Seattle maintains its streak as the nation’s hottest housing market as it reaches its 18th month in a row. The area’s tech industry continues to draw new residents to the area, keeping demand high and inventory low.
According to the latest Case-Shiller national home price report, Seattle home prices were up 1.7 percent from January 2018 to February 2018 and up 12.7 percent from a year ago. Seattle’s home prices are also up 23.9 percent from its July 2007 peak.
The only other metro areas with double digit price growth were Las Vegas (with an 11.6 percent increase) and San Francisco (a 10.1 percent increase). Nationally, prices rose 6.8 percent over the past year. In addition to leading the nation in home price growth over the last 12 months, Seattle also posted the nation’s largest gain in employment among the 20 cities covered.
Earlier this month, NWMLS released their market update sharing that the housing market was back to a “pressure cooker situation,” as we enter the spring and summer months. The number of pending sales shot up 29 percent — from 7,980 in February to 10,311 in March.
In a report released this week by Zillow, inventory appears to be slowly rising nationally. In the first three months of this year, inventory of existing homes has risen, the first streak of its kind since early 2015. New home inventory has also grown in this time period. For the first time in almost a decade, new home inventory has been above the 300,000 threshold for two consecutive months. Despite signs of inventory growth, it will still take quite some time to build the market back up to a ‘normal’ level.