Since President Bush signed the Housing Bill on July 30th, I've experienced a huge surge in business!  I was curious to see if it was simply me having some good results, or if there has been a shift in the market.  I ran a search of homes for sale in Mt. Vernon, Burlington, and Sedro Woolley priced under $300,000.  There are currently 422 Active listings in the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS).  There are an additional 101 homes that have Contingent/Pending transactions on them.  That is a very healthy number!  It indicates that a Seller's Market is on the way!  A healthy market is generally regarded as having 6 months of inventory.  Assuming that all of the Contingent/Pending transactions close in the next 30 days, we'll have a shortage of homes under $300,000.  There would be just over a 4 month inventory of homes.  Market swings generally begin in the lower price ranges.  After all, to buy a bigger or better home most people need to sell a smaller or less expensive one.

The July 2008 sales for all of Skagit County Residential Homes showed a 3.92% price increase over last July's sales prices.  The number of Closed Sales is still significantly less than we had last year, but the Pending Sales figures for July are much more in balance with last year's numbers.  All of the signs are there for a market that is rebounding in a big way! Consumer confidence is going up.  Sales are going up.  Prices are going up.

The news media will probably catch on to this in the next couple months.  The doom and gloom stories are already disappearing and are now being replaced with the "Glimmer of Hope" and "Good News for a Troubled Market" type stories.  Next, we'll likely see the "Rebounding Market" stories...

If you've been waiting for the market to "bottom out" before you buy, look around and you'll find that it is happening right now.