Doron's Vlog

Hi, I’m Doron Weisbarth with Weisbarth & Associates. Welcome to my October 2023 Market Update SPOOOOOKY report! For several months, I’ve been reporting on the slow and steady increase in home sale prices, and that, if done correctly, you can expect to sell your home quickly and for a good price when you put your home on the market. It’s been true, and it continues to be true. At the same time, while prices are going up, the number of homes sold has remained sluggish for several months. And now that the summer sale season is officially over, it’s becoming clear just how strange this year has been. Consider these two graphs, which show data for single family homes in King County for nearly 11 years, basically starting in January 2013 and going through September of this year. And while I present data from King County, these trends that I’m going to show you hold true for many of the counties in the Greater Seattle area, and even beyond. So don’t think that this is somehow exclusive to only King County. The BLUE line represents the median single family home sales price, and you can see how it’s been steadily increasing at a pretty predictable rate. And you can see the annual cycle of activity in the data for ‘Closed Sales’, that’s the ORANGE line. Notice that, in most of the previous years, the peak market activity took place around late spring or early summer, with about 2,500 to 3,000 homes sold during those peaks. It’s a bit harder to pinpoint it on the graph, but most of the sales in September of each of the past years were about 2,000 to 2,500 homes. And then there’s 2023. No, you don’t have to adjust your glasses or clean your screen – that huge drop-off is real! The month with the highest number of sales this year reported only about 2,000 homes sold. In September of this year, we only had about 1,400 homes sold in King County. That’s about 23% fewer homes sold this September compared to last September. And if you compared it to the September before that, meaning, 2021, the drop is 47%! That is just incredible! By the way, if you want to look at all this information and read my report at your pace and leisure, you’ll find all this information in my October newsletter, available online and for download, for free, at Weisbarth.com/Newsletter, that’s Weisbarth.com/Newsletter. And, as I’ve been reporting, throughout all this slow market activity, home prices have pretty much held steady. With such low inventory of homes for sale, you’d expect to see great pressure on the market that would push prices up much faster. This is where the higher mortgage interest rates are helping keep the appreciation manageable, almost perfectly countering the effects of the low inventory. So, I think that, in many way, the real surprise here is just how much demand we still have, despite the high mortgage interest rates, which really speaks volumes about the kind of pent up demand that we have in our area. And it also bring up the question about what will happen once mortgage interest rates drop – which, most if not all expert agree, will happen sooner or later. Will lower mortgage interest rate bring back to the market a lot of buyers, which will increase the demand so much that prices will start rising fast again? It certainly sounds plausible. Or maybe the inventory of homes for sale will then also increase, as seller feel more comfortable listing their homes, which will then help keep the price increase in check. This too sounds plausible. What will actually happen? Well, only time will tell. For now, if you are looking to sell, here’s what you need to know: we still have more buyers than sellers. In fact, waaay more buyers than sellers. But that doesn’t mean that you can be sloppy about how you list your home. Understanding and following the proper marketing principles is absolutely critical, if you want to get a better a outcome from your home sale. If you do things correctly, without cutting corners, you can 100% expect a good sale, fast and for a good price. So, if you or anyone you know who is looking to buy a home or sell their home, please refer them to me and my team at Weisbarth & Associates by phone, email or fill out a form on our website. My team and I are in the top 1% of all brokers in the state of Washington. We reached this level because we know and understand how the market works, how the system here works, how to implement the correct marketing principles, how buyers and sellers think and see the world. And we have the numbers to prove that our success is not just a fluke, but rather based on sound planning and well tested strategies. More than that, we make sure to educate our clients about all this too, so that they can make correct and informed decisions. The best way to reach me is by phone at 206-779-9808, that’s 206-779-9808. And remember that we donate a substantial portion of our income from each sale to the kids at Childhaven, so your business and referrals help the kids at Childhaven, so you get a good deed out of it too! Please remember to like, subscribe and follow for more great insights, charts and tips on my monthly vlog, and read our monthly newsletter at Weisbarth.com/Newsletter. I’m Doron Weisbarth with Weisbarth & Associates. Have a wonderfully spoooooky Halloween, and I’ll see you next month!

Hi, I’m Doron Weisbarth with Weisbarth & Associates. Welcome to my August 2023 Market Update report. How is a seller to know what to think during this murky period of real estate? On the one hand, inventory is down, which means buyers have fewer choices. That means it should be easier to sell. But on the other hand, higher interest rates and other uncertainties seem to make buyers pickier and to resist getting into huge bidding wars. The result, even with our lower inventory, is that new listings and sales remain sluggish. While median prices have meandered down in July 2023 relative to June 2023, it remains to be seen whether this is a trend, or just the normal, seasonal market fluctuation, affected by the higher interest rates, vacation time, people having fun in the sun, etc. Most likely, it’s a combination of all of the above. The good news, if you want to sell, is that there is a pathway that leads to a great outcome, namely: selling faster and selling for more money. Consider this graph: What I’m showing here is the final sale price as a percentage of the original asking price. Meaning, if your listing price was a million dollars, and you got a million dollars, then you are 100%. If you got more than a million dollars then you’re more than 100%. And, of course, if you got less than a million dollars, then you are below 100%. Make sense? From the summer of 2022 through March of 2023 – about nine months – sellers in Seattle and King County sold their homes for less than their asking prices, sometimes by as much as 5% less. In our area, with median home prices in the $800k range, 5% can be $40,000 – that’s a LOT of money, and that’s just for the median price! But then, starting in March of this year, sellers starter receiving at least their asking price. You can see this trend in the graph, where the line was below 100% for months, but is now consistently holding steady right on or above the asking price. And this is true even for July 2023, even though overall median prices dropped relative to June 2023. By the way, if you want to look at all this information and read my report at your pace and leisure, you’ll find all this information in my August newsletter, available online and for download, for free, at Weisbarth.com/Newsletter, that’s Weisbarth.com/Newsletter. What does all this mean? First, the market has stabilized. That’s good news and it is a big deal. Second, despite it being a strong sellers’ market, which it still very much is, if you want to maximize the sale of your home, the fundamentals of marketing are still very important. Things such as: Preparing and presenting your home in an appealing way Pricing the home correctly Understanding the buyers’ psychology Knowing where and how to reach those buyers Deal negotiations and so on. All these things matter a lot. In fact, none of these steps can be skipped, or you risk getting results that you may not like, such as taking longer to sell and selling your home for less than what it’s really worth. The other thing, if you want to maximize your home sale, is that you just can’t take the buyer’s for granted anymore. Just a few short years ago buyers would pretty much jump on anything that the market presented to them, and throw money at it, sometime without enough thought. Well, no longer! Buyers today are picky. And who can blame them? If you’re going to pay so much money for a home, and have a large monthly mortgage payment because of the higher interest rates, you’d be picky too! Fair? I think so. So, if you or anyone you know is looking to buy a home or sell their home, please refer them to the Weisbarth & Associates team by phone, email or fill out a form on our website. Our team will make sure that you are educated and prepared correctly. And when you refer someone, tell them that just because we meet and talk doesn’t mean that they are obligated to work with us – there’s absolutely NO obligation! To be honest, all of our clients work with us not out of any sense of obligation, but because they think that we’re the best suited to represent them on their home purchase or home sale, truly! The best way to reach me is by phone at 206-779-9808, that’s 206-779-9808. And remember that your business and referrals help the kids at Childhaven, so you get a good deed out of it too! Please remember to like, subscribe and follow for more great insights, charts and tips on my monthly vlog, and read our monthly newsletter at Weisbarth.com/Newsletter. I’m Doron Weisbarth with Weisbarth & Associates. Have a great rest of your summer and I’ll see you next month!

Hi, I’m Doron Weisbarth with Weisbarth & Associates. Welcome to my June 2023 Seattle Real Estate Market report. A year ago, I presented data showing just how far beyond the norm home sale prices were during 2021 and the beginning of 2022. I refer to this period of price aberration as the ‘Covid Price Spike’. This month, I’ll show you a similar graph, updated with another year’s worth of data, that is even more telling about what is going on in our Seattle area real estate market. Before I do that, I have to share with you a headline from the Seattle Time from June 5th. Really, Seattle Times? Really? Talk about attention grabbing headlines. This headline makes it sound like the sky is falling, when nothing could be further from the truth! Let’s look at some real data, shall we? The rising graph shows the median sale prices for single family homes (SFH) in King County going all the way back to January 2013. I used ORANGE to represent the portion of the dataset through December 2020, and BLUE to represent the portion of the dataset starting in January 2021 to the present. And by the way, these trends that I’m showing you are true for Snohomish County and Pierce County, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other counties in Washington as well. This next paragraph is a bit technical, so hang in there with me… I added to this graph two straight lines. The DOTTED ORANGE LINE represents the straight-line appreciation calculated using only the portion of the dataset from January 2013 to December 2020, and then extrapolated through May 2023. The DOTTED BLUE LINE represents the straight-line appreciation, calculated using the entire dataset, starting in January 2013, and all the way through May 2023. What these two straight lines represent are the rate at which single family homes appreciated in King County in the last 10 plus year. As you can clearly see, even with the large price increases during the ‘Covid Price Spike’, these two lines are very close to each other. What does all this mean? It means that despite the ‘Covid Price Spike’, the market seems to gravitate back to those straight-line appreciation rates. By the way, if you want to look at all this information and read my report at your pace and leisure, you’ll find all this information in my June newsletter . Incidentally, a similar price spike happened in 2017 and early 2018, although those spikes were not quite as pronounced. Although at the time, almost everyone thought that the end of the world was coming. So this kind of fearmongering is not new business. In the end, in all of these cases, the market eventually corrected itself back to the line. Again, I want to point out that these trends are true for Snohomish and Pierce counties, as other counties as well. So what we’re seeing now is the median home prices rising, although not quite as dramatically as they did last year. All this brings us back to the fundamental truths about real estate, that home prices are determined by two forces: supply and demand ! As long as the supply is low (which it is) and the demand is high (which it also is), then prices will continue to rise. Sometimes they will rise too fast, and then they will drop; sometimes they will be above the line, and sometimes below the lin. But these periods are generally short lived, as the market corrects itself very quickly. So don’t let misleading headlines confuse and scare you. As the old saying goes – numbers don’t lie! The market is very much alive and well. And when you understand the dynamics of all these market forces, you can make better decisions about buying and selling. Now if you know anyone who is considering buying or selling their home this year, please send them this video or refer them to us by phone, text, email or fill out the ‘referral’ form on our website . My team and I will make sure that they get educated on the buying and selling process, the things to do and not do, and, of course, on the market itself, so that they can make the best decisions and maximize their results. There is no cost for any of this and absolutely no obligation. The best way to reach me is by phone at 206-779-9808. Please remember to like, subscribe and follow for more great insights, charts and tips on my monthly vlog , and read our monthly newsletter . I’m Doron Weisbarth with Weisbarth & Associates. See you next month!