It’s a seller’s market – so much so Realtors are encouraging homeowners to “sell at this time.”
Pam Bradford of Hallmark Homes added that, “Prices are really up. We’re having a hard time with inventory.”
She said the technology market in Seattle is driving sales here. “They want more home and more area around them,” she said, adding inventory may pick up as the school year ends.
Demand is so high, many houses are getting multiple offers above the sales price. Newly built homes are the most popular.
Bradford said those hanging on to houses are wondering, “Where will we go?” If you want to stay in this area, “You sell high, you buy high,” she said.
Most people want to move up or downsize when deciding to sell. “The problem is you can’t find anything to downsize to,” Bradford said, adding that you’ll pay not a lot less for something smaller.
Shannon Woodward of Windermere said she recently sold a home that had four offers, all over the asking price. She said “it’s alarming what some people are doing farther south,” such as waiving inspections and putting up $100,000 in earnest money.
Woodward said the fastest-selling homes are those downsizing or buying their first home. Not long ago that cost was $250,000, but now it’s up to $300,000.
Houses are selling so fast that some buyers are getting better prices by allowing the sellers to stay in their homes for up to a few months, until they can find a place to move. Like Bradford, Woodward said if you are even thinking about selling this is the month to do it because more will come on by summer. She said Realtors like about three to five months of inventory, and right now it’s at .7 of a month. “In the old days it was nice to get full price,” she said. “Now you rarely get just the asking price.”
Woodward said there are so many more buyers than houses that Realtors get excited when a potential seller says, “I think I’m ready just to talk.”
“No seller can lose in this market,” she said.
Buyer happy
Even though it’s a seller’s market, Amy Lefotu’s family still was able to find their dream house. It sits on a hill and has a water view, overlooking the flats between Marysville and Everett. Lefotu said there were four offers on the house, and theirs wasn’t even the highest bid. She thinks their personal touch may have made the difference. She is a nurse, and her husband is a firefighter. They have a baby, and they are buying their first home. They wrote a letter to the sellers explaining all of that. Plus, they waived the pre-inspection, which also helped.
Their family was renting a house in south Everett. But the baby “propelled us to get” a home, she said. “They change it all.”
They first started looking last summer from Lynnwood to Snohomish to Lake Stevens. Then they stopped. “We were discouraged. We couldn’t find what we loved,” she said. After the holidays they started looking again, and found what they wanted within two weeks. Her husband found it. They were so excited, “He couldn’t sleep” that night.
They like the quiet neighborhood, linked to two cul de sacs. The rambler has an open floor concept with a new rug, windows with bright natural lighting, a two-car garage and decks. “It’s comfy, homey,” she said.
Lefotu said they “made mistakes initially. We looked at it in an emotional way. We’d take only 10 minutes or so to decide if we love it or not.”
She said they also were trying to stick to a lower budget the first time. The second time they saw prices already were going up so “we increased our budget a little bit.”
Lefotu added, “You just get nervous, going from paying rent to a mortgage.”
Driving forces
The market forces driving the local surge are many, real estate experts in Marysville and Arlington agreed.
Seattle reigns as the hottest metropolitan area in the nation in home price growth, according to the Case Shiller Indices.
“Some prospective buyers have decided they are going to brave the commute to get more house for the money,” said Gene Bryson, broker and agent with Windermere Real Estate in Arlington.
They are heading our way along with cash-ready newcomers moving to the Northwest drawn by jobs, low unemployment and high consumer confidence.
Bryson said agents are seeing some straight cash offers. But when buyers have ready cash from sales of pricier homes in the Seattle and Eastside communities, as well as squeezed markets in California, it’s difficult for conventional buyers seeking mortgages to compete.
“That’s making it harder to figure out the values,” he said, adding that it skews the real value and “puts pressure on the pricing.”
Local real estate brokers said they don’t foresee a let up anytime soon. Tanis Costa with Team Costa Real Estate in Marysville said he believes the housing market will spike locally this summer, while nationally, sales will taper off.
Others say the residential housing market in Puget Sound is not on a bubble; they expect soaring prices for maybe years to come.
Arlington Times reporter Douglas Buell contributed to this report.
By the numbers
•In Marysville, the home median sales price is up about 15.3 percent at $317,075 compared to $275,000 a year ago.
•In Arlington, the home median sales price is up about 10.3 percent at $336,724 compared to $308,000 a year ago.
•By comparison, the median single-family house sold for $635,000 in Seattle and $751,000 on the Eastside.
•Renters in Arlington and Marysville should be prepared to pay $1,600-$2,200 per month, when they could own a house for that same amount. The median rent in Marysville is $1,725, compared to the Seattle’s $2,195.
•In 2016, Snohomish County was second in the nation behind only Pierce County when it came to people moving in compared to moving out. The Census Bureau shows 10,500 people moved in Snohomish County, twice the number from the year prior.
•Inventory fell nearly 25 percent from a year ago to 10,679 from 14,235.
