Seattle Home Sales Hold Steady

The median paid for resale single-family detached houses held at $310,000 in September, the same as in August and July but down 4.6% from a year earlier. That year-over-year decline was the smallest since April 2008, when the median for that home-type category fell 2.7% from a year earlier.

Another key price measure for resale single-family houses, the median price paid per square foot, dipped slightly to $172 in September, down from $174 in August and down 15.5% from a year earlier. The September figure was 28.5% below the peak $240 median paid per square foot in July 2007.

In September, foreclosure resales edged slightly higher in the greater Seattle area: 17.8% of all homes resold were houses or condos that had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months, up from 17.1% in August and up from 9.4% in September 2008. Foreclosure resales peaked in January this year at 23.9% of resales.

In September, 38.7% of all Seattle-area buyers used government-insured FHA loans, a popular choice among first-time buyers, according to an analysis of public property records. Absentee buyers made up 13.5% of all purchases - a relatively low%age in the West. Absentee buyers include investors and second-home buyers, mainly, as well as others who indicated at the time of sale that they will have their property tax bills sent to a different address.

The use of adjustable-rate mortgages ("ARMs") to buy homes rose in September to 6.4% of all Seattle-area purchase loans, up from 4.8% in August and up from a decade low of 1.8% in May this year. However, September's purchase ARM level was down from 13.7% a year ago and down from a monthly ARM-use average this decade of nearly 33%.

>To order reprints of this article, click here: Reprints