Seattle Home Prices Up 6% Over The Past Year

* Synced from Seattle and Real Estate Blog
The local housing market continues to grow on a yearly basis, with prices for single-family homes in November 2014 having risen by 6 percent over November 2013, but the market also saw slowing monthly growth for the third month in a row, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday. Despite the slowdown, Zillow’s Chief Economist Stan Humphries told The Seattle Times that the Seattle area’s housing prospects for 2015 are still strong, and the slowdown represents merely the market settling back in to normal levels. The Seattle market continues to outperform both the 20-city index and the national market, which saw annual growth rates of 4.3 percent and 4.7 percent respectively. Rates for 30-year fixed mortgages have held steady over the past week at 3.58 percent.

October Trends: Higher Appreciation, More Homes Sold

*Synced from Seattle and Real Estate Blog
After months of single-family home prices in the U.S. growing by smaller and smaller percentages on a yearly basis, the market finally looks to be back on the rise. Prices in October grew by 6.1 percent compared to the previous October, whereas year-over-year gains for September were 5.6 percent, according to new data released by CoreLogic. They report that all states in the U.S. saw some percentage of yearly appreciation in October.
But despite this recent uptick, Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic, said in a statement that prices are only growing by half the pace they were in the spring of 2014, when the market was seeing double-digit growth. However, some markets such as Seattle and Denver are seeing higher appreciation than the rest of the country.
Nationally, the number of homes sold in October increased by 2.2 percent from October 2013. Redfin attributes the jump to low mortgage rates that are hovering below 4 percent, a drop in unemployment, slowing home-price growth, and higher median wages. They point out that median incomes increased in all but one (Orlando) of the markets that saw the biggest year-over-year jump in sales. Though Seattle was toward the bottom of the list, with only a 2.6 percent jump in number of homes sold (as a comparison, Tampa, Fla. saw a 19.7 percent increase) and only 1.9 percent more homes newly listed for sale, any increase is welcome in our market, which has seen extremely low inventory over the past year.
If you are interested in buying or selling a home in the Seattle area, contact your local real estate agent today.