I also find it useful to look at the official Northwest Multiple Listing Service data for each month–this is what I built my own model to predict, and it’s what the monthly Seattle Times article about local real estate market conditions is based on. That official data set comes out the first week of every month for the month that’s just ended (so in the first week of March we get the official data for February). One thing that’s less than ideal about the NWMLS data is that it only has two categories: the first is houses + townhomes combined, and the second is condos. That’s a large part of why I built my own model–so that I could pull out houses and townhomes separately (to see that data click here, or on the “Seattle real estate stats” tab on the navigation bar)–but having it also allows me to run the stats in real-time in order to predict where the median home price is likely to end up before the month actually ends. Below are my charts based on the official NWMLS data, which I’ve pulled going all the way back to January of 2000–note that prior to January of 2007 the data was only for King County, so the Seattle-specific data starts in 2007; and that the spreadsheet for January of 2001 is missing in the NWMLS online archive, which is why it’s not in the relevant charts:
Median home prices, 2007 – the present (Seattle only, broken out by houses + townhomse vs. condos). This one is a great visualization of the full period between the pre-Great-Recession peak in mid-2007 and the present, for Seattle proper only.
Median home prices, 2007 – the present (broken out separately by Seattle vs. King County and houses + townhomse vs. condos). The same as the graph above, but including King County too.
Median home prices, 2000 – 2012 (broken out separately by Seattle vs. King County and houses + townhomse vs. condos). This one encompasses both the bursting of the tech bubble in the early 2000s and the full arc of the Great Recession, which saw prices peak in mid-2007 and bottom out in early 2012.
Median home prices, 2000 – the present (broken out separately by Seattle vs. King County and houses + townhomse vs. condos). This view flattens the early years a bit, but it’s great if you want to see the entire period between 2000 and the present in one place.
