Lack of inventory in county sets up ‘crazy spring real estate market’

With spring coming soon — and hopefully sunnier weather along with it — more people will be out in neighborhoods checking out open houses.

They’ll have less to see.

Snohomish County has a third fewer homes available on the market now than it did just a year ago, according to numbers released Monday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

There were 1,244 homes listed in the county in February. That’s down from 1,880 in February 2015, or a decrease of 33.8 percent. It’s a trend being seen all over Western Washington.

“This market squeezes all the fun out of buying a home,” said Frank Wilson, immediate past chair of the Northwest Multiple Listing Service board, in a news release. “Prospective purchasers who are coming up short tend to be first-time buyers or those who are using anything other than cash or conventional loans.”

The county has less than 1.5 months of inventory on the market, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. That’s how many months it would take to sell the current inventory of homes given the current pace of home sales.

In general, industry analysts say four to six months is the supply needed for a balanced market.

“Buyer frustration continues to build as inventory levels drop and a mixed quality of homes comes on market,” said George Moorhead, designated broker at Bentley Properties, in the release.

With so few homes on the market, that’s setting up for a “crazy spring real estate market,” said J. Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO of John L. Scott

“Houses are being gobbled up as soon as they come on the market,” Scott said.

Despite a limited inventory, the number of pending and closed sales were up in Snohomish County year over year. Real estate agents logged 1,475 pending sales for the month up 4.9 percent from the same month a year ago, which had 1,406 pending sales. The number of closed sales were 848 last month up from 740 in 2015, or an increase of 14.6 percent.

Despite the lack of inventory, Snohomish County home sellers saw only a mild bump in home prices compared to other counties. Overall, the median price for all homes went up $327,500 compared with $319,000 in February 2015. That’s just a 2.7-percent increase year over year.

Single-family home prices went up 8.8 percent during that time frame — $359,000 compared with $330,000. But that was behind King County, which saw a nearly 20 percent increase in home prices.

The price of condos in Snohomish County actually fell from $240,712 last year to $236,000 this February, a drop of nearly 2 percent.

Still, with so few homes on the market, it will be an intense spring shopping season.

“We’ll start to see an explosion in the amount of sales activity for the next eight months,” Scott said in the news release. “That’s the good news. The bad news? Market conditions still require buyers to make an instant response because there are so many other hungry buyers out there.”