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Gig Harbor, WA Homes Sold during April 2010 (thus far)

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Real Estate Agent

Gig Harbor, WA Homes Sold during April 2010 (thus far)

The home buyer tax credit is about to run out the end of April (in two weeks), so I was curious how single family home sales in Gig Harbor have been going thus far in April. I ran the numbers on the Northwest Multiple Listing Service and found there have been 32 offers made on homes in Gig Harbor thus far in the first two weeks of April (this does not include across the Purdy spit on the Key Peninsula, which also has a Gig Harbor zip code). The majority of them are in the less than $500,000 price range, but there are a handful in the $500k-$600k price range and even one waterfront home on Horsehead Bay listed at a whopping $3,495,000 - I'll be curious to see what that sells at when the transaction closes.  There are 578 listings of single family homes for sale in Gig Harbor.  This means that roughly 5.5% of homes for sale had offers made on them during the first half of Apirl, compared to Gig Harbor's less afluent real estate neighbor to the north, Port Orchard, which is more than twice as high at 12%.

We reported on our website's blog, Healthcarehomebuyer.com, March's real estate market activity for Gig Harbor had 55 closed transactions, which represents offers made on homes most likely in February and earlier. There are 19 closed transactions for homes sold in Gig Harbor so far this month, which is slightly behind last months 55 closed transactions. 

So what do all these numbers mean? What they seem to say to me is that any recovery for Gig Harbor real estate still has not materialized. With so many bank owned homes and short sales still glutting the Gig Harbor real estate market and driving prices down even further than what they were last year at this time, I wouldn't count on any good news for home sellers in Gig Harbor this year. On the other hand, if you have a stable job, decent income and good credit I can't think of any better timing to buy a home if you have been tossing around the idea. Let me qualify that by stating the obvious first - if you have to sell your current home in order to be able to afford to buy another home, one obvious factor you have to consider is when did you buy your current home. Considering that current home prices in Gig Harbor are close to where they were at in 2004, if your purchased anytime after that year you probably don't have much more equity in your home other than what you put down on it. If you've taken out a second, well then you can pretty much forget about it. Of course this is a generality, so examine your specific situation objectively, and if you think that it may be a good time for you to get into another home, now may best time to make your move.