The Seattle-area housing market shook off some of the winter doldrums in March.
More homes hit the market last month, fulfilling a highly anticipated seasonal surge in listings, and offering home shoppers some relief after a period of tight offerings. But the market remained muted compared to the years of ultralow mortgage rates.
March’s new listings were up 15% in King County, nearly 10% in Pierce and 11% in Snohomish compared with the same month last year, according to data released Thursday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Services.
These new home listings also drew more buyers “out of the woodwork,” said Jeff Tucker, principal economist with Windermere.
Still the Seattle area’s already broadly unaffordable market continued to see prices climb.
The median home price rose 3.3% in King to $977,500, 3.9% in Snohomish to $790,000 and 2.7% in Pierce to $565,000. The median price for a single-family home sold in Seattle hit $1 million in March, rising 8% from a year ago. On the Eastside, the price rose 1.6% to top $1.7 million.
Across the region, condo prices also climbed. In King County, the median condo price in March was $590,000, up 9% from last year. In Snohomish, the median condo price increased 2.9% to $529,994 and in Pierce it was up 6.7% to $415,000. The condo data includes units in apartment buildings and some accessory dwelling units that resemble small single-family homes.
In Seattle, the median condo price was $627,650, up 6.8% from last March.
Despite the activity, the Seattle-area market at the start of its busiest season remained “more balanced,” according to Tucker. It is far from “the white hot” conditions in spring 2021 where a frenzy of buyers competed for homes when mortgage rates were still low.
“We’re not seeing too much of that kind of craziness,” Tucker said. But “compared to last March, this one is shaping up a little bit better,” he said.
Broader economy
The national economy remains a wild card for the housing market this spring. Consumer confidence has plummeted on the news of a potential global trade war over tariffs. Some national economists have raised the odds of a recession.
Sherry Sahlstrom, an associate with Re/Max Eastside Brokers, said “people oftentimes just stay put” during turbulent times.
“They won’t sell,” she said. “They’ll just kind of wait and see how things are.”
Tucker said a recession and job declines could set the Seattle-area market back for a repeat of a weak 2023 market. But mortgage rates tend to drop during economic downturns, and that could also spur demand for homes among those who retain their jobs.
“It does seem like buyers in this region are particularly sensitive to interest rates,” Tucker said.
The activity across the region was uneven. Some Seattle-area real estate agents said buyer traffic and the number of new listings was weaker than the typical March and typical start of the spring season.
“We’re still radically low on supply,” said John Manning, managing broker for Re/Max Gateway in Ballard.
The supply of homes in King, including single-family homes and condos, was at 1.86 months in March, compared with 1.23 a year ago. The NWMLS considers the market balanced when it would take four to six months to sell all the homes active in its inventory. Some homes are also lingering on the market, Manning said, increasing overall listings. That is partly because buyers such as young professionals are likely preferring to rent and wait for conditions to improve.
That “could be just a basic factor of interest rates,” Manning said.
Mortgage rates, while declining in recent weeks, are expected to remain elevated this year in the low-to-mid 6% range. The average rate this past week for a 30-year fixed mortgage was 6.64%, down from 6.82% a year ago, according to Freddie Mac.
Buyers face different levels of competition depending on the property type.
Matt Miner, a Seattle-based real estate broker with Compass, said single-family homes in Seattle neighborhoods with good schools are drawing multiple bids, but that’s not the case for other property types in the same neighborhoods.
“You can list the town house low, and you might not even get one good offer,” Miner said.
“Whereas single-family homes, it doesn’t even necessarily need to be that special, it just needs to not be terrible.”
In Eastside communities, the picture was also mixed in March.
Sahlstrom said high-quality town homes are selling on the Eastside along a tech corridor running from Bellevue to Redmond. Young tech workers have been out in the market looking for homes, and don’t necessarily want a big single-family home with a lawn to maintain.
“They’ll have an office in one of the bedrooms and they have a bedroom in the other, and that’s good,” Sahlstrom said. “That’s all they want.”
Miner said prices for single-family homes in some Eastside communities may have reached their limit, however. In the Tuscany development near Woodinville, for example, 3,300-square-foot homes now are listing significantly over $2 million, where a close comparable sold for under $2 million last fall, Miner said.
“The houses have been sitting,” Miner said. “There’s several houses in that neighborhood for sale, none of them has gone pending.”
Buyers, however, have been looking at Bothell or relatively affordable neighborhoods with good schools.
“It’s not a consistent story everywhere on the Eastside,” Miner said.
Agents said that many buyers have been taking their time.
“There’s a lot of temperamental buyers,” said Mike Ferreri, a real estate broker in Windermere’s Mercer Island office.
“I mean, it’s a big deal,” he said. “Homes are super expensive here and it’s probably the biggest transaction that a lot of people haven’t done before.”
