This edition of housing notes will explore some particularly ambitious projects in the works across the Puget Sound region. It’s also worth noting to kick things off that some indicators suggest that the housing market in the Seattle metro area may be creeping toward a more balanced state.
Economists often gauge the health of a housing market by how many months of housing supply are available, which is measured by how fast housing sells. This figure can be determined by dividing the total number of homes for sale in a given area over the number of homes sold in one month, and firms like Redfin track the metric regularly. For example, if there were 30 homes for sale in Tacoma in a month, but only 10 homes sold in that period, that would indicate there are three months of supply left in the Tacoma housing market.
In an average or “healthy” housing market, there are typically four to five months of supply available — anything less than that means that the market is considered to be in a period of scarcity. As you might imagine, in the Seattle metro area housing has been scarce for a long time. However, a July 2022 study released by the Northwest MLS found that housing market in King, Snohomish, Pierce, and Kitsap counties had bumped up to almost 1.9 months of supply, which is the highest it’s been since January 2019.
Now this number is still not great, and importantly, it has not equated to reductions in housing prices, which are still on the rise in all four counties, with Pierce County leading the way with its 12.7% increase from July 2021. However, an estimated 1.9 months of housing supply is a lot better than the figures for July 2021, which were all less than one month.
While there is still a lot of progress to be made on this front, ambitious developments like those described below would help to move the region toward a healthier, more affordable housing market.
564 apartment homes near light rail headed to Des Moines/Kent Station
Canadian developer Cedar Coast has filed the paperwork with the City of Kent to bring 564 market apartment homes to a 12-acre parcel of land near the future Des Moines/Kent Link light rail station, anticipated to open as part of the Federal Way Link extension in 2024.
