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Are you thinking of buying a home? There are plenty of great housing markets across the state of Washington that you may want to consider buying in, and Seattle and Kirkland are just a couple of them.
Real estate markets across Washington State are highly competitive right now. Common conditions include rapidly rising home prices, short supply, and fierce competition.
Today, we will look at some similarities between the Seattle and Kirkland housing markets as we head further into 2024.
Both the Seattle and Kirkland real estate markets experienced above-average growth in home prices in recent years. In fact, house values in both cities have risen by double digits per year from 2012 to 2018.
And over the last 12 months from August 2023 to August 2024, home prices have increased quite a bit. According to RedFin, home sale prices in Kirkland rose a whopping 13.7% year-over-year, and Seattle’s home prices increased 3.6% over the same time period.
Perhaps it was a blessing for homebuyers, but home price averages in both Seattle and Kirkland declined for a period from mid-2018 to mid-2019. Prices were exploding so quickly that many might argue that such a slow down was inevitable.
That said, prices have been picking up in both centers since then. In Seattle and Kirkland, home prices are expected to tick up by around 1.5% to 3% over the next year.
According to the latest data from RedFin, the median home price for Kirkland, Washington sits around $1,425,000 as of August 2024, while the median home price in Seattle is currently around $855,000. Those are hefty home prices are well above the statewide average of $650,700. This is yet another thing that housing markets in Seattle and Kirkland have in common.
This is an issue that has caused frustration for a lot of home buyers in both the Kirkland and Seattle real estate markets. There is a severe inventory shortage within both of these markets. The short version is that there aren’t nearly enough homes listed for sale to satisfy the current demand from buyers.
A balanced real estate market is one that has around five to six months of supply, according to economists. That means, in theory, that it would take five or six months to sell all homes currently for sale if no new ones came onto the market.
When you sink below this theoretical threshold, you have a market that favor sellers over buyers. And that’s clearly what is happening in both the Seattle and Kirkland real estate markets, as we head further into 2024.
According to recent reports, both of these cities had around a 2-month supply of homes for sale in August 2024. By comparison, the average for real estate markets across the country was a 4.1-month supply of homes for sale — and even that is below normal. So both the Kirkland and Seattle housing markets are experiencing chronically low levels of housing supply.
The supply shortage mentioned above has created a real estate market where bidding wars and multiple offers are a common occurrence. Homes that go onto the market in or around Seattle tend to attract multiple offers within days of the initial listing — if not the same day.
It’s also common for houses to sell above the seller’s original asking price, as potential buyers try to outbid one another. This is the current reality for both the Kirkland and Seattle real estate markets. And it’s something that home buyers will probably have to contend with for some time.
Related: Make sense of fluctuating home prices in the Seattle area!
Housing analysts use a particular metric known as the “median days on market” to get a feel for how active or sluggish a particular real estate market is. This is basically the midpoint for how long it takes to sell a home in a particular area.
In August 2024, the median days on market for Kirkland and Seattle was around 7 and 9 days, respectively. This means that homes listed for sale in the area spend a median of 7 and 9 days on the market, before going under contract, according to Redfin.
Both markets are considered to be very competitive now, and the low number of days on the market is a testament to that fact.
If you’re in need of a mortgage to buy a home in Kirkland, Seattle, or any other market in the Pacific Northwest, we’d love to help. Sammamish Mortgage is a local, family-owned company based in Bellevue, Washington, and we currently offer many mortgage programs in all of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Colorado since 1992. Please contact us if you have mortgage-related questions.
Whether you’re buying a home or ready to refinance, our professionals can help.
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No Obligation and transparency 24/7. Instantly compare live rates and costs from our network of lenders across the country. Real-time accurate rates and closing costs for a variety of loan programs custom to your specific situation.