EVERETT — More homes landed on the market in Snohomish County last month.
Even more went off.
The county saw an increase in the number of homes listed in March from February, but pending sales outpaced the number of homes for sale.
“It’s a straight-up crazy, frenzy market in King and Snohomish counties,” said J. Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO of John L. Scott.
In March, 1,537 houses and condominums were listed in Snohomish County. That’s up nearly 500 homes from February when there were 1,083 homes were added to the market, according to numbers released by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
The county saw 1,614 pending sales for the month of March. That left just 892 active listings on the market, down nearly 30 percent from the previous year when 1,267 homes were listed on the market.
By his own analysis, Scott said that about 75 percent of homes are selling within the first 30 days.
The county has less than a month of inventory, which means it would take less than a month for all of the homes on the market to be sold at the current sales pace if no new listings became available.
Overall, the county saw an 8.9 percent increase in median price for homes from last month over March 2016. The median price for homes rose to $396,000 from $365,000 year over year.
The areas that reported the highest overall increases were in the northern part of the county around Arlington, Marysville, Stanwood and Lake Stevens.
The Northwest Multiple Listing area zone that includes Arlington, Marysville and Stanwood saw a 20 percent increase year over year. The median price of homes sold in the area rose to $343,750 up from $286,500 on March 2016.
For the zone that includes Lake Stevens and Granite Falls, prices rose 17 percent during the same time period. The median prices for homes sold in those areas rose to $360,000 in March up from $307,500 the year before.
Diedre Haines, principal managing broker of South Snohomish County at Coldwell Banker Bain, pointed to the county’s low unemployment, plentiful jobs and a rosy economic forecast.
Still, she cautioned that sellers need to be reasonable when pricing their homes.
“This doesn’t mean sellers can just slap a price they like on their listing and expect it to fly off the shelf,” Haines said. “We certainly don’t need or want (overpriced) inventory that just sits there, gets stale and becomes stigmatized.”
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