Housing

Seattle area home prices surge for biggest growth in US

The Seattle area has the hottest housing market in the country - the first time in nine years that Seattle has led the United States in home-price growth, according to the Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.
The typical single-family home across King, Snohomish and Pierce counties cost 11 percent more in September than a year prior. That marked the biggest increase among the 20 major metro areas covered.
Seattle narrowly topped Portland, where home values gained 10.9 percent. For the prior eight months, Seattle had seen its home-price growth sit second in the country behind Portland.
Overall, Seattle prices are rising twice as fast as the rest of the country, as they have for most of this year.
The Case-Shiller index looks at only single-family homes, and compares the price of a home to the price of the same home the last time it was sold. The data does not include every home listing and tends to focus on existing homes rather than new construction.
When KIRO 7 asked the Northwest Multiple Listing Service for similar data, MLS provided numbers based on all listings of single-family homes and condominiums.
When looking at prices from January through October of 2016, MLS compared them to the same time period in 2015 and saw that the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle saw the largest price increase of 21.5 percent. All sales in this area were condominiums.
Using the same calculation, MLS shows that homes on the Eastside, south of I-90, had the smallest price gain of 8.2 percent when comparing 10 months in 2016 with the same 10 months the year before.
Seattle-based real estate website Zillow also calculated home values, but compared only the month of October 2016 with October 2015. In looking at both single-family homes and condominiums in this snapshot, Zillow said Seattle home prices have increased more than 12 percent.
That falls just behind Portland and Dallas.
Zillow produced a list of the fastest growing home prices, based on October data compared to one year ago.
The fastest growing home values are:
1. White Center – 21%
2. Mountlake Terrace – 19.8%
3. Bryn Mawr-Skyway – 18.7%
The slowest growing home values are:
1. Yarrow Point – 6.3%
2. Black Diamond – 7.2%
3. Darrington – 7.8%
Even areas with the slowest appreciation are meeting or exceeding the national average.
Zillow predicts that in 2017, home values in the Seattle metro area will increase at a slower rate, with an average of a 7 percent increase.

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Associated Press

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