June brought more choices than ever for Washington home buyers

After breaking a 44-month supply streak in May and giving buyers some relief, June saw even "more choices and less competition," according to the latest Northwest Multiple Listing Service report. "Inventory is up and demand has dropped," reported Robert Wasser, an officer with the board of directors at Northwest Multiple Listing Service. "A pretty simple economic recipe for a softening market”, he added. It is definitely good news for buyers. Figures for June show a 5.2 percent improvement on the number of active listings system-wide which -- when coupled with the 8.4 percent drop in the volume of pending sales and the 7 percent drop in closed sales -- seems to indicate that the market in June was more favourable to buyers than in recent memory. Prices area-wide continued to rise, increasing more than 10 percent from the same time last year. But on the whole, NWMLS brokers seem a bit more optimistic about navigating the market as a buyer.