Year End Recap
The year-end reports are in and it's a good time to recap the real estate market for the areas of Washington State served by the Northwest MLS.
23 of 26 counties in the NWMLS service area reported year-over-year price increases in 2024.
San Juan County experienced a decrease of 4.76% in median price from 2023’s $892,500 to 2024’s $850,000. Douglas County recorded the largest increase in the median price of $505,000, up 12.22% from 2023’s $450,000.
Brokers added 93,077 new listings during 2024, up from the previous year’s volume of 81,612. This represented an increase of 14.05% (compared to 2023’s decrease of 26.01%).
Activity for new listings, including single-family homes and condominiums, peaked in May with 11,572 listings added. When reviewing the overall inventory of all active listings, on average there were 11,910 active listings in the NWMLS database each month in 2024, a 24.33% increase from 2023’s average of 9,579.
Pending sales peaked in May with 8,220 homes going under contract. The fall market was strong in 2024 compared with previous years. Following the seasonal trends, pending sales cooled significantly in the 4th quarter but did better than the prior year.
Brokers also reported that single-family home sales during 2024 had closing prices at 100.2% of the list price. The sale-to-list price ratio is the final sale price divided by the last list price, with the resulting value expressed as a percentage; if the ratio is above 100%, the home sold for more than its list price.
This indicates that sellers still maintain confidence in the value of their homes in the face of the high mortgage rates confronting buyers – high mortgage rates that may be here to stay. The relatively low supply of homes on the market was also a factor.
“The 30-year mortgage interest rate was actually higher at the end of 2024 (6.85%) than at the end of 2023 (6.61%),” said Steven Bourassa, director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research (WCRER) at the University of Washington, in December 2024.
“We may well be experiencing the pains of adjusting to a new normal, with persistent interest rates of 6% or higher.”
Check back tomorrow for an update on where we are heading for real estate predictions by the experts in 2025
