” according to Dick Beeson, managing broker at RE/MAX Northwest Brokers of Tacoma-Gig Harbor.
He cited building supply chain slowdowns and a scarcity of skilled workers for home building. In May’s jobless report, WorkForce Central said the data showed that in Pierce County 17 percent of claims filed involved workers in construction and extraction.
Beeson said he estimates about 75% of all sold properties during the past six months in Pierce County as well as in Kitsap and Thurston counties sold in a week or less.
“It can’t get much faster. All three counties have barely two weeks of inventory,” he said in Thursday’s update.
Here are the median closed sale prices for existing homes in surrounding counties in July:
▪ King: $871,000
▪ Kitsap: $510,000
▪ Mason: $386,000
▪ Snohomish: $700,000
▪ Thurston: $465,000
And median closed sale prices for condominiums:
▪ King: $460,000
▪ Kitsap: $315,000
▪ Mason: $515,000 (one sale recorded)
▪ Snohomish: $473,000
▪ Thurston: $269,000
Coldwell Banker Bain CEO Mike Grady, in Thursday’s release, said he expected more of the same in the coming months, noting the time it would take to sell all homes in inventory (month’s supply) only increased about three days since June and still remains well under three weeks in most markets.
“That’s a long, long way from a ‘balanced’ market of four-to-six months of inventory,” he said.
