By Everett Herald

Brief: The Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties was honored by the National Association of Home Builders Remodelers program with an award for Demonstrating Remodeling Excellence in the Public Relations and Promotion category.

Homing in on Our Region's Housing Statistics

By MBAKS Senior Policy Analyst Allison Butcher

Median home prices continued their upward trend in February, rising to $759,735 in King County and $700,250 in Snohomish County. The median price of a single family home meanwhile was $857,750 and $745,725 respectively.

Please contact data@mbaks.com with questions or feedback. We want to know what data would be useful to you!

Months' Supply of Housing Inventory

As of February 2022

	King County had 0.55 months' supply of inventory (down from 0.85 months' of inventory a year ago).
	Snohomish County had 0.41 months' supply of inventory (down from 0.42 a year ago).

Many industry analysts consider a four-to-six-month level as an indicator of a healthy market.

Source: Northwest Multiple Listing Service

Median Home Price

February 2022

	The median price of single-family homes and condos was $759,735 in King County and $700,250 in Snohomish County.
	For single-family homes only, the median price in King County rose 14.37%, from $750,000 a year ago to $857,750. The median price in Snohomish County rose 19.49%, from $624,075 to $745,725.
	In Seattle, the median price of single-family homes and condos was $760,000. The median price for single-family homes only was $925,000, a 15.91% increase from $798,000 in February 2021.

Source: Northwest Multiple Listing Service

Building Permit Activity

Jobs

	The seasonally adjusted Washington unemployment rate for February 2022 is 4.3%; for Seattle/Bellevue/Everett, it is 3.4%.
	Construction employment in Washington increased by 2,500 between January 2022 and February 2022. Total construction employment is 230,600 statewide and 105,200 for Seattle/Bellevue/Everett specifically.

Source: Employment Security Department: WA Employment Estimates (Seasonally Adjusted), February 2022 and Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Population

The Puget Sound region's population as of April 1, 2021 was 4,330,400. Over the past year, the region added 66,200 people, as follows:

Source: Office of Financial Management

Icons made by Freepik from flaticon.com

Forget your favorite tiny home hunter show for a minute—this is real life. Despite what the media tells us, homeowners and homebuilders, have only very recently begun to shrink their standards in favor of more compact confines.

In the 1990s, if you can remember back that far, about 23.2 percent of homes built were 3,000 square feet or more according to a builderonline.com article based on data taken from the Census Bureau American Housing Survey (AHS). But after the recession, square footage dropped, right? Not so much. The study, which looked at the years between 1990 and 2015, saw the number of 3,000-plus square foot homes built actually increase to 28.6 percent from 2010 to 2015. In fact, the tiny trend didn't really start picking up steam until mid-2016, when millennials and other such first-time buyers became a big enough segment to affect census numbers.

What's interesting is that the minor dent young folks and first-timers are putting in the overall evolution of expanse isn't enough yet to pull builders off course. As labor and land costs expand with our house sizes, builders are less likely to put themselves at risk, opting to operate in the higher-end housing market boasting secure returns, as opposed to taking a less calculated dip into the lower-end income pool and the smaller—dare we say ‘tiny'—household segment.

Does that mean lower-end shoppers are out of luck?

Not necessarily. Townhouse construction is on the rise, accounting for 9 percent of single-family homes from 2010-2015 (up from 6 percent during the ‘90s), and, according to the Builder article, recent data reports show townhouse construction making upwards of 12 percent of total construction in current quarters.

Will townhomes and tiny houses continue to creep into the bigger picture? Time will tell, but it's safe to say as costs continue to rise and people continue coming to hotspots like Seattle and the Puget Sound region, both builders and buyers will continue to push traditional housing boundaries and seek out less expensive, more practical means of housing.

Should be an interesting evolutionary ride.

Craving more on less? Check out Seattle's tiny home revolution.