Herald staff
The Puget Sound-area real estate market is surprisingly strong, despite the regional recession, according to a new quarterly indicator developed by Windermere Real Estate.
The Windermere index, unveiled last week, shows that the market in Snohomish, Pierce, King and Kitsap counties is just 1.7 percentage points below the all time reached in late 1999, officials said.
During the first three months of this year, the index fell to 1.036, declining at an annual rate of 0.9 percent from the previous quarter. The benchmark for the index was in 1996, when it had a value of 1.0.
It’s designed to rise and fall as the market improves or deteriorates.
The index was developed for Windermere by Seattle economists Dick Conway and Doug Pedersen of Conway Pedersen Economics.
They examined such things as home sales, time on the market, and the ratio of the selling price to the listing price to develop a single composite index reflecting the health of the industry.
They also developed supporting indexes reflecting housing supply, demand and affordability, and analyzed trends that may have impacted these factors from quarter to quarter.
“The Windermere Index is a unique tool for tracking regional residential real estate conditions in this simple, but comprehensive manner,” Conway said.
The economists charted market trends in the area for the past 15 years to give the new numbers perspective.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
