Home Tracker: Asking vs. Selling

OK, call me a real estate nerd, but I think this is pretty cool. One of the main reasons I started the Home Tracker feature on this site (see archives in right sidebar) was to follow up and see how much the homes end up selling for. This gets into what may be my only major complaint about the generally very good online property records in the Seattle area: By the time the sale of any given home is completed, making the selling price available for anyone to see by looking at the excise tax records, the original listing -- and therefore the original listing price -- is no longer available (or at least not easily accesible to a layperson like me) in the public version of the Northwest Multiple Listing Service listings.

With the Home Tracker feature, I figured it would be interesting to watch selected homes to see whether they end up selling for more or less than the asking price. Not a scientific sample, by any stretch of the imagination, but interesting, since one of the signs of the strength of a market is whether high demand is causing people to bid prices above the original amount the seller seeks.

The reason for this post: One of the first Home Tracker homes, in West Seattle, has now sold -- for $590,000, compared with the $619,000 asking price. See this updated chart for the details:



Maybe after several other Home Tracker homes are sold, we'll see a trend. Unfortunately, even then, all it will do is whet the appetite for an actual, comprehensive measure or index of list price vs. closing price in the region. Or maybe I'm missing something: Is anything like that already available to real estate agents or anyone else?

Update: In an admirable display of real estate geekiness, Dustin has a great post on the Rain City Guide that builds on this theme, including a graphic that shows list price vs. selling price in his neighborhood. See my thoughts in the comments section below his post.