King County home sales surge in December for seventh straight month
By Eric Pryne
Seattle Times business reporter
King County house sales surged in December for the seventh straight month, according to statistics released today by the broker-owned Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
Buyers closed on 1,462 single-family homes in the county last month, up 57 percent from December 2008 and down just 7 percent from November, when a deadline — later extended — to claim the federal first-time homebuyers’ tax credit spurred many deals.
Monthly sales now have exceeded those for the same month in the previous year every month since June. It’s a trend that seems likely to continue for the next few months, if only because sales were abysmal last January and February.
“With what our agents already have in the pipeline, I’m optimistic about a positive first quarter,” Meribeth Hutchings, broker at Windermere Real Estate’s Lake Stevens office, said in a prepared statement.
The median price of a house sold in King County last month was $380,000, down 5.8 percent from December 2008 — the last month the median topped $400,000. In 2009 the median price bounced between $364,000 and $395,000.
King County condo sales in December were up 38 percent year-over-year, but the median price — $244,000 — was down 15.5 percent.
In Snohomish County closed single-family home sales in December were up a whopping 89 percent from December 2008, while the median price fell 9.9 percent to $287,000.
The number of active single-family listings was down year-over-year in both counties: 21 percent in King, 19 percent in Snohomish.
Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com