What I'm Seeing Out There Right Now

I have been running a lot of open houses lately. And if I had to describe the mood in one word, it would be nervous.

Not panicked. Not checked out. Nervous. People are walking through homes, asking good questions, doing the math in their heads. But there is a hesitation underneath it that I have not felt in a while. The cost of everything is weighing on people. The news is weighing on people. Tech layoffs, tariffs, rates that will not come down. Nobody feels like they have a clear read on what comes next.

What is interesting is that plenty of people are still looking. The open houses are not empty. Keybox activity across the NWMLS service area is actually up 5.5% from a year ago, which means more doors are getting opened, more homes are getting walked through. The buyers are out there. They are just thinking harder before they write anything down.

That hesitation is the market right now. And depending on your situation, it might be worth paying attention to.

What the April Numbers Actually Say

The Snohomish County median closed April at $750,000, down just slightly from $755,500 a year ago. Prices are holding. What has changed is inventory. Active listings are up 58% year over year, from 1,325 to just over 2,000. That is the largest increase of any county in the NWMLS service area.

At the current pace of sales, Snohomish County has about 2.8 months of supply. A balanced market sits between four and six months. So we are not in buyer's market territory yet, but we have moved a long way from where we were. A year ago we were well under two months.

King County tells a louder version of the same story. The median dropped to $859,000, down 5.3% from $907,000 a year ago. Inventory up 30%. Prices are softening there in a way they have not yet here, which matters if you are thinking about making a move across the county line.

What is actually selling in Snohomish County is worth breaking down. Single-family resale is the tightest segment, with average prices near $877,000 and homes still selling at 99.8% of list when priced right and showing well. New construction and condos are softer. Builders are negotiating. If you are open to new construction, you have more leverage in that category than you have had in years. The homes sitting are the ones with tradeoffs the seller has not addressed, either in price or condition. Buyers have options now. They are using them.

The Eastside Factor

Something shifted on the Eastside in late February that is worth naming. Microsoft's return-to-office policy went into effect February 23rd. Employees within 50 miles of a campus, three days a week, onsite. The Redmond campus employs somewhere between 44,000 and 47,000 people. That is a large number of households rethinking their commute math.

Three days a week changes the calculus on distance in a real way. Someone who could not justify living in Bothell or Mill Creek or Woodinville at five days a week can justify it at three. Same commute, different frequency. And the East Link light rail connection between Seattle and Bellevue opened in late March, which quietly expands the commute radius in both directions.

Microsoft is not the only driver. Amazon is building toward 25,000 Bellevue employees. OpenAI, Snowflake, Anduril, and a handful of others have planted flags on the Eastside in the last couple of years. The pool of well-employed buyers looking at southern Snohomish County is not shrinking. If anything it has structural reasons to grow.

The Window Some People Are Missing

Here is the thing I keep thinking about when I am standing in those open houses talking to people who own a home and want more space or a different situation.

If you are in a home you want to sell, you are still selling into a market where prices have held remarkably well. The Snohomish median is essentially flat year over year. You are not leaving value on the table the way sellers in King County might be starting to. And on the other side of that transaction, there are sellers who need to move. Not everyone listing right now is doing it casually. Some of them are dealing with job changes, life changes, timelines that matter. Motivated sellers exist in this market in a way they did not when everything was getting ten offers in the first weekend.

That combination, selling at still-strong prices and buying from someone who has real reason to negotiate, is a window. It is not going to be open forever. If rates come down and demand picks back up, motivated sellers get less motivated quickly.

This is not advice to rush. It is a reason to think seriously if you have been on the fence.

The Part That Makes It Harder

The catch, and there is always a catch, is contingent offers.

If you need to sell your home to buy the next one, you will likely need to make your offer contingent on that sale. And a lot of sellers still do not want to hear it. It adds uncertainty to their timeline. It introduces a variable they cannot control. Even in a slower market, a clean offer beats a contingent one most of the time.

There are ways to work around this. Bridge financing, if you qualify, lets you buy before you sell. Some sellers will accept a contingency if the price and terms are right and your home is genuinely sale-ready. In some cases a rent-back agreement on your current home buys you time. None of these are simple, and none of them are free. But they are worth understanding before you decide the move is impossible.

This is exactly the kind of logistics conversation worth having before you are trying to write an offer on something. The time to figure out your path is not the Tuesday afternoon you find the house you want.

The Honest Read

The market is not broken. It is recalibrating. Prices are holding better than the headlines suggest. Buyers are active but selective. Sellers who have priced honestly and prepared their homes are still moving them. The ones who have not are sitting, and some of them are starting to get the message.

The nervousness I feel at those open houses is real, but nervousness is not the same as a bad market. Sometimes it just means people are paying closer attention than they were. That is probably overdue.

If you are trying to figure out whether this market makes sense for your situation, that is a real conversation worth having. I am easy to reach.

Call or text: 425.492.6788