April Eastside condo market report: new listings increase for fourth month in a row
In March, we felt we were starting to see signs of the condo comeback on the Eastside. In April, we saw more of those signs, especially in terms of inventory. New listings increased for the fourth month in a row in April. 334 new listings was a 10% increase over March and a 19% increase over April 2019. By the way, if you read last month’s update, I predicted a dip in new listings based on historical trends. Always happy to be wrong about more inventory!
More inventory was also paired with some signs of increased competitiveness. Median percent of last list price hit 101% in April. This marked the first time it broke 100% since June of 2018. This measures whether or not buyers are paying more than the list price. Median days on market remained at just 6 days in April, another sign of increased buyer demand.
Despite signs of increased buyer activity, we also got some mixed signals about the buyers market for condos. Buyers put fewer homes under contract in April than they did in March at 288. This was still right around the high of 291 in September of 2020 and higher than any month in 2019.
With inventory increasing for four months straight, a pullback in median sales price was not a surprise like it was with single-family homes. Median sales price dropped 11% to $520,000. Median price per square foot also dropped slightly to $477 per square foot.
The Eastside ended April with 196 condos still on the market. This is right around the level we’ve closed each month of 2021 at. Despite new listings increasing for four months in a row, we’d still like to see this number higher so we’re not frantically refreshing our browser to see what’s new.
Finally, when we take a look at how much inventory is out there we measure this in months of supply. This is a measure of how long it would take to sell all the homes on the market if no new homes hit the market. For condos on the Eastside, this has been teetering just under a month all year and for April was 0.9 months. Normally, you’d think this indicated a sellers market but thanks to the single-home frenzy happening right now, we find ourselves in a buyers market for condos.
