Favorable weather brings more buyers, higher prices

Spring is the traditional housing season, yet February’s fair weather brought out potential buyers in droves.

Many of them were surprised to find they were joining a huge group already sorting through the scarce number of Puget Sound listings.

“The early spring weather has brought a bumper crop of buyers to a market experiencing a drought of listings,” said John Deely, principal managing broker at Coldwell Banker Bain.

The competition for homes pushed the median price of a single-family home in King County to $429,900 (up 6 percent from a year ago), followed by Snohomish County where February’s completed transactions commanded a median price of $330,00 for a year-over-year gain of nearly 4.8 percent.

Kitsap’s median price was $238,903 while Pierce checked in at $233,000.
Northwest MLS figures show pending sales system-wide surged 18.7 percent in February compared to the same month a year ago, rising from 7,247 mutually accepted offers to 8,599. Twenty of the 23 counties in the service area reported double-digit increases in pending sales.

“Listings are flying off the shelf faster than allergy medicine in this early spring market,” said Frank Wilson, branch managing broker at John L. Scott, Inc. Poulsbo. “(Buyers) will probably make several offers before one is accepted and they just need to expect to be competing with others.”