Leavenworth Real Estate Update Spring 2022
As most folks have heard, the Leavenworth real estate market has changed dramatically in recent months. Mike Simonsen, a real estate analytics expert at Altos Research, declared on May 30th “the pandemic real estate frenzy is over.”
Simply put, inventory is increasing, demand has slowed and prices are not increasing at the astronomic rates that we have seen in recent years.
However, real estate sales data tends to lag since it takes thirty to sixty days for the escrow process and closing a sale. Second quarter data presented here is for homes that closed in April, May and June. The real effects of a slowdown won’t show up in sales data until later in the summer.
New listings are clearly up in 2022 and it would be easy to exclaim that they are almost double the number of new listings we saw in 2021. However, the graph above demonstrates that the paucity of new listings in 2021 was the real aberration and the number of new listings this spring are similar to previous years.
As mentioned previously, the sales data from this quarter show what has “happened” as opposed to what might be “happening” right now. Spring sales weren’t quite as strong as 2021’s record numbers, but prices skyrocketed up to new heights.
In the Spring of 2022, the average price of a Leavenworth single family home was $928,000 and the median sales price in Leavenworth was $795,000.
The average home price was up 21% from 2021 while the median sales price in Leavenworth went up 18%.
Are Leavenworth home prices dropping?
While inventory is increasing, the supply needs to outpace demand for home prices to drop. With approximately 170 homes selling in 2021, a supply of 85 homes listed for sale would be considered a balanced market based on 6 months of supply. A range of 5-7 months of supply may slow price growth dramatically, but not cause home prices to actually decrease. This means having 70-100 homes on the market, which is actually less than are currently listed for sale.
Instead of widespread price declines, it is more likely that different neighborhoods and price ranges experience different waves of buyer demand or of new inventory. A glut of Kahler Glen condos, for example, may cause pricing of those homes to decrease, but have no effect on the price of a waterfront home on Lake Wenatchee or a condominium in downtown Leavenworth.
2022 Leavenworth real estate forecast
Homebuyers expecting firesale pricing in the Leavenworth real estate market will be disappointed, but buyers who are tired of being beaten out by cash buyers in bidding wars will find more opportunities and more choices than in the past few years. Sellers and their agents will have to be smarter about pricing and greedy or overambitious sellers will find themselves reducing their list prices to realistic numbers in order to get buyers’ attention.
Required disclaimers:
Information and statistics derived from Northwest Multiple Listing Service. Additionally, this representation is based in whole or in part on data supplied by the North Central Washington Association of Realtors or its Multiple Listing Service. Neither the Association nor its MLS guarantees or are in any way responsible for its accuracy. Data maintained by the Association or its MLS may not reflect all real estate activity in the Market.
