November was a great month for Puget Sound Real Estate with more than a few highlights worth mentioning:

  • Last month was the best November on record for pending sales since 2005
  • Our inventory levels are the lowest they have been in 5 years
  • Home sales outpaced new listings for the first time in 5 years
  • The rate of home sales in November were on par with the rate of sales last spring during the $8,000 First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit

Northwest Multiple Listing Service members reported 6,103 pending sales during November, marking the seventh straight month of double-digit year-over-year increases.

Last month's total number of mutually accepted offers was 22.4 percent higher than the same month a year ago. It also marked the first month since December 2006 that the number of pending sales surpassed the number of new listings (6,043), prompting discussions of possible inventory shortages.

At month end, there were 30,650 residential listings in the MLS inventory across 21 counties, down nearly 17 percent from a year ago.

Despite the smaller selection, the listings in the MLS database covering all counties span a wide price range: 400 homes are priced at $50,000 or less and 65 residences are listed at $5 million-plus.

For homes and condominiums that sold last month, the median selling price was $225,000, down 10 percent from the year-ago median price of $250,000. Single family home prices were off 8 percent from a year ago ($234,612 versus $255,000), while condo prices slipped more than 17 percent ($169,000 versus $204,500).

Brokers point to distressed properties, which tend to be deeply discounted, as a primary cause of lower prices.

For the four-county Puget Sound region, a check of the Northwest MLS database shows more than one-fourth (26.8 percent) of the single-family homes that sold last month were classified as distressed, up from the year-ago figure of 21.9 percent.

For the MLS market overall (21 counties), the number of closed sales jumped 36.2 percent, rising from 3,583 completed transactions during November 2010 to last month's total of 4,879.

SALES VS. LISTING ACTIVITY - KING COUNTY AUGUST 2010 TO PRESENT