Puget Sound Area Home Sales – Hitting Bottom….OUCH!

Posted by James Lupori

The end of 2008 is turning out to be one of the most challenging real estate markets in decades. A huge number of difficult factors have converged in a sort of “perfect storm” which has utterly destroyed confidence in the market. Even after the Fed provided capital to help stabilize the financial markets, consumers aren’t out there buying up homes, even though prices have softened. To illustrate how slow things are, please turn to the following charts which represent “absorption rates” for November:

PUGET SOUND ABSORPTION RATES

Absorption rates are based on the ratio between active listings and the net number of homes that are in the sale process. According to the charts above, only 8.2% of the listed homes were absorbed in November.

KING COUNTY ABSORPTION RATES

King County fared slightly better with 10.6% of the homes were absorbed in November.

SNOHOMISH COUNTY ABSORPTION RATES

Snohomish County absorbed 8.8% of the active inventory in November.

I’d like to say something light and positive at this point; however, I’m a big proponent of facing the brutal facts of the current reality: the market has gone into a coma for the time being. Also, home prices have fallen this year which is discouraging.  I would also like to say that homes ARE selling in spite of all the challenges. About the only wise thing to do for now is continue to monitor the housing market for signs of improvement. Now, more than ever, make sure you’re working with a real estate professional when searching for a home.

Picture by inju

Graphs courtesy of Alan L. Pope & Associates, Inc – Real Estate Appraisers & Consultants

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Real Estate, Real Estate Business, Statistics, Uncategorized, economics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Puget Sound Area Home Sales – Hitting Bottom….OUCH!”

  1. Kenmore Undressed » Blog Archive » The Anatomy of a Blog Post: I Think, Therefore I Blog says:
    December 14th, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    [...] sources for his statistics and quotes. Moreover, I have access to numerous sources of my own. In my last post, my sources back up the notion that we should all be a little skeptical [...]

  2. Kenmore Undressed » Blog Archive » Kenmore, WA Home Sales - Final Statistics for November 2008 says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 8:54 pm

    [...] expected given the chaos and uncertainty gripping the overall economy. As I’ve suggested in earlier posts, our financial system is paralyzed without two of the most important ingredients for success: [...]

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