The Northwest Multiple Listing Service just published it's 2009 sales update with some interesting stats includeding:
- Sales totals were down 3.7% from 2008 (SFR and Condos)
- Dollar volume fell by 14.6%
- Highest median price for SFR was $443,500 (San Juan County)
- Next was King County (Seattle area) with median of $380,000
- System wide median price was $280,000
- 8 out of 10 sales were co-op transactions
- 87 % of sales in 2009 were single family homes and accounted for 89% of dollar volume.
- The pace of sales as measured by "months supply" (an estimate of how long it would take for all inventory of active listings to sell at the current pace assuming no new inventory is added) showed improvement in many areas. In the four-county Puget Sound region, there was a 5.36 months supply at year-end; at the end of 2008 the months supply was at 7.9 months. System-wide, at the end of 2009 there was a 6.25 months supply, which compares to 8.66 months supply at the end of 2008. (Economists consider a supply of 3-to-6 months to be a balanced market, meaning the market favors neither buyers nor sellers.)
