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Seattle Blues from a Walla Walla Perspective

By
Real Estate Agent with Coldwell Banker First Realtors

 

Seattle's softening real estate market

Posted by The Oregonian February 03, 2009 07:30AM

In case you didn't know, it's a buyer's market out there for homes. And it couldn't be truer than Seattle's once thriving real estate scene. Nearly a third of homes sold in the last quarter of 2008 sold at a loss, according to recent stats.

Here's the story in the Seattle Times by reporters Karen Gaudette and Justin Mayo:

The latest distress signal in a softening real-estate market comes from Zillow.com, which found that 29 percent of homes in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area sold at a loss during the final three months of 2008.

And a Seattle Times analysis of property data from the King County assessor's office shows that early summer of 2005 was the tipping point. Most homes bought since mid-2005 and sold during the last three months of 2008 fetched lower prices than their owners paid in communities ranging from Mercer Island to Kent to Federal Way.

Sellers hardest hit were those who bought in the first three months of 2007. If they sold their homes in the fourth quarter of 2008, they typically lost more than $100,000.

The opposite was true for those who bought homes early in 2000. They walked away with a median appreciation of about $200,000 if they sold at the end of last year.

With that less than positive news there is still some good news in the market, The Portland, OR area continues to buck the trend, check out this link, http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/articles/steady-growth-in-portland-real-estate-51406.aspx. Our market here in Walla Walla continues to be steady with our numbers in Coldwell Banker First Realtors office stronger in December ‘08 and January ‘09 than the previous year numbers.

The point being that no matter where you look you can find plenty of bad news, which the media thrives on, whereas if you look and listen there are spots that are doing well. We are very fortunate here to have a group of stable employers with decent paying jobs that continue to support our market. It is a buyer's market, but buyers are not taking the beating we see in areas like Seattle. With historically low interest rates and plenty of good inventory, Walla Walla continues to be a good real estate buy.

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