Doron's Vlog

Hi, I'm Doron Weisbarth with Weisbarth & Associates, and welcome to my September 2026 Market Update! So... are we normal again? The short answer is: I'm not so sure. August gave us a collection of signals that don't fit neatly into a single story. Some of what happened looked like a pretty normal transition from summer into fall. Other parts were anything but normal. And rather than try to force all of that into a nice, clean explanation, let me show you what actually happened. This graph compares what happened in our King County single-family home market from July to August this year with what typically happens during that same period, based on data from the previous ten years. The blue bars show the change this year, in 2026, and the gray bars show the typical July-to-August changes of years past. We’re going to look at each one of these measured items more closely, and as you look across these six measurements, you'll see why I'm having a hard time calling August normal. Let's start with sellers. New listings dropped 19% from July to August. Now, listings normally decline this time of year, so the fact that they fell isn't particularly surprising. What's unusual is how much they fell. Typically, we'd expect a decline of about 9%. This year, it was more than twice that. But while sellers were pulling back, buyers actually became more active. Pending sales — homes that went under contract during the month — increased nearly 7%. Typically, they decline about 2% from July to August. And we see something similar when we look at showings. Showings per listing increased 7%, compared with essentially no change in a typical year. So we had fewer new homes coming onto the market, more homes going under contract, and more buyers showing up to see homes for sale. You might look at those three numbers and think, "Okay, the market is strengthening." Except... then we get to prices and days on market. Median prices fell 7.4% from July to August. Again, a decline in August isn't unusual, but typically it's only about 1.4%. And homes took considerably longer to sell. Median days on market went from 11 days in July to 17 days in August. That's a 55% increase, compared with a typical increase of about 15%. That’s a huge change. And then, after all of that, look at what happened to the number of homes for sale. It declined 3.8% — remarkably close to the typical August decline of 2.9%. So that's August for you. Fewer sellers. More pending sales. More showings. Lower prices. Longer market times. And, somehow, a fairly normal decline in the number of homes available for sale. Those things don't necessarily contradict one another. But they also don't give us a nice, clean answer like, "The market is getting stronger," or, "The market is getting weaker." We can see very clearly what buyers and sellers did in August. What's much harder to tell from one month's data is what was driving those decisions. One possibility is that lower prices encouraged some buyers to act. Both pending sales and showings increased as prices declined. But I want to be careful with that explanation because median prices can also change simply because of the mix of homes that happen to sell in a particular month. So just because those things happened at the same time does not mean one event necessarily caused the other. Another possibility is that we're finally seeing the normal transition into the late summer-early fall market. Normally, new listings peak in the spring and then decline as we move through summer. But this year, listings remained remarkably steady from April all the way through July. It wasn't until August that we finally saw that drop. And, of course, several things could be happening at once, which, actually, would not surprise me at all. Price, selection, interest rates, consumer confidence, individual circumstances — all of those can affect when someone decides it's time to buy or sell. So August gave us plenty of information about what happened. Figuring out what it all means is going to require a little more time. By the way, if you'd like to spend a little more time looking at this data and reading the full analysis, you'll find everything in my September newsletter, available online and for download, for free, at Weisbarth dot com forward slash newsletter. That’s Weisbarth dot com forward slash newsletter. Okay, so what am I going to be keeping my eyes on in the next few months? Easy — pending sales! Pending sales are one of our better leading indicators because they tell us what buyers are doing right now, rather than closed sales, which tell us what buyers were doing several weeks ago. And that's what makes September particularly interesting. If buyer activity remains stronger than its normal seasonal pattern in the coming months, then August may turn out to have been a harbinger rather than an anomaly. But if it doesn't, then August may simply have been one unusual month. We’ll find out soon enough. So... are we normal again? Maybe. Some familiar seasonal patterns returned in August. Others didn't. And right now, we simply don't have enough information to know whether we're seeing the beginning of a meaningful shift or just one unusual month. For now, I'd rather watch what happens next than pretend the data is telling us something it isn't. And if you or someone you know are thinking about buying or selling, uncertainty doesn't necessarily mean you should wait. It means your strategy matters. At Weisbarth & Associates, we've developed a three-step system for buyers and a five-step system for sellers designed to help our clients make good decisions based on the market we actually have. If you have questions, specific or general, you can reach out through this website, email me, text me, or, my favorite, pick up the phone and give me a call directly at 206-779-9808. That’s 206-779-9808. I love talking with old friends and new ones, truly! What’s more, your business and your referrals truly make a difference in our community! Every time we help someone buy or sell a home, we make a donation to Akin, an amazing nonprofit that helps children and families thrive throughout our community. Thanks for watching. If you find this information helpful, remember to like, subscribe, and follow for more updates. You can also subscribe to my monthly newsletter at Weisbarth dot com forward slash newsletter. I'm Doron Weisbarth with Weisbarth & Associates. Enjoy the beginning of our fall season, and I’ll see you next month!

Hi, I'm Doron Weisbarth with Weisbarth & Associates, and welcome to my July 2026 Market Update! If you've been wondering why the market feels different this year, the answer isn't because buyers disappeared. It's because sellers finally showed up. You know, over the past several years we've all lived through higher interest rates, inflation, stock market swings, political uncertainty, and no shortage of headlines predicting that the housing market was about to come to a screeching halt. But when I look at the actual data from our local multiple listing service, the NWMLS, I keep coming back to the same conclusion. The buyers never really left. In fact, they kept buying homes. So what’s changed this year isn't demand, it's supply. Let me show you what I mean. This chart really tells the whole story. Bur before we look at the numbers, let me explain what you're looking at. The orange line represents pending sales of single-family homes in King County, or in other words, the number of homes buyers put under contract each month, but had not yet close. The blue line shows the median sales price of those homes. And the green bars represent the average number of new listings that came onto the market during the second quarter of each year. Meaning, if you add up the number of new listings in April, May and June of each year, divide by three, that’s the number. And while I use the data from King County, these trends hold in other counties in our area as well. Now, don't worry about every little bump and wiggle in the lines. Instead, step back and look at the bigger picture, because what we’re looking for are the trends. The trends tell us what's really happening in the market and how buyer and sellers are behaving. The first thing that jumps out at me is the information in the orange line. Despite everything that's happened over the past four years, buyer activity has remained remarkably consistent. The dotted orange line shows the trendline for this data, and you can see how nice and perfectly horizontal it is. Yes, there are the normal seasonal ups and downs, but overall buyers have continued buying homes at a very steady rate. Now compare that with the green bars. Remember, each green bar represents the average number of new listings each month during the second quarter of that year. Here the dotted green line shows the trendline for this data. You can see how it’s inclined up, because every year these green lines have gotten taller. To put this in real number, back in 2023, the average number of new listings during the second quarter was just over 2,150 homes per month. A year later it increased to almost 2,600. Last year it climbed above 3,000. And this year we're averaging more than 3,200 new listings each month. That's about a fifty percent increase in just four years. And that's a pretty remarkable shift in such a short period of time. At the same time, as I mentioned earlier, buyer activity has remained surprisingly steady. So when you put those two trends together, the result is exactly what you'd expect. Inventory naturally increases. Today we're sitting at about three-and-a-half months of inventory. Now, compared with the past few years, that's a noticeable increase. Historically, though, it's still generally considered a seller's market. The difference is that buyers finally have more choices than they've had in quite some time. And honestly, I think that's healthier for everyone. Buyers now have time to compare several homes before making one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives. By the way, if you'd like to spend a little more time looking at this chart and reading the full analysis, you'll find everything in my July newsletter, available online and for download, for free, at Weisbarth.com/newsletter. That's Weisbarth.com/newsletter. Now, don't get the impression that homes aren't selling. Good homes—properly priced and marketed—are still selling quickly. But the market does seem increasingly divided. And that’s another interesting consequence of all this. Some homes are selling very quickly, while others take longer. But they do sell, and that’s an important things to understand. As for prices, they're still slightly lower than they were a year ago, but they're continuing to move upward month-over-month, which is exactly what we'd expect during the spring and early summer market. So here’s an interesting question for you: why are more homeowners finally deciding to sell? My honest answer is... I don't know. I have some theories about it though. One possibility is that many homeowners postponed moving after locking in those historically low mortgage rates a few years ago. And that certainly made sense at the time. But, you see, eventually life catches up with all of us. Whether it’s a change in the family size, or change in jobs, retirement, or some other circumstance. Life doesn’t stand still and like many other things, housing needs evolve. At some point, those life events become more important than the interest rate on your mortgage. And when that happens, the decision to move becomes obvious. Now, whether what we’re seeing is the beginning of a longer-term shift or simply a release of pent-up supply is still too early to know. The next few months should give us a much better picture of where the market is headed. So if you're thinking about buying or selling—or simply you’re trying to understand what today's market means for your own plans—this is a great time to start putting together a strategy. My team and I use real data from our Northwest Multiple Listing Service, proven systems, and years of local market experience and insights to help our clients make confident decisions and maximize their results. And remember, when you work with us, you're also helping support Akin, an amazing nonprofit that helps children and families throughout our community. Your business and your referrals truly make a difference, and that's something we're incredibly proud of. For a no-obligation consultation—or if you'd simply like to bounce around some ideas—reach out by email, text, or, my favorite, a good old-fashioned phone call at 206-779-9808. That's 206-779-9808. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow for more updates. And be sure to check out the full July newsletter at Weisbarth.com/newsletter. I'm Doron Weisbarth with Weisbarth & Associates. Enjoy the rest of your summer, and I'll see you next month.

Hi, I’m Doron Weisbarth with Weisbarth & Associates, and welcome to my June 2026 Market Update! I don't normally spend much time responding to media coverage of real estate. Part of that is because market data and headlines often serve two very different purposes. One is trying to inform you. The other is trying to get you to click. And let's be honest, a headline that says, "The Seattle housing market is behaving pretty much the way it usually does" isn't going to set the internet on fire. But over the past few weeks I've seen several articles suggesting that Seattle-area home prices are falling, that the market is weakening, and people are leaving Seattle and King County in large numbers. And after seeing enough of those stories, I found myself wondering whether we were all looking at the same data. Because when I pull up the actual date from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service data, which is the source of where all these housing numbers come from in the first place, I see a very different picture. Let me show you what I'm seeing. So, if all those headlines were correct, I'd expect to see buyer activity falling, prices softening, homes sitting on the market longer, and generally a market that was struggling to find its footing. Instead, what I see is pending sales reaching their highest level in about three years. We see median home prices continuing to trend upward. And we see homes selling relatively quickly, with the median home spending just seven days on the market. All this is suggesting that the market is actually very, very active. The buyers are out there shopping. Now, I want to be careful here because I'm not suggesting that every home sells in seven days or that every segment of the market is equally strong. Real estate is always more nuanced than that. But when I step back and look at the broader picture, to me it doesn't look much like a market in decline. And that's where context becomes really important. You see, real estate markets have seasonal patterns. Inventory rises and falls throughout the year. Buyer and seller activity rises and falls throughout the year. Prices accelerate and then level off and then accelerate again. And withing that larger seasonal and consumer behavior patterns there are still more subtle variations. That is normal. The problem is that if you ignore those patterns, it's surprisingly easy to create a narrative that sounds convincing, but isn't actually telling the whole story—and certainly not the correct story. Compare the wrong months. Focus on a single statistic. Ignore seasonality. And suddenly you can make a healthy market look troubled. That's one of the reasons I spend so much time looking at month-over-month trends an well as at longer-term trends, instead of relying entirely on a simple year-over-year comparisons. The context matters every bit as much as the numbers themselves. And just as importantly, you need to understand what's influencing buyer and seller behavior at different times of the year. The numbers matter, of course, but so does the psychology behind those numbers. And honestly, to me, the most remarkable part of this entire story isn't that the market is strong. It's that the market is behaving so normally. Think about everything we've been through over the past year or so. Inflation concerns. Interest-rate uncertainty. Tariffs. Stock market volatility. Wars. Political drama. Tech layoffs. There has been no shortage of reasons for buyers and sellers to feel nervous. And yet somehow the Greater Seattle area housing market continues to follow many of the same seasonal patterns that we've seen for well over a decade. That's actually pretty remarkable when you think about it. By the way, if you'd like to look at these charts yourself and dig deeper into the data, you can find my complete June newsletter online and available for free download at Weisbarth.com /newsletter. That's Weisbarth.com /newsletter. One of the arguments I've seen lately is that inventory is rising and therefore the market must be weakening. At first glance, that sounds reasonable. After all, if there are more homes for sale, doesn't that mean demand must be falling? Well... not necessarily. I was curious to see how today's inventory compares to what we considered normal before all the craziness of the past few years, and what I found was that inventory is still below much of what we saw throughout the 2010s. In other words, yes, buyers have more choices today than they've had recently. But that's very different from saying we suddenly have too many homes for sale. In fact, for years one of the biggest complaints from buyers was that there weren't enough homes to choose from. They'd wait for a home to come on the market, rush out to see it, compete against ten other buyers, lose, and then start the process all over again. Okay, my clients would actually win those multiple bids most of the time, but that's a different story. Thank you, you can hold your applause. A little more inventory isn't necessarily a sign of trouble. In many ways it's a sign of a healthier and more balanced market. Buyers have a better chance of finding the right home, sellers still have active demand, and the market functions more efficiently because people can actually compare options instead of fighting over the same handful of listings. And then there was another headline that caught my attention. The idea that people are leaving Seattle and King County in droves. Come on.... Whenever I hear a claim like that, my first instinct is usually the same: let's go look at the numbers. And when I did, I found that Seattle very recently surpassed 800,000 residents after adding roughly 11,500 residents over the past year. In fact, Seattle remains one of the fastest-growing major cities in the entire nation, even if that growth isn't quite as dramatic as it was during some of the boom years. To me, that doesn't sound much like a city that's emptying out. So the broader story continues to be one of growth rather than decline. Which brings us back to where we started. The more I looked into these stories, the more I kept coming back to the same conclusion: the headlines and the data simply aren't telling the same story. The headlines tell a story of decline. The data tells a story of a market that continues to be strong and behave remarkably normally. Almost boringly so. And honestly, I think that's the real story. Despite all the uncertainty, despite all the noise, despite all the reasons people have to feel nervous, the local housing market continues to behave in a surprisingly normal and seasonally predictable way. And that's important because buying and selling homes isn't just about economics. It's also about psychology. It's about how people feel about their situation today and about their confidence in their future. You've heard me say this many times before: a confused mind will do nothing. And what's not often said is that when confusion causes us to freeze, we tend to assume that everyone else is doing the same thing. But life doesn't really work that way, does it? People still get married. People still get divorced. Families grow, kids leave home, jobs change, people retire, and sometimes people simply wake up one morning and realize the house that worked perfectly a few years ago doesn't really fit their lifestyle anymore. Life keeps moving forward whether the headlines are optimistic or pessimistic. And because of that, housing demand tends to keep moving forward too. So if you're thinking about buying or selling this year—or if you know someone who is—I would encourage you to focus a little less on the headlines and a little more on the underlying data. Because that's where the real story is. My team and I use real NWMLS data, proven systems, and years of local market insights and experience to help our clients make confident decisions that maximize their results. And remember, when you work with us, you're also helping support Akin, an amazing nonprofit that helps kids and families in need thrive. Your business and your referrals make a real difference in our community, and we're incredibly proud to be part of that mission. For a no-obligation consultation—or if you'd simply like to bounce around some ideas—reach out to me by email, text, or, my favorite, a good old-fashioned phone call at 206-779-9808. That's 206-779-9808. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow for more updates, and be sure to check out the full June newsletter at Weisbarth.com /newsletter. I'm Doron Weisbarth with Weisbarth & Associates. Welcome to summer, welcome World Cup, and I'll see you next month.