Northwest MLS Brokers Report $35.4 Billion in Home Sales During 2006
KIRKLAND , Wash. (Jan. 23, 2007) – Members of Northwest Multiple Listing Service fell short of matching the 2005 record for number of transactions in a calendar a year, but the dollar volume of sales they reported during 2006 was about five percent higher than the previous year.
In its year-end summary report, Northwest MLS, which serves 19 counties covering about 80 percent of the state’s population, logged more than 96,000 closed sales during 2006. Those transactions, which included sales of single family homes and condominiums, totaled more than $35.4 billion.
Last year’s volume, measured by number of units, amounted to a drop of about 6.7 percent from 2005. Despite notching fewer sales, the dollar volume grew by about 5 percent.
Among highlights the broker-owned service noted for 2006 activity were:
- 1,951 sales of single family home priced at $1 million or more – about 28 percent more than the previous year’s total of 1,521 million-dollar plus sales. The MLS area covering Bellevue/West of 405 had the highest number with 219.
- 859 sales of condominiums that fetched $500,000 or more (including 145 condos that sold for more than $1 million).
- Double-digit price gains for single family homes in all but one county in its service area. The median price (half sold for more, half for less) for all single family homes that sold through NWMLS during 2006 was $323,000 – about 13 percent higher than the previous year.
- Grant County had the most affordably priced single family homes, with a median selling price of $133,540. At the other end of the spectrum is San Juan County, where a single family home that sold there had a median price of $539,500, and King County, which reported a median sales price of $425,500 for last year’s sales of single family homes.
- In the four-county Puget Sound region (King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap), only about 6 percent of single family homes sold for under $200,000.
- Brokers added nearly 140,000 new listings of single family homes and condominiums to the inventory during 2006.
- NWMLS members sold more than 15,000 condominiums, about the same number as the previous year. About 63 percent of all condos that sold were in King County.
- About 83 percent of all residential sales were single family homes. Of these transactions, more than half (52 percent) had three bedrooms.
- Counties within the MLS service area have wide variation of prices for 3-bedroom homes. For pre-owned homes (built 2004 or earlier) the median sales price ranged from $124,900 in Grant County to $508,000 in San Juan County.
- Mercer Island had the highest priced homes when comparing prices by school district. Single family homes that sold in that district during 2006 had a median selling price of $949,500.
- MLS members represented more than 30,000 sellers, on average, each month.
- Maintained a high ratio of cross sales: more than three-fourths of all transactions were listed by one office and sold by a different office.
- In King County, the average price of a single family home that sold in 2006 was nearly three times costlier than the price in 1990 (up from $178,187 to $518,108).
Northwest Multiple Listing Service encompasses approximately 2,100 member brokerages with more than 26,000 sales associates. The MLS covers 19 counties, including most of western Washington, plus Grant, Kittitas and Okanogan counties in the central part of the state.
Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!
