Seattle single-family December market report: median flat

The numbers for what the Seattle single-family and townhome real estate market did in December are out.

The median price for single-family homes was flat month-over-month at $825,000. This is still down from the $893,500 peak we saw in May but up a little over $50,000 from December 2020. I don’t expect we’ll see much change in the January median price, as it is based on homes that went pending in December, but I do expect prices to rise over the first six months of 2022 likely exceeding the peak we saw last May as there are still way more buyers than sellers.

Our advice to buyers is that the first half of 2022 is likely to be crazy, but if you need a home, you need a home!

Our advice to sellers is to list sooner rather than later. While the market is a very hot seller’s market right now, an increase in interest rates or a declining stock market could change that.

Here’s a deep dive into all the numbers.

Surprisingly the median price per square foot is nearing an all-time high.

Buyers put 445 homes under contract in December. This is less than last December’s 593 (a weird year) but a bit more than usual.

Median days on market ticked up one day to 7 days. That’s still pretty fast :).

We saw 339 new listings in December. Less than December last year when we saw 497, but we saw more than a typical year.

At the end of December, there were 187 homes for sale, the lowest we’ve ever seen at the end of December. However, December’s crazy weather likely contributed to that. No one wanted to list with snow on the ground and a deep freeze.

Months of supply is a measure of how long it’d take to sell all the homes for sale. It is now at an all time low – in theory it’d take just 6 days for all the homes in Seattle to sell if nothing new hit the market.