Belingham Real Estate Market Update
The end of the first half is always an interesting time to look at the sales numbers. We are midway through 2011what has it brought us, and what may that indicate for our future? As is usual, some areas are up and some are down, but overall we are doing pretty good. The number of sales in the first half of the year were down across the board from last year, but last year we had the homebuyer tax credits during the first half. Average and median prices, on the other hand, were close to last year or up a bit, except in the Sudden Valley and Mt Baker areas, where they have continued to slide. Numbers from Bellingham and the entire county for the past three years are shown in the table below.
A comparison of June 2010 to June of this year is even better, with number of sales even closer to last year in fact, by the time late reports have straggled in, most areas could match or beat last years numbers.
Distressed property (short sale and bank owned) numbers have stayed pretty consistent over the past year. At the end of June, 10.6% of the Bellingham homes for sale were distressed. 38.6% of the pending sales were distressed, and 16.2% of the sales closed in June were distressed. They dont seem to be having a big impact on overall sale prices.
Inventory levels in Bellingham are down 12% from last year at this time and pending sales are up by 2%.
Frankly, it looks as though the market is pretty stable. Unless there is some major change in the national economic picture, it seems that it might stay that way for a while.
Some things I am noticing:
Appraisals are more of a problemeither with appraisers not coming up with the value or with underwriters not accepting the appraised value without more comparables. In a market like Whatcom County, where we have multiple small, unique markets, there arent always a lot of comparable sales, and that can be a real problem.
There are more multiple offerssometimes on distressed properties, but often on ordinary sales of desirable homes at good value. As was true in the hot market, not all of these offers last very long.as a seller, it makes sense to look hard at the buyers ability and reason for buying before choosing the offer to accept. Some buyers jump in too quickly in the heat of moment, then get cold feet and back away when they have time to think.
For the complete article and more charts and statistics on the Bellingham and Whatcom County Real Estate Market visit the Bellingham Real Estate Update on the Johnson Team Real Estates website.
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