Home Sales in Port Orchard, WA during April 2010 (thus far)

Home Sales in Port Orchard, WA during April 2010 (thus far)

The Real Estate Market in Port Orchard, WA (including Olalla) seems to have come alive this month.  Since the beginning of April there have been 68 offers made on homes in Port Orchard.  The majority of homes are under $300,000 price range, which could be influenced by first-time and move-up home buyers trying to take advantage of the home buyer tax credit, which is due to end this month.  There have also been a handful of homes in the $300k-$550k that have offers made on them, which is fairly respectable considering Port Orchard’s more affluent real estate neighbor to the south, Gig Harbor, has only been able to eek out only 32 offers so far this month.  Last month there were a total of 84 homes in Port Orchard that had offers on them, so this month is shaping up to be even better than March.  

So far for the month of April, there have been 19 closed home sales in Port Orchard.  This number reflects homes that most likely had offers made on them back in March or earlier.  This number is a bit low considering that last month, of the 260 total closed home sales in Kitsap County, 92 of them were in Port Orchard.  Well, I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the total numbers are at the end of the month to reach any type of conclusion. 

There are currently 533 single family homes for sale in the Port Orchard area.  Considering roughly 12% of the homes for sale in Port Orchard have had offers made on them during the first half of April, compared to only 5.5% of Gig Harbor’s total of 578 homes for sale as we reported on our website's blog, Healthcarehomebuyer.com, I’d say Port Orchard’s real estate market is starting to make a stronger come back for sellers right now.  It’s still not great because there are still many short sales and bank owned homes that are driving down prices, but the sooner the inventory of homes decreases, the sooner that home prices will start to recover.  Until then, there is no better time for home buyers to be in the real estate market.  With interest rates still hovering around 5%, I don’t believe that this time next year will present home buyers with the same buying power that they currently have.  Tony Sideris.