Thurston among worst housing markets in nation for buyers as home sales soar in October
The Thurston County housing market, which typically slows in fall, had one of its most productive months in years after sales rose 15 percent in October from the same month a year ago, according to Northwest Multiple Listing Service data released Thursday.
The 522 single-family homes that sold here last month broke the previous October record of 494 in 2017, said Ken Anderson, broker and owner of Coldwell Banker Evergreen Olympic Realty in Olympia.
“First, the urban flight as a result of COVID-19 is real,” Anderson said. “There are loads of people moving here from more dense urban areas. This has stoked new demand.”
Anderson also thinks COVID-19 has had another effect on the market: Normal demand for homes paused during the initial months of the pandemic, resulting in stronger sales activity in September and October.
And though it’s getting increasingly more expensive to buy a home in Thurston County — the median price rose to $395,000 last month — it still is a relative bargain when compared to King County. The median price of a single-family home in the Seattle area was $745,000 in October, Northwest MLS data show.
Steady demand, combined with low inventory, has made life pretty rosy if you’re a seller here. But if you’re a buyer, it was perhaps the most challenging month. Months of inventory for the county was under one month in October, the data show.
A market that doesn’t favor either buyers or sellers is thought to have inventory in the range of four to six months — inventory levels that haven’t been seen in years in this county.
What are buyers up against? This is how J. Lennox Scott, chairman and chief executive of John L. Scott Real Estate, put it on Thursday.
“It’s like the whole market is watching for each new listing,” he said. “We are nearly virtually sold out of homes priced up to $750,000 locally. This price range, which comprises 96 percent of sales activity locally, has sales activity intensity that ranges from surge to extreme frenzy.”
The Puget Sound housing market is so hot, in fact, that the region is home to the top four most competitive housing markets in the country, according to Seattle-based digital brokerage Redfin.
Homes in Olympia, Tacoma, Seattle and Bremerton are selling so quickly, and with so little scrutiny, that nowhere in the country is worse to shop for homes right now than those four cities, Redfin told The Seattle Times.
“The number of people who can work from home is changing everything about the housing market,” said Redfin broker Rachel Lieder Simeon, who focuses on Tacoma and Olympia. Remote workers searching for space and affordability are flooding into markets they couldn’t have considered before the pandemic because of their distance from their offices, she told the Times — including buyers from as far away as Silicon Valley.
In hopes of winning bidding wars, buyers are commonly waiving the right to inspect the home and to back out of the deal if a mortgage appraiser values the home at less than the sale price, according to Redfin. Many buyers are also offering high down payments, giving the advantage to home shoppers with cash on hand, Redfin’s Simeon said.
Thurston County single-family home data
▪ Sales rose 14.98 percent to 522 units last month from 454 units in October 2019.
▪ Median price increased 13.4 percent to $395,000 from $348,300 over the same period in 2019.
▪ Pending sales rose 11.8 percent to 549 units from 491 units over the same period.
Thurston County condo data
▪ Sales fell to nine units last month from 13 units in October 2019.
▪ Median price rose 9 percent to $240,000 from $220,000 over the same period.
▪ Pending sales fell to 14 units from 18 units over the same period.
Source: Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
This story was originally published November 6, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
