It looks like the pieces have fallen into place for home sales to start to pick back up in Wenatchee. The two main factors are lower financing rates and available affordable homes.

A year ago you couldn't find any homes under $200,000 in Wenatchee, but currently there are 70 homes on the Wenatchee/East Wenatchee area MLS for under $200,000. And these are just the Single Family Homes; this does not include condo conversions etc.

The recent Wall Street problems have had a positive impact on mortgage rates; we have seen FHA Mortgage rates in the mid 5% range, which makes these homes affordable.  FHA allows for a 3% down payment which can come from family, and FHA allows the seller to contribute up to 6% for closing costs or interest rate buydowns.

The other great program is the HouseKey first time homebuyers program which allows for 100% financing at low rates.

These two new patterns of lower rates and affordable home prices should allow some renters to buy up these lower priced homes and create some move up buyers who can pick from 200 homes in the $200,000-$300,000 range. 

The biggest thing holding back this turnaround is that the general public is so focused on the headlines, they don't know that they can buy a home with little or no money down.

While I'm at it, I'll throw in my two cents on the financial meltdown.  Housing foreclosures did not cause the problem; slick Wall Street firms did Enron style financing for homes and alllowed people who couldn't afford them to buy homes.  Wall Street's own bad investments are just coming back to bite them.