Jeff Tucker:

Hi. I’m Jeff Tucker, principal economist with Windermere Real Estate, and this is a Local Look at the August 2025 data from the Northwest MLS.

This summer, the local housing market has decisively swung in buyers’ favor, as home sellers around Washington have had to contend with both softening demand, and more abundant competing listings. That’s all good news for home buyers, but we are seeing fewer of them than we saw last year.

In August, closed sales of residential homes came in 6% below last year’s August total, across the Northwest MLS. Pending sales, which give some signal about next month’s closed sales, were roughly flat – up just 1% from last year.

On the supply side, we seem to have passed an inflection point, where sellers are starting to back away from the market. There were 2% fewer new listings than last August — which marks the first year-over-year decline in new listings since February. The month ended with 31% more active listings than last August, marking a slowdown from the inventory growth of about 36% the last two months. This pullback in supply should put a floor under any potential price decreases that the market shift could bring.

Speaking of which: The steadiest number across the Northwest MLS recently has been median sale price, which was exactly the same this August as last August: $665,000. That’s two months in a row of flat annual price changes, but it does remain about 5% higher than in 2023.

Now I’ll take a closer look at the four counties encompassing the greater Seattle area.

Closed sales dipped by almost 6% from last year in those four counties put together. Only Pierce County saw a gain, albeit a tiny one, from last August.

Median sale prices, though, actually crept upward from last year in all four counties: 4% higher in King; 7% higher in Kitsap, 1% higher in Pierce and 1% higher in Snohomish County.

Looking ahead, pending sales dipped 1% across the region, although Pierce County was again the standout for sales volume, with 9% more pending sales than last year.

On the supply side, the four-county greater Seattle area had 32% more active listings altogether than at the end of August 2024. That continues the moderation of inventory growth we’ve seen since May, when this metric peaked at 45% year-over-year growth. King County especially has been at the heart of that rebalancing, down from 50% growth to just 32% active listings growth. 

Looking ahead, I think the key question is whether buyers begin to come off the sidelines in response to these more favorable conditions: They’ve got lots more inventory to choose from, listings that have lingered on the market, and they’re seeing mortgage rates that have dipped from closer to 7% to now about 6.5% over the course of this summer. For people in a position to buy, this fall is shaping up to be a sweet spot.

All right, that is all I have got for this Local Look at the August 2025 data from Northwest MLS. Thank you so much for watching.