Thurston County WA real estate market update for Spring 2013

What Does This Mean For You?

For Sellers, it is always important to understand where your property fits into the competitive landscape. Currently, there is a wide variety of conditions in the marketplace, but overall this is the kind of market sellers love to see.

After years of persistent buyer’s market conditions, much of our market is now in balance, or squarely in a seller’s market.  Today, 91% of the market, by price range, fits into these categories.  Only 9% are in a buyer’s market.

In the price ranges below $350,000 the market is quite active.  Multiple offers are becoming common again.  This is more prevalent in undersupplied areas, where the inventory is low.

For many sellers, particularly trade-up sellers who are looking to buy larger or more expensive homes, they know the math is better if they move now before prices bounce up.

For Buyers, it is important to know that most price ranges are attracting more buyers than sellers.  This makes it competitive for buyers, who may find themselves competing with other buyers for the same property.

This is a unique time to be a buyer.  Prices around the country appear to have bottomed out and interest rates are so low they tend toward ridiculous!  These factors combine to make homes affordable.  As interest rates rise, less house will be available at the same mortgage payment.  When prices also rise, a buyer can quickly be priced out of something that may have been affordable when prices and interest rates were lower.  This is ultimately why we are seeing a big jump in the number of buyers in the market.  Today’s buyers will be happy they purchased when they did.

One of the trends we track is Absorption Rate.  This measures the speed at which houses sell.  In other words, if you took all the homes currently listed in your particular
area and didn’t add any new listings, it would take so many months to sell all those homes.  (This doesn’t mean how long it will take to sell YOUR home—just how long the entire inventory will sell.)  This is a tool to measure if it’s a buyers’ market or a sellers’ market, to gauge if prices will increase, remain the same or decline, and to examine inventory.  To learn more about absorption rate, visit my blog post here.

If you’d like to know what your home is worth, contact me today for your personalized, in-depth market analysis.