The NWMLS released the statistics for the month of February. I thought I would share some of them with you. It's not all bad.

 

I'll tell you straight up that the prices are not what interest me the most. Sure, they are critical. However, they are what they are at this point in time. We are all looking to the future for better news. With that in mind, I think the various listing numbers and days on market numbers are of more importance to me. They will determine how the market and prices behave in the future.

 

I love that the February new listings are down compared to both last year and last month. This is a time of year that the sellers are looking to get their houses on the market for a sale prior to the summer. Seeing a smaller number of new listings on the market is encouraging from the supply and demand perspective. The total number of listings is higher than last month, but lower than this time last year which is a bit conflicting. However, the number I like the most though is the number of listings that are pending. Not all of these will close in the next 30 days, but it is a great indicator of how many homes may close in the next 30 days. Compare the number of pendings, 1264, to the number of closed units, 661. This is a great direction for the market to be going and reflects the increased activity level I am seeing from my clients day to day. The average time on market has also begun to come down slightly since last month. It is a small change... but I'll take it as it is, again, a good trend.

 

I pulled up the same set of numbers for the East of Lake Sammamish area as well.

East of Lake Sammamish (Area 540), Residential
	February 2009	Last February	Last month
New Listings	192	256	225
Total Active Listings	774	814	725
Pending Listings	64	134	77
Closed Listings	53	100	40
Average Sold Price	$595,630	$637,500	$536,967
Median Sold Price	$464,701	$597,444	$495,000
Average Time on Market	124 Days	79 Days	99 Days