National slowdown claims its first major-city victim: Seattle home values

S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller reported that Seattle-area single-family home prices fell 1.2% in May from the same month last year

(Credit: iStock)
(Credit: iStock)

A decline in Seattle-area home values is the first in years in a major U.S. metropolitan area, a leading source of real estate data reported.

Single-family home prices in May fell 1.2 percent, compared with the same month last year, according to fresh data from S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller.

Kelly Meister, a Seattle-based broker for Compass, said home prices appear more uneven than a year ago from one neighborhood in the city to another.

“The Seattle market is like a microwave: super hot in some spots and cold I others,” she told the Seattle Times

Indeed, the dip in house prices across metropolitan Seattle obscures strong markets for homes north and south of the city.

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South of Seattle in Pierce County and Tacoma County, for example, the median house price was 7.3 percent higher in June than in the same month last year, the Northwest Multiple Listing Service reported.

Single-family home prices also vary widely within the city of Seattle, where the median price of a house is $714,600, research by Zillow shows.

Whether house-price declines spread from the Seattle area to other major metropolitan areas “remains to be seen,” Philip Murphy, managing director of S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a prepared statement. “For now, there is still substantial diversity in local trends.”

The growth of home prices has been slowing across the nation, even in the Southwest, where prices have been rising at the fastest pace. [Seattle Times] — Mike Seemuth