Price cuts increasingly common in Seattle home listings

It’s increasingly common for Seattle-area home listings to slash their asking prices, according to data released earlier this month by Zillow.

While lowering an asking price isn’t totally uncommon, the percentage of listings cutting their prices has nearly doubled since last year in the Seattle metro area, which includes Tacoma, Everett, and Bellevue, rising from 6.9 percent in June 2017 to 12 percent in June 2018. The difference is even more dramatic in Seattle proper, with more than double the listings asking less than when they were first listed, jumping from 4.3 percent to 10.7 percent over the same time period.

While this doesn’t come with decrease in median sale value, the data does come as Seattle home values are rising less quickly than before. According to data released by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, the median closing price of a Seattle home in June 2018 went up 8 percent from the year before, compared to more than 17 percent from May 2017 to May 2018. And it’s only slowing down: Median closing price only rose 5.15 percent from July to July.

Inventory has also only gone up, giving buyers more homes to choose from. Back in June, Seattle saw more than a month of inventory—a figure based on number of homes for sale and typical sales time—for the first time since September 2016, and it’s gone up since then.

This pans out with Zillow’s own data. Out of the 35 largest United States housing markets, Seattle saw the biggest slowdown, with home prices rising the 12th most quickly—down from first just a year ago.

Still, the median closing price in Seattle in July was $735,000, per the NWLMS—or $699,000 in King County. The median home value metro-wide for July was $487,600, according to Zillow, or $753,600 in Seattle proper. With things having already gotten pretty pricey, the area’s real estate market isn’t about to get any more accessible for people who have been gated out of it anytime soon.