Thursday, February 8, 2007
Seattle's median home price in January was the lowest it has been in a year, according to statistics released Wednesday.
The median price of $379,990 was down from $420,000 in December, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
A seasonal decline is consistent with recent years, but Seattle's January median home price also was lower than King County's median -- a first since at least 2001. King County's median home price in January was up 8 percent from a year earlier, while the median for all 19 counties in the Northwest MLS was up 10.6 percent.
"That's odd," Bob Melvey, assistant manager at Windermere Real Estate's Ballard office, said of the Seattle numbers. "My personal experience doesn't jibe with the stats."
The median price could be dragged down by the sale of condominiums, which made up a higher percentage of home sales last month than a year before. Condos generally sell for less money than houses.
But the median Seattle house price in January was up just 5.7 percent from a year ago, compared with an increase of 10.1 percent for the county as a whole and 15.5 percent on the Eastside.
Melvey speculated that town homes, which are counted as houses but are typically cheaper than other houses, might have made up a larger chunk of Seattle's sales in January.
"I've noticed a lot of town homes in what I would consider not desirable neighborhoods coming on the market, and they're at pretty low prices," Melvey said. Specific numbers for town-home sales were not available Wednesday.
Shifts in how home sales are distributed among Seattle neighborhoods also could be to blame, said Glenn Crellin, director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at Washington State University. The Northwest MLS numbers showed year-over-year price declines of more than 11 percent downtown and in northeast Seattle.
"I think you really have to take a wait and see," Crellin said. "There are clearly some composition issues that are affecting the overall prices."Uncertainty about where the market is going has not deterred home shoppers like Jeffrey Wellhausen.
"We figure around here it's pretty much just going to go up, slowly in the near future," he said at a Green Lake neighborhood open house on the last Sunday in January. "We're not expecting a big drop."
Crellin said he expects prices to go up in general, but said they would not go up as fast as they did in the past couple of years and they could decline in higher-end areas or those with many speculators.
A dip might help home shoppers such as Bryan Ruppert, who was at an open house in Wallingford. He said he started looking for homes online in June, before moving to Seattle from England.
"The prices are just outrageous," Rupert said. The selection is good, he said, "if you can afford it."
The Northwest MLS reported that Seattle had 20 percent more homes on the market in January than the month before and 30 percent more than January 2006.
"That gives the consumers a better opportunity to shop around and find a property that really meets their needs, rather than buying the first thing that is presented to them," Crellin said.
After visiting a Wallingford house for sale, shopper Lisa Wrenn said she's been looking for about four months.
"We placed a couple offers on different places, and we lost out," she said. "We're just really discouraged at what people will pay."
Some homes are staying on the market longer, but their prices are not coming down, Wrenn said. "People are willing to let their houses sit around."
 By AUBREY COHEN P-I REPORTER |
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