West Seattle Market Update for April 2024

One interesting note: If you take a close look into the details of this three year graph, this is the first March where the median house drop in price between February and March. It’s easy to say that prices are dropping, but from our perspective, it’s more likely that the new listings are coming out are not the same homes that we saw last year. The homes coming out right now are fewer single family homes in the upper price ranges, it’s more of the DADU cottages and more townhouses. The reason is no surprise to anyone, resale homes are not coming on the market because sellers aren’t willing to trade their current sub 3% rate for a 6.5% market rate mortgage now.

No new here, inventory is down. And that’s unlikely to change this year. Asking someone to trade a sweetheart rate of the last several years for something more than double that rate is too much for people to want to move. There is a good argument that the FED will need to lower interest rates and it has been the consensus opinion for a while that we will see rates come down at the end of this year. But that is unlikely to manifest in more sellers until early next year. At least we all hope so!

The number of sales, while still in a spring surge, is far off of past years. For many buyers, the interest rates are too much to handle right now and the lack of inventory continues to stifle those buyers that are out there. Although if rates do finally recede in the fall, we could see buyer activity increase and maybe not have the winter slump that is typical. Election years, especially the Presidential ones, tend to be artificially good.