The Seattle-area housing market was bananas in 2015. You don't need any reminders on that, especially if you were one of those out there pounding the pavement, getting into bidding wars and pulling out all the stops to try and afford a house around town. But you might not realize just how insane the housing market was in Seattle, Redmond, Bellevue and elsewhere in 2015 until you see Redfin's list of the 30 most competitive neighborhoods in the U.S. this past year and realize King County is home to 13 of them.
In fact, America's toughest neighborhoods for homebuyers were located in just four cities.
The 30 most competitive neighborhoods of 2015 were all located in just four cities: Boston, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle. The rankings are based on several indicators of competition, including the percentage of homes that sold above asking price, how quickly homes went under contract and the percentage of Redfin offers that faced bidding wars. Redmond actually put the rest of us to shame (or maybe it's the other way around) thanks to Overlake, the second most-competitive neighborhood in the entire nation, as well as Grass Lawn, which came in seventh. Idylwood also popped in there at 28th overall. In case you're wondering, there's only one house available in Overlake right now and it'll run you $1.5M.
Seattle neighborhoods included on the list are Roosevelt (4th), Phinney Ridge (9th), Stevens (11th), Greenwood (12th), Victory Heights (16th), Green Lake (17th), Madrona (20th), West Woodland (22nd).
Don't think Bellevue didn't get involved. They got two neighborhoods on the list: Newport Hills (14th) and Newport (30th).
While median sale prices were all over the map, there were a lot of criteria these neighborhoods shared. All averaged houses with a median days on market under ten, all saw over 50 percent of their homes sell for over asking price and all of them saw bidding wars break out for almost every home sale.
It's hard to say what 2016 will bring but we'd assume these trends aren't fading away for the moment. If you've already been trying to buy a home in these neighborhoods you already knew all of this, but if you're new to the market, now you know where you've truly got your work cut out for you.
· Homebuyer Competition was Crazy in 2015. These Four Cities Had It Especially Bad [Redfin]