Eleven offers here, seven offers there, 14 pre-inspections at one listing, dozens of buyers sharing inspection reports . . . the market is in a frenzy, and there’s no sign of a letup.
“We had fifteen offers and four cash buyers,” one agent told us; “three pre-inspections,” said another, both talking about perfectly fine houses that seemed reasonably priced until the offers started pouring in.
A hot market and rising prices are good for sellers, but there are some hurdles to getting the sale closed. “We took the cash offer even though it wasn’t the highest bid,” another agent said, “because we were worried about the appraisal – nothing sold in the past six months supports this price.”
The buyers don’t seem to care. As of this writing, 147 Seattle houses went Pending this month. Pending is the status where inspection contingencies have been satisfied. 96 had market times of ten days or less, fifty had market times of five days or less. Typically, a listing will stay active for three to seven days to give buyers a chance to see it, a typical inspection period is a week. To go “Pending” in ten days indicates either quick offer acceptance or pre-inspections, inspections made without the certainty of being under contract.
Buyers were digging deep into the shallow inventory too, by putting twenty-one houses under contract that had been on the market for three months or more.
The condo market isn’t quite as hot, but it’s catching up, as 22 of the 53 pendings this month had market times of seven days or less; 13 listings that had been on the market for over two months have gone under contract.
Where does this leave buyers? “You can’t really play around on a new listing,” said a veteran agent. “You just have to assume that the list price is ten percent too low.”
Note: We compiled the data from the NWMLS, which is in no way responsible for the way we use the data!
