What Seattle open houses are telling us right now
Sample post — draft content
Numbers lag. By the time a closed-sale statistic shows up in a report, the decisions behind it are two or three months old. Open houses don't lag — the mood in the living room on a Sunday afternoon is the market, live.
After twenty-plus years of walking them, here's the pattern we watch for and what it's been saying lately.
The tells
- Who shows up. Neighbors and looky-loos mean a quiet market. First-time buyers with a lender letter in hand mean a real one. Investors with a contractor in tow mean the smart money smells opportunity in that block.
- The questions people ask. "When are offers due?" is a hot market. "Would they consider…?" is a cooling one. When buyers start negotiating in the doorway, sellers have lost the leverage — whatever the list price says.
- How long people stay. Five-minute walk-throughs are shoppers. Twenty-minute second visits with a tape measure are buyers.
What we're seeing
The frenzy-era reflexes are gone: buyers aren't waiving everything just to compete, and well-priced homes are still moving while aspirationally-priced ones sit and take price cuts. That gap — between the house that sells in a week and the nearly identical one that sits for six — is the most honest signal in the market right now. It means buyers are back to being selective, and selective buyers are what a healthy market looks like.
For sellers, the lesson is old-fashioned: price to the market you're in, not the one your neighbor sold into three years ago. For buyers, the doorway negotiation is open again — you just have to show up and ask.
(This is an observation, not advice — every neighborhood is its own market. If you want the block-by-block version, ask us.)