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Snohomish County Real Estate Trends and Insights for January 2024

Writer's picture: Joe FrankJoe Frank

As expected, January housing data for Snohomish County showed more activity than the previous two months, though not as much as I would have thought.


Average Home Sales Prices for January 2024 increased to $747,000 from $712,000 in December, yet this is less than November ($757K) and October ($747K) 2023.


Homes for Sale inventory has seen a steady decline since September 2023 and sits at 138 for January 2024.


Average Days on the Market has seen a steady increase from the June 2023 (the low point for the year) at 11. For January 2024, Average Days on Market was 32, which is the highest since about March 2023.


The percent of Homes Selling at List Price was at 98.4%. So homes on average are not selling for over list price, and in fact, about 1.5% are selling for less.  We’re also seeing about 3% of homes listed for applying price reductions.





Mortgage rates continue to weigh heavily on the real estate market, and to a lesser extent lingering inflation. The housing market was looking healthier as mortgage rates came down quickly from the 8% range during October and into December, however as of late, they’ve continued to hover in the mid-to-high 6% range. Continued higher mortgage rates continue to have people (that don’t have to move) “locked in” to their low mortgage rates from 2020 to 2022. Many of these rates are as low as 2.5%. I wrote about the mortgage rate lock-in effect in 2022.


The lock-in effect along with new home builders being unable to keep up with demand is contributing to a slow, grinding market where prices have stayed uncomfortably elevated, especially considering the higher mortgage rates (relatively speaking to the last 10 years or so).


We will likely continue in this slow grind that I seem to write about every month until mortgage rates come down significantly and sustain (in the 5 to low 6% range), new home inventory increases, and/or average wages increase materially to counteract high mortgage costs.


If you would like any additional insight for your specific area, or perhaps an area you’re looking to move to, please don’t hesitate to contact me. And please remember that housing markets can vary greatly from state to state, county to county, zip to zip and even neighborhood to neighborhood.


As always, thanks for reading!


-Joe

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