Seattle Tops the Nation for Home Price Growth 15 Months in a Row
Increasing Demand and a Lack of In-City Inventory Pushes Buyers Out of the City
After a slight dip in home price growth from September to October, home prices in Seattle have begun their upward trek once again, as the index ended November 2017 at 0.18%. As Case Shiller noted in their official report, the highest year-over-year gains among the top 20 cities belonged to Seattle, Las Vegas, and San Francisco. “In November, Seattle led the way with a 12.7% year-over-year price increase, followed by Las Vegas with a 10.6% increase, and San Francisco with a 9.1% increase.”
As a competing West Coast gateway market, San Francisco has seen a surge in price growth over the past three months, which brought prices above the previous highs set a decade ago. As Drew Becher of Paragon Real Estate in the Bay Area writes, some of San Francisco’s neighborhoods have surpassed their previous peaks quite substantially, with values exceeding $1 million in October 2017.
In Seattle, increasing prices are being driven primarily by a lack of available inventory. Local employers, particularly in the tech industry, are hiring scores of employees at lucrative incomes, yet the shortage of available homes for sale in downtown Seattle is keeping many renting apartments or driving them outward to single-family homes in close proximity to the downtown core. This is driving prices up as near the city as the Eastside, as far south as Tacoma, and as far north as Skagit County.
See where Seattle stands on the latest S&P/Case-Shiller chart below or download their summary here
Want to know how the latest report impacts your neighborhood? Contact me for an analysis and stay tuned for the 2017 Year in Review and 2018 Market Forecast coming in March 2018.