Friday, May 09, 2008

Home Values in North and Central Seattle

I've been looking over the sales history of single family homes located in Seattle's central (S. of the ship canal & N. of I90) and north (N. of ship canal) neighborhoods. From the statistics I've created the following graphs.
For north Seattle, home values began to drop from their peak in October 2007 with the median priced home selling for $511,000. By January the median was down to $444,000. There was a move upward in February to $477,000, but the median settled down to $450,000 in April. Currently, the volume of homes sold and pending is on the rise with the warming of spring. I expect home values in north Seattle to improve in the coming month.

Central Seattle is not fairing as well. October of last year was also the peak. The median priced home at that time was $671,000. Since then home prices have slowly declined to $585,000 in April. With the coming of summer I expect home values in central Seattle to flatten out and potentially improve in the coming months.

Mortgage interest rates may be playing a large role in the difference in statistics between north and central Seattle's market. Low interest rates for conforming loans may be helping north Seattle. While jumbo rates which are about 2 points higher continue to be a drag on central Seattle.

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